Guest Editors: Keren Gorodeisky (Auburn), Sean T. Murphy (Southern Utah), & Kenny Walden (Dartmouth)

Virginia Woolf had a long and fruitful engagement with philosophy. Her relationships with individual philosophers, her attraction to certain philosophical ideas, and her wrestling with philosophical texts alongside the rest of the Bloomsbury group are well-documented. Yet, serious engagement with the philosophical depth and originality of her fiction and critical essays is not what it could be. Given Woolfā€™s sustained and pathbreaking work on urgent questions at the center of philosophy and philosophical aