Announcements

The Journal of Somaesthetics is a peer-reviewed, online, academic research journal devoted to research that advances the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics, understood as the critical study and meliorative cultivation of the experience and performance of the living body (or soma) as a site of sensory appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-stylization. https://somaesthetics.aau.dk/index.php/JOS/about

Journal of Somaesthetics is Elsevier Scopus indexed.

  • Call for Abstracts: Somaesthetic Practices – Interviews with Artists and Somatic Practitioners

    20-02-2025

    This issue places special emphasis on interviews with artists and practitioners engaged in somatic work, including those in visual arts, experimental arts, music, dance, performance, and other embodied creative practices. These fields offer unique insights into how the human body-mind functions as a site of creation, expression, and transformation. Whether through the fluid movements of dance, the precision of choreographed performance, the improvisational nature of sound and movement, or the ways in which physical disciplines such as martial arts, somatic therapies, or ritual practices engage the body, this issue seeks to highlight the profound connections between somaesthetic practices and aesthetic experience. Similarly, artists working in visual and experimental arts explore embodiment through materiality, process, and interactive engagement, expanding the scope of somaesthetics in contemporary culture.

    Abstract submission deadline: Maj 15, 2025

    Full article submission deadline: Sept 30, 2025

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  • Call for Papers: Somaesthetics and Anthropology

    03-08-2024

    This issue of the Journal of Somaesthetics will explore the intersection of anthropology and somatic analysis. We invite authors to think anew about socio-cultural anthropology’s longstanding engagement with “the body” in light of the “somatic turn” in contemporary thought shaped by the philosopher Richard Shusterman’s extensive corpus of work on somaesthetics.

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  • Call for Papers: Queering the Soma

    18-08-2023

    According to Richard Shusterman, “the body is both shaped by power and employed as an instrument to maintain it—how bodily norms of health, skill, and beauty, and even our categories of sex and gender, are constructed to reflect and sustain social forces” (Shusterman 2020, 247). In this issue of the Journal of Somaesthetics, we consider somatic identities and behaviors that subvert somatic normativity, with a special focus on gender and sexuality. Although there has been somaesthetic work devoted to mostly heteronormative identities, behaviors, and histories, there has been little devoted to queer somaesthetics. Beginning with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s definition of queer as “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (Sedgwick 1993, 8), this issue is dedicated to intersections between queerness and somaesthetics, broadly construed.

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  • CfP: Methodologies for exploring embodiment and aesthetics

    11-01-2023

    Somatic practices and embodied reception are notoriously difficult to account for academically because neither physiological data nor philosophical theory can capture the experiential dimensions of embodied aesthetics.

    Against this backdrop, we are interested in new methodological orientations that could contribute to studying the aesthetic aspects of the body and embodiment. We would also like to encourage the contributions of authors addressing these issues in their own research, even if not explicitly connected to the notion of somaesthetics.

    The Journal of Somaesthetics invites proposals of academic papers, essays, and video articles from different fields of somatic practices, empirical research, art, and philosophy that want to shed light on and discuss the methodologies used in research of, through, and for the aesthetics of the body and embodied aesthetic experiences.

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  • Journal of Somaesthetics has been approved to be among the top-ranked journals of aesthetics in Italy.

    28-09-2022

    Last year Stefano Marino informed the agency Anvur at the Italian Minister of Research about the Journal of Somaesthetics, suggesting that it should be included in Anvur's list of top-ranked journals in Aesthetics.
    This is a procedure that, in specific periods of the year, Italian professors and researchers have at their disposal, to inform Anvur about possible updates of its List of scientific and top-ranking journals ("classe A").
    Today, Stefano Marino received an e-mail that confirms that Anvur has approved the Journal of Somaesthetics to be one of the journals the Italian Minister considers as top-ranking in the field of Aesthetics. This is good news, because the Journal will now be even more attractive for Italian scholars.
    Thank you very, very much Stefano for your efforts.

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  • Open call for papers

    21-09-2022

    The Journal of Somaesthetics invites theoretical, philosophical investigations, analyses of practical and empirical projects and case studies concerning the aesthetics of the living body. The submission might come in various formats such as research paper, essays, reviews of books and practical work. The submission might include images, graphics, sound and video.

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  • BODY, SPACE, AND ARCHITECTURE

    14-12-2021

    This issue of the Journal of Somaesthetics is dedicated to the embodied and aesthetic potentials of architectural and spatial designs. We invite articles and cases that investigate how “the soma is the crucial medium through which architecture is experienced and created” (Shusterman: 2009, p.290).

    How should we approach the world of architecture through the principles of the living sentient body? How do we create a fertile dialog between practical design work and embodied philosophies, such as somaesthetics, pragmatism, or phenomenology? Concretely, how do we design houses, public spaces, interiors, soundscapes, landscapes, augmented realities, virtual spaces, or art installations from the somaesthetic point of view?

