ASAP/Journal

Notes to Contributors

ASAP/Journal welcomes articles of interest to those studying post-1960s international literary, visual, performing, and media arts. We publish work that articulates new arts movements, critically examines emerging aesthetic practices, discovers new critical methods and vocabularies, and investigates how the contemporary arts confront the historicity of artistic form. We welcome essays about international art, artists, or arts movements of any kind, unrestricted by national, ethnic, religious, or gender borders and boundaries. We invite contributions that address the aesthetics, ethics, politics, forms, and methods of the contemporary arts in any medium, including the cinematic, media, visual, plastic, sound, literary, and performance arts. In addition to scholarly essays, we also invite artist interviews and essays in alternative or multi-media formats; our online site will publish book and exhibition reviews. If you are interested in proposing an interview, please email us at editors_asap@jh.edu. 

Special-topic issues, guest edited by scholars in any arts field, are regularly included in the journal. If you are interested in proposing a special issue, please contact the editors. Please send all inquiries to editors_asap@jh.edu. For additional information lease see Special Issue Proposals.

Submissions Policy

ASAP/Journal uses Open Journal Systems, which is open-source, automated submission software. To submit material for publication consideration, you will need to create an account (register) with this site. Please send submissions to mc.manuscriptcentral.com/asapjournal

Manuscripts should be submitted in Microsoft Word format. Essay submissions (6000-8000 words for articles and interviews) should be prepared in accordance with The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition using endnotes for full initial references. Articles of more than 8,000 words are not considered for publication; this count includes notes but excludes works-cited lists and translations, which should accompany foreign-language quotations. Interviews and dialogues should include an introduction of 500-1000 words. Manuscripts in languages other than English are accepted for review but must be accompanied by a detailed summary in English (generally of 1,000–1,500 words) and must be translated into English if they are recommended for publication.

ASAP/Journal does not accept articles that have been previously published in any language; essays simultaneously under review by other journals will not be considered. ASAP/Journal does not publish unsolicited creative submissions, though we do encourage critical work in creative formats.

Because all content is double-blind peer reviewed, authors’ names should not appear on manuscripts, and authors should not refer to themselves in the first person in the manuscript. If the contribution includes any materials (e.g., quotations that exceed fair use, illustrations, charts, other graphics) taken from another source, the author must obtain written permission to reproduce them in print and electronic formats, secure high-resolution image files (300dpi or better), and pay any permissions fees.

Reviews relating to the Arts of the Present are published on the journal’s open-access platform, ASAP/J (www.asapjournal.com).

The Hopkins Press Journals Ethics and Malpractice Statement can be found here.

Peer Review Policy

ASAP/Journal publishes articles of interest to those studying post-1960s international literary, visual, performing, and media arts. We welcome essays about international art, artists, or arts movements of any kind, unrestricted by national, ethnic, religious, or gender borders and boundaries. ASAP/Journaluses ScholarOne, which is open-source, automated submission software: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/asapjournal. Essay submissions (6,000-8,000 words) should be prepared in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style. Articles of more than 8,000 words are not considered for publication; this count includes notes but excludes works-cited lists and translations, which should accompany foreign-language quotations. Interviews and dialogues should include an introduction of 500-1,000 words. Manuscripts in languages other than English are accepted for review but must be accompanied by a detailed summary in English (generally of 1,000–1,500 words) and must be translated into English if they are recommended for publication.

ASAP/Journal does not accept articles that have been previously published in any language; essays simultaneously under review by other journals will not be considered. ASAP/Journal does not publish unsolicited creative submissions, though we do encourage critical work in creative formats.

