What Is Art Good For? The Role of Literature and the Arts in Contemporary Society

The academic journal Messages, Sages and Ages (http://www.msa.usv.ro/) based at the English Department, University of Suceava invites contributions for an issue focusing on the role of literature and the arts in today’s world in relation to the economic crisis, activism, terrorism, public impact, personal value, economic value and production, and religion. The scope of articles is broadly inclusive: proposals for papers on the role of literature and art of any period will be considered as long as they address one or more of the following topics

• Art and Economic Materialism: can art help us to overcome the economic crisis?
• Art and Social Change: is the activist an artist (in women’s rights organisations, environmental protection organisations, Greenpeace, etc.)?
• Art and Violence: does art play a role in terrorism, mass-murders, or war?
  ‘Words never ground a grain of corn’: is art useful for material production?
  Can Art Be Quantified in Material Terms?
• Art and the Urban Distribution of the Self: is architecture a reiteration of a mirrored reader?
• Buildings as Texts: how can we draw an artistic identity in an urban co(n)text?
  Consuming Cities: mechanical gestures of consumerist acting (tourism, shopping, promenade, etc.) re-produced within literature
• Art as a Form of Religious Experience: is the artist a priest of the imagination?
  We invite proposals from senior as well as junior academics, and also from representatives of non-governmental or governmental organisations.

We welcome papers in English. Abstracts (cca. 200 words) and full papers (up to 9,000 words), together with a brief biographical sketch (cca. 400 words), are to be sent to the following address: msa_usv@hotmail.com.

Submission deadline: 1 June 2017