Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture aims to explore how the complexities of being in time find visual form. Crucial to this undertaking is accounting for how, from prehistory to the present, cultures around the world conceive of and construct their present and the concept of presentness visually. Through scholarly writings from a number of academic disciplines in the humanities, together with contributions from artists and filmmakers, Contemporaneity maps the diverse ways, in which cultures use visual means to record, define, and interrogate their historical context and presence in time.

For our forthcoming issue, we seek submissions from scholars, artists, and filmmakers.

Possible topics or areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The concept of the present across time and cultures
• The persistence of the past in the present
• Cultural exchange, temporal disjunction, historical coincidence
• The simultaneity of conflicting kinds of time
• Messianic time, circular time, the eternal return, the event, everyday life, historical time, timelessness
• Teleology, apocalypse, the end of time, the end of art, the end of history
• Tradition, decadence, renaissance, restoration, avant-garde, modernization
• Phenomenology of time
• Nostalgia, melancholy, boredom
• Chronophobia and chronomania
• Making time visible, representing time through images and texts, narrating
• The life of images and reception history
• Methodological problems concerning the writing of art history or film history

Proposals for book and exhibition reviews, interviews or scholarly discussions will also be considered. We encourage submissions from artists and filmmakers, recognizing that these submissions may take many forms. Proposals can be directed to the editors at contemporaneity@mail.pitt.edu

The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2014. Manuscripts should be no more than 6,000 words in length and should adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style. Please visit contemporaneity.pitt.edu for more information.

To make a submission, click Register and create an Author profile to get started.