Subsequent to an initial editorial review, all essay content is double-blind peer reviewed by two readers in the general field of expertise of the submission. Reviewers are selected with the input of the journal’s Associate Editors in the field(s) of expertise corresponding with the essay topic. Pending the reviewer selection process, essays out for review are usually reviewed within 2-3 months, though if reviewer judgments are in conflict additional reviews become necessary. Once a manuscript is reviewed, the editors make a decision based on the reviewer judgment as to whether a) the essay is unsuitable for publication in ASAP/Journal and should be rejected,  b)  the essay is potentially suitable for  publication in ASAP/Journal  and should be revised and  resubmitted for further review, or c) the essay is suitable for publication in ASAP/Journal pending minor revision. For a revise and resubmit judgment, authors are advised to resubmit their revised essay within 2-3 months to undergo another round of review by the editorial board and peer review. For an accepted essay, we ask that authors revise their work for a forthcoming issue. The journal editors then present a line-edited version of the text for author review before the copyediting process.

Reviews for informal pieces (interviews, conversations, editorial forums, etc.) are completed by the editors and the editorial board.

Editor-in-Chief

Elizabeth Ho
University of Hong Kong

Senior Editor

Michael B. Gillespie
City College of New York

Editor, ASAP/J 

Alexandra Kingston-Reese
University of York

Reviews Editors

Irenae Aigbedion
The Pennsylvania State University

Jerrine Tan
Mount Holyoke College

Associate Editors (3-year terms)

Visual Arts, Architecture, Art History

Rachel Haidu
University of Rochester

Elizabeth Harney
University of Toronto

Lisa Uddin
Whitman College

Media, Film, Digital Arts

Rita Raley
University of California, Santa Barbara

Elena Gorfinkel
Kings College, London

Courtney R. Baker
Occidental College

Literature

Marijeta Bozovic
Yale University

Rachel Galvin
University of Chicago

Brian Kim Stefans
University of California, Los Angeles

Music, Musicology, Sound

Dale Chapman
Bates College

Brigid Cohen
New York University

Eric Lott
CUNY Graduate Center

Drama, Dance, Performance

Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson
Northwestern University

Kate Elswit
Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

Founding Co-editors

Jonathan P. Eburne and Amy J. Elias

Journal Design

Sarah Lowe, University of Tennessee
Samuel Bendriem, Independent Designer

Editorial Advisory Board

Laura Anderson Barbata
Sarah Bay-Cheng
Alexis Boylan
Hillary Chute
Samuel Cohen
Craig Eley
Jane Elliott
Tatiana Flores
Rosalind Galt
Lisa Gitelman
Brent Green
Dene Grigar
Birgit Hopfener
Linda Hutcheon
Oren Izenberg
Joseph Jonghyun Jeon
Carolyn L. Kane
Barbara S. Krulilk
Venus Lau
Benjamin Lee
Brian McHale
W.J.T. Mitchell
Steven Nelson
Eldritch Priest
Ignacio Sanchez-Prado
Ramon Saldivar
Edgar Schmitz
Caroline Shaw
Gabriel Solis
William Uricchio

Editorial Associate

Aurelie Matheron, The Pennsylvania State University, 2019-2020

Supporting Institutions

The Department of Comparative Literature
The Pennsylvania State University
The Humanities Institute at Penn State

Call for submissions to ASAP/Journal Forum

Precarity, Temporality and Public Housing

Special Issue Editors: Bryan Yazell and Emily J. Hogg
Essay Submission Deadline: May 1, 2022

Theorists of precarity stress the temporal dimensions of economic insecurity, whether in Guy Standing’s formulation of “tertiary time” or Lauren Berlant’s “ongoing now.” This forum extends recent scholarship on precarious time through a sustained investigation of a particular site where it is experienced with special intensity: the social housing estate in post-austerity Europe.

