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Call for Papers and Reviews
Wreck – University of British Columbia Graduate Journal of Art History, Visual Art & Theory, Volume 4 (2012)

Processes of Change: Translation, Metamorphosis, and Conversion

“Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

While Schopenhauer’s words reflect the centrality of change, they simultaneously efface its complexity. This issue of Wreck aims to acknowledge this complexity by exploring the processes of translation, metamorphosis, and conversion in art and visual culture. Though comparable, these processes are divergent in ways that allow for a nuanced theorizing of change. Translation implies a negotiation between removal and addition; loss and gain; excess and lack. Metamorphosis involves a transformation in form, shape or substance, often implicating an external force or agent. Conversion suggests a shifting of position or orientation as well as an alteration of properties. We posit that these processes can be useful for rethinking many of the issues occupying the art historical discipline, including globalization, intermediality, materiality, and agency. For this issue of Wreck, the editors invite articles and reviews (of books and exhibitions) that engage with any aspect of translation, metamorphosis and/or conversion in relation to any period, region, and artistic medium or practice.

Some possible questions to be addressed include: Are there cases in which these processes of translation, metamorphosis and/or conversion can offer insight into shifts in artistic/architectural vocabularies, practices, and techniques? How might these processes of change allow us to rethink or question notions of progress, evolution, or historical change? What strategies have been mobilized in the representation of religious or political conversion? In what ways do slippage, excess, and/or remainder inhere within the process of translating across media? What forms of visual, cultural, or theoretical transformation can be explored through the process of metamorphosis? We also welcome submissions that intersect with translation, metamorphosis and/or conversion in other ways.

Wreck is the Graduate Journal of the department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia. First published in 2008, the journal’s mandate is to provide a forum for graduate students to engage in debates enlivening the field of art history and visual culture. For more information on Wreck please go to www.ahva.ubc.ca/wreckAbout.cfm.

Article submissions:
- 3,000 – 5,000 words;
- formatted with endnotes in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition);
- include relevant images with your submission (these images will be for the editors’ review only; publication of images will be contingent upon copyright regulations).

Review submissions:
- 500 – 750 words;
- reviews of any relevant books or exhibitions will be considered (a list of potential books for review can be provided upon request).

Please email submissions as a separate attachment to ahva.wreck@ubc.ca. Please also include a 1-page CV. The deadline for both article and review submissions is October 15, 2012. If you have any questions or require any further information please contact Lisa Andersen and Joan Boychuk at the above address.