    Guest editor: Aurosa Alison

    Schedule

    Deadline for articles:              August 1, 2022

    Peer-reviews back:                 Oct. 1, 2022

    Deadline for final articles:      Nov. 1, 2022

    Publishing:                              Vinter, 2022

     

    Guidelines

    Papers should be between 5,000 and 8,000 words and prepared for blind review, according to the Journal’s style guidelines as indicated on the Journal’s website:

    https://somaesthetics.aau.dk/index.php/JOS/about/submissions

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  • Aesthetics and Body Experiences in Health Care

    07-10-2021

    In this issue of the Journal of Somaesthetics, we invite contributions that investigate the significance of aesthetics and the experiencing body (soma) within the field of health care, health studies, and other health and well-being practices. The journal invites academic investigations and presentations of and reflections on any kind of somatic practice in health care.  All approaches to health and reports on practices centered on the experiencing body are welcomed independent of whether they take outset in phenomenology, pragmatism, sociology, psychology, politics or other perspectives.

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  • Conference: BODIES OF POWER - SOMAESTHETICS AND POLITICS

    14-06-2021

    BODIES OF POWER:
    SOMAESTHETICS
    AND POLITICS
    November 4-5, 2021
    Florida Atlantic University | Boca Raton
    Political regimes wield their power on and through our bodies.
    However, bodies also provide instruments for individuals and
    groups to find emancipation through creative somaesthetic
    action. Explore the complex issues of bodies and power with an
    international and multidisciplinary group of expert researchers.
    For more information, please visit
    fau.edu/artsandletters/bodymindculture/
    uconfern/bodies-of-power

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  • Somaesthetics and Beauty

    01-10-2019

    In this issue of the Journal of Somaesthetics, we invite contributions from various fields exploring experiences of beauty vis-à-vis aestheticized phenomena in everyday life, design, art, urbanity and elsewhere. The lack of borders within the aesthetic field rebounds on a corresponding unlimitedness in our ability to perceive. Correspondingly, the question is whether the beautiful has become too broad and thus too superficial a concept or does the sentiment of beauty help us to differentiate our perceptions? Mapping the conceptual potentials of beauty points not only to a revaluation of modern and contemporary art and artistic ways of challenging traditional beauty, but it simultaneously emphasizes the need for focusing on the sensible, perceptive and bodily experience. The major question remains how, despite trivialization, beauty may still (or again) refer to an aesthetic experience that is manifesting itself in the sensing body, both as originating from the body, and as appearing in a meaningful, embodied experience.

    We invite scholars and practitioners interested in the notion of beauty and beautiful experiences. We do not want to limit contributions to specific fields or methods of inquiry, but encourage scholars and practitioners from various relevant fields (aesthetics, arts, health studies, sports, natural sciences, theology) to submit an article, essay or a documentation of a practical inquiry related to beauty.

    Submission deadline:  January 15, 2020

     

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  • CfP Somaesthetics and Sound (issue 5.2)

    01-03-2019

    Somaesthetics and Sound

    The intertwining of sound and the body is fascinating and multifarious. Until fairly recently, sound has mainly been studied as an acoustic or auditive phenomenon. In turn, the body has been commonly approached as a physiological entity. Lately, however, the embodied and experiential aspect of sound has increasingly gained ground in research and pedagogies as well as in the arts.

    In this issue of the Journal of Somaesthetics, we invite contributions from various fields exploring sound as manifesting itself in the body, as originating from the body, or as a meaningful, embodied experience. The focus is on the body-aesthetic, or somaesthetic dimensions of sound. Aesthetic experience here is not limited to the arts alone.

    Deadline

    June 30, 2019

    Contact

    Anne Tarvainen: tarvainen.anne@gmail.com

    Päivi Järviö: paivi.jarvio@uniarts.fi

     

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  • Call for Papers: Bodies of Belief / Bodies of Care

    17-10-2016

    Bodies of Belief:

    Human bodies are shaped not only by their genetic endowment but also by the belief systems of the cultures in which they develop and function. Such belief systems vary from unarticulated background assumptions to ritualized practices and explicit doctrines or even to formulated laws enacted and enforced by social institutions. Likewise, belief’s somatic shaping ranges widely from the stylization of external appearance (including clothing and ornamentation) to the structuring of bodily actions and comportment (including essential practices like eating) and even to inner modes of affect (which are felt somatically). The beliefs that the human soma embodies and expresses are not confined to established social norms; they also include items of faith and commitment that are individualistic, nonconformist, or even antagonistic to the cultural mainstream. More than a mere instrument of compliance or worship, the soma is also a site and weapon of protest.

    Bodies of Care:

    Bodies are obviously the targets of one’s daily care in terms of personal hygiene, grooming, exercise, and proper nourishment. They are also objects of care in the sense of worry or concern, since we all suffer illness and death through our bodies. However, the sentient, purposive, active body or soma is also a subjectivity that examines and cares for the body as object, whether it be one’s own body or the bodies of others who one wants to help or comfort. We all need such curative help or comfort at some point in our lives; and some people devote their professional and personal lives to giving such care. Bodies need and give care in many ways and for many reasons: to overcome illness and disability, to address and alleviate dependence, to learn new skills and remedy bad habits, to inspire greater confidence for personal flourishing and greater social betterment. 

    Abstracts of 250 words, and a current CV, should be sent electronically as attachments  to Richard Shusterman at bodymindculture@fau.edu.

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