Artists and scholars have long stressed the extent to which public access to housing shapes both individual and collective imaginations of the past, present, and future, and the particular affordances of the European public housing development represent a crucial location from which to theorize precarious time. First, social housing developments collect diverse populations (including remaining members of the Fordist-era working class and first-generation immigrants) who keenly feel their own sense of precarious time—albeit in contrasting and contradictory ways. Moreover, as a relic from the welfare state’s past that persists into an uncertain future, social housing is frequently stigmatized and pictured in dominant media discourse as a dead-end. Due to the dismantling of public housing programs across Europe, which has accelerated since the 2007 Great Recession, its future is deeply uncertain and vulnerable, frequently overshadowed by the threat of imminent destruction. The cluster will therefore establish a new critical dialogue that draws from precarity studies, accounts of European austerity, and contemporary artistic forms to show how social housing—as the subject of visual representation, narrativization, and social policy planning, as a setting for works of art and as a site which generates artistic production—indexes the relationship between precarity and temporality.

We are particularly interested to receive submissions which explore formally innovative contemporary literary, visual, cinematic and mixed-media texts; live art, site-specific theatre, and other ephemeral performance art; and media technologies (e.g., social media campaigns, pirate radio, underground music genres) in relation to the following themes:

• The multiple temporalities associated with the precarious ongoing existence of specific social housing developments in Europe (e.g., renewal, home-making across generations, hope, decay, disaster and memorialization).
• Contrasting temporal experiences of precarious housing estates in relation to processes of racialization.
• The temporalities embedded in public housing architecture and aesthetics (e.g., the ‘ugly’ concrete from the post-war construction boom), especially in view of the recent revival of Brutalism.
• Protests against racist and exclusionary housing policies and/or the demolition of social housing.
• Rewritings of the history of public housing from marginalized or minoritarian perspectives.

Please send queries or abstracts via email to the ASAP/Journal editor, Elizabeth Ho, at editors_asap@jh.edu. Articles should be submitted to the journal’s online submission site at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/asapjournal

ASAP/Journal Forum contributions are 600-1200 words or equivalent. You're invited to present your ideas through non-expository means; i.e., contributions may take the form of essays, case studies, multimedia, or personal narratives. Co-created pieces are welcome.

Forum submissions (including notes but excluding translations, which should accompany foreign-language quotations) in Microsoft Word should be prepared in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style. If the contribution includes any materials (e.g., quotations that exceed fair use, illustrations, charts, other graphics) that have been taken from another source, the author must obtain written permission to reproduce them in print and electronic formats and assume all reprinting costs.

Authors’ names should not appear on manuscripts; when submitting manuscripts, authors should remove identifying information by clicking on “File”/“Properties” in Microsoft Word and removing identifying tags for the piece. Authors should not refer to themselves in the first person in the submitted text or notes if such references would identify them.

For additional submission guidelines, please see Author Guidelines.

For informal inquiries prior to submission you may also write to the issue editors at the email addresses below.

Emily J. Hogg (ejh@sdu.dk) is Associate Professor of Contemporary Anglophone Literature at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research has appeared in Criticism, Textual Practice and English Studies and she is the co-editor of Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Bloomsbury, 2021).

 Bryan Yazell (yazell@sdu.dk) is an Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark and a research fellow at the Danish Institute for Advanced Study. His research on social welfare politics and literature appears in Precarity in Contemporary Literature and Culture, Configurations, and Modern Fiction Studies.

ASAP/Journal Special Issue

The Forever Crisis

Special Issue editors: Suzanne Enzerink and Christine Okoth
Essay Submission Deadline: May 1, 2022

This special issue takes up artistic encounters with what we are calling the ‘forever crisis’: articulations of catastrophe that appear singular or locally-situated, but which are in fact part of a much larger network of interrelated crises (climate change, war, pandemic, capitalist extraction) that threaten the long-term viability of the planet and its many inhabitants. “Encounter” is a necessarily ambivalent term, and by wielding it here, we distance ourselves from reflexively redemptive readings that see artistic production as a privileged site of resistance against these violent events. Artistic expressions are, we venture, often complicit in exacerbating the very crises they take as their thematic subject, as with the disproportionate shipping of media waste to countries in the Global South or the carbon footprint posed by art exhibits. And while technological advances have made it possible to document crises in real time, our media climate is one in which a near-constant bombardment of violent images often “threatens to info-whelm us into a state of perpetual distraction”(Nixon 12, 2011). With these uncomfortable realizations in mind, cultural producers must resort to using new representational strategies and modes to make sense of our times and the crises marking them, particularly as they work within a digital landscape that has reprogrammed our capacity for attention and care.

