Call for Papers - Somaesthetics & Fashion

15-04-2026

The special issue welcomes submissions on fashion that place somaesthetics into substantial dialogue with philosophical aesthetics, ethics, phenomenology, pragmatism, social and political philosophy, critical theory, and the history of philosophy. At the same time, historical approaches are strongly encouraged. We particularly welcome essays that investigate fashion, dress, adornment, and bodily presentation through historically grounded philosophical analysis, including work attentive to archives, visual culture, material culture, conduct literature, etiquette, satire, commerce, colonialism, and the historical formation of norms governing appearance. Such work may address historical figures, movements, and practices in order to illuminate the philosophical stakes of fashion as an embodied and socially mediated phenomenon.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • fashion as an object of philosophical aesthetics

  • somaesthetic accounts of dress, adornment, and style

  • embodied self-fashioning and technologies of the self

  • fashion, habit, discipline, and ethical cultivation

  • appearance, normativity, and social legibility

  • pleasure, discomfort, and the somatic experience of dress

  • fashion and the phenomenology of embodiment

  • bodily presentation and the politics of recognition

  • fashion in relation to gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability

  • historical philosophies of dress, taste, manners, and civility

  • fashion, ridicule, satire, and moral judgment

  • adornment, commerce, colonialism, and modernity

  • fashion in relation to art, design, and performance

  • feminist, queer, decolonial, and critical race approaches to fashion and embodiment

The Journal of Somaesthetics welcomes original submissions that bring philosophical rigor to the study of fashion while remaining attentive to the historical conditions and embodied practices through which appearances are cultivated, regulated, and contested. Contributions may be theoretical, historical, or interdisciplinary, but they should engage clearly with the philosophical significance of fashion for somaesthetic inquiry.

Submissions from both established and emerging scholars are warmly encouraged.

Submission Deadline: March 15, 2027

Submissions should be prepared in accordance with the Journal of Somaesthetics’s standard submission guidelines and formatted for anonymous review. Authors should clearly indicate that their manuscript is intended for the special issue on Somaesthetics and Fashion.

Questions concerning this special issue should be directed to:

Mark Tschaepe
Co-editor-in-chief, Journal of Somaesthetics
mdtschaepe@pvamu.edu