In putting together a theory of the forever crisis aesthetic, then, we ask a set of interrelated questions. What representational and formal strategies have artists developed to rupture the seemingly endless barrage of apocalyptic imagery and rhetoric, either to offer refuge or hold our attention?  How have they prompted a reconsideration of the temporality of crisis and its representational challenges, so that we might better recognize its structural causes? How have cultural producers seized existing representational modes and genres—the zombie film, the web show, the participatory collage, to name but a few—and adapted them to their discrete contexts or goals? And what points of transnational connection, intersection, and collaboration emerge out of these new interventions, and to what extent do these help us rethink what it means to practice art in a planetary or global framework? We are also interested here in aesthetic shifts borne out of logistical necessity—with travel bans in effect, close collaboration is not always possible, while at other times financial precarity, migration and / or immigration challenges, and infrastructural damage necessitate creative solutions and strategies.

Finally, how can we rethink the relationship between art and crisis by considering art as (part of) the forever crisis? Between ecological footprints and the global flows of people, labor, and capital that cultural production relies on, the artistic process cannot be seen as separate from these material concerns. We are therefore particularly interested in essays that highlight these transnational or global dimensions and that are attentive to the uneven power structures that mark these relations.
Please send queries or abstracts via email to the ASAP/Journal editor, Elizabeth Ho, at editors_asap@jh.edu. Articles should be submitted to the journal’s online submission site at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/asapjournal

For this issue, we invite essays from 6,000-8,000 words responding to these questions or exploring related subjects that fall into this larger theme. We anticipate that the final shape of the issue will be determined in part by the scope of the essays we receive, and encourage applicants to be bold and creative in their submissions.

Essay submissions of 6000–8000 words (including notes but excluding translations, which should accompany foreign-language quotations) in Microsoft Word should be prepared in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style. All content in the journal is anonymously peer reviewed by at least two referees. If the contribution includes any materials (e.g., quotations that exceed fair use, illustrations, charts, other graphics) that have been taken from another source, the author must obtain written permission to reproduce them in print and electronic formats and assume all reprinting costs. Manuscripts in languages other than English are accepted for review but must be accompanied by a detailed summary in English (generally of 1,000–1,500 words) and must be translated into English if they are recommended for publication.

Authors’ names should not appear on manuscripts; when submitting manuscripts, authors should remove identifying information by clicking on “File”/“Properties” in Microsoft Word and removing identifying tags for the piece. Authors should not refer to themselves in the first person in the submitted text or notes if such references would identify them.

For additional submission guidelines, please see "Author Guidelines", above. 

The special issue will be tentatively published in 2023. For informal inquiries prior to submission you may also write to the issue editors at the email addresses below.

Suzanne Enzerink is an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of St. Gallen. She was previously based at the American University of Beirut. Suzanne can be reached at suzanne.enzerink@unisg.ch

Christine Okoth is a lecturer in literatures and cultures of the Black Atlantic at King's College London. She can be reached at christine.a.okoth@kcl.ac.uk

ASAP/Journal welcomes proposals for full issues of the print journal and guest-edited issue “clusters” (articles related to a special topic) on a topic of central importance to the existing or emerging post-1960s interdisciplinary arts worldwide. ASAP/Journal includes 5-8 articles per print issue, in addition to the journal’s regular editorial features, which include an interview with a practicing artist (in any medium) and usually an editors’ forum related to the special issue topic. All articles in guest-edited issues should be original contributions not published elsewhere, in English or in another language, at the time of publication; copyright for all articles remains with Johns Hopkins University Press.

In keeping with the mission of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/Journal encourages issue topics that both incorporate and speak to contemporary arts in numerous media (visual art, film, performance, music, theater, digital media, plastic art, literature, etc.) and across national boundaries. We do not publish special issue topics that focus on a single artistic medium in isolation, or that relate only to a single nation or region (although we do, on occasion, publish essay “clusters” focused on more concentrated topics).

Guest editors serve as the primary contact between ASAP/Journal and issue contributors during the proposal, editorial review, and publication process. Guest editors work in close collaboration with the ASAP/Journal editors-in-chief and the editorial board, who will consult with the guest editors about editorial procedures (dissemination of the call for papers, refereeing process, communication with authors). All special-issue proposals will be vetted by the ASAP/Journal editorial staff and articles within issues will be blind peer-reviewed, though this process may be modified to allow for efficient publication timetables given the additional editorial oversight such issues accrue.

Duties of guest editors include:

• Inviting leading authors to contribute articles to the prospective issue.
• Ensuring that articles submitted have not been submitted elsewhere (we do not accept double submissions) and have not been previously published.
• Writing and disseminating a call for papers.
• Ensuring that all authors know what is expected and are aware of the overall content of the issue and of issue deadlines.
• Writing an introduction to the issue (typically 3000-4500 words).  (Guest editors are discouraged from proposing an article in their own special issue.)
• Preparing the manuscripts of the issue, making sure that they conform to the journal’s guidelines and to the highest standards of scholarly argument.
• Submitting the issue articles to the ASAP/Journal editors for peer review.
• Transmitting reviewers’ comments to authors and handling final authorial revisions.
• Accountability for the progress of the issue and for reporting to the journal editors any problems that may arise.

Proposals for special issues of ASAP/Journal should include the following:

1. The title and estimated word-count of the proposed issue.

2. A rationale and description of the issue topic explaining the stakes, expected impact, target readership and timeliness of the proposed issue. The rationale should include a notation of how articles will speak to one another and clarify a central investigative question of importance to the post-1960s arts worldwide. We are particularly interested in topics that are pluri-disciplinary and that speak to our diverse range of readers as well as to the mission of A.S.A.P. If the proposed content is based upon conference proceedings, the proposal must make clear what are the guest editor’s expectations for revision into article-length submissions.

3. A list of potential invited authors. Providing a list of invited contributors already willing to submit papers to the proposed issue is particularly appreciated.  N.b. all essays will be double-blind peer reviewed, which means that an invitation to submit an essay is not a guarantee.  Shorter editor’s forum contributions and interviews are not, however, blind reviewed and can thus be solicited more explicitly; we are not able to pay for contributions (i.e. by practicing, independent artists, filmmakers, and writers), so this is important to note in inviting forum and interview contributions.
4. A call for papers (no more than 350 words). In keeping with the mission of A.S.A.P., we encourage guest editors to issue an open call for submissions even if they plan to include invited essays in their special issue.
5. A brief professional biography of the guest editor(s), with contact information.
6. A proposed timeline for submissions to send to peer review, revisions based on peer reviews, and final submission of issue copy to ASAP/Journal.

The Editors will assign an issue date upon acceptance of the proposal. (The editors reserve the right to ask for revisions of an issue proposal if they deem it to have potential but to lack clarity at the first submission stage.)  Once a proposal for a special issue has been accepted, guest editors are expected to submit to the editors-in-chief a complete table of contents for the special issue within 6 months of the scheduled publication date, and this table of contents should include

• the title of the special issue
• the titles of all articles
• the authors’ contact information.

Guest editors are also expected to keep the editor apprised in a timely fashion regarding progress toward completion of the special issue.

If you are the editor of a forum or special issue forthcoming with ASAP/Journal, there are two options for collaborating with ASAP/J.

Cluster

Sometimes material is best suited for digital. You are welcome to pitch a supplementary cluster to the editors of ASAP/Journal and ASAP/J as part of your proposal to the print journal. This cluster may include video, image, audio, as well as text, and will be published at the same time as your print issue. Please see ‘Submit a cluster’ for guidelines or if in doubt please get in touch with Alexandra Kingston-Reese at editor at asapjournal.com if you have questions.

Reviews

If you would like to pitch 2–3 reviews as part of your special issue or forum, please get in touch with our Reviews Editors at reviews [at] asapjournal.com. You may have reviewers and books/exhibitions in mind, but we can also solicit writers and/or suggest titles for review. These will be published at the same time as your print issue.

The editors reserve the right to reject a special-issue proposal or even a full issue manuscript if

• the members of the editorial board deem the proposal or the submitted manuscript inappropriate for the journal;
• the final issue contents deviate significantly from the editorial proposal initially outlining them;
• the issue articles are not adequately edited or prepared in accordance with the journal’s house style or to the scholarly standards appropriate to the journal;
• copyright agreements signed by all authors are not submitted;
• the issue is submitted 6 months beyond the agreed-upon deadline.

Timelines

ASAP/Journal is scheduled for publication 3 times per annum, in January, May, and September.

• Proposals for guest-edited issues should be submitted at least 18 months before the planned publication date.

• The call for papers should be disseminated at least one year before the scheduled publication date.
• The complete table of contents for the issue should be submitted to ASAP/Journal at least 6 months before the schedule publication date.
• The reviewing process should start at least 6 months before the scheduled publication date.

Special issue proposals or inquiries should be sent to editors_asap@jh.edu with the subject line “Special Issue Proposal.”

ASAP/J is the open-access platform of ASAP/Journal, the scholarly publication of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present. Like the association and print journal it serves, ASAP/Jexplores new developments in a variety of post-1960 arts, including writing, plastic and visual arts, digital arts, music and sound art, performance, architecture and design, mixed media and intermedia arts, and so on. ASAP/J provides a forum for dialogue among and between scholars and practitioners of the contemporary, and it seeks to advance our collective knowledge of our own elusive contemporaneity.

ASAP/J welcomes born-digital content such as brief interviews, reviews, essays, working papers, and photographic, audio, and video works, among other forms. If you would like to contribute a feature to ASAP/J—typically 2,000 to 4,000 words for an essay—please send a brief pitch of 200 to 300 words to asapjeditors@gmail.com. You’re also welcome to pitch ideas for edited clusters on topics of special interest. You would be the primary editor for such a cluster, with support from ASAP/J‘s editor, Abram Foley. If you would like to pitch an edited cluster, please include the names of your potential collaborators.

Reviewing for ASAP/Journal

Reviews relating to the Arts of the Present are published on the journal’s open-access platform. ASAP/J publishes single-book reviews as well as review essays on several recent titles. Single-book reviews should be 1,000 to 1,500 words in length; review essays should not exceed 4,000 words. While we primarily review academic titles, we are also eager to publish review essays on clusters of books of fiction, poetry, essays, arts writing, etc. Michael Dowdy’s essay on “Poetry from a Year of Precarity” is a good example of this genre. We do not publish single-book reviews of fiction, poetry, memoir, etc.

ASAP/J also publishes reviews of art exhibitions, film festivals, symposia, and other authored or curated content.

Please contact Review Editors Jacquelyn Ardam and Molly Warnock at asapjeditors@gmail.com to inquire about reviewing a book, exhibition, or other event. In your email, please include a brief bio, including prior publications, and let us know why you would like to review this particular subject.

Published three times a year.

Readers include: Scholars and practitioners of visual, media, literary, architectural, and performing arts.
Print circulation: 210

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Abstracting & Indexing Databases

• EBSCOhost
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
• Gale
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
• ProQuest
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)

Source: Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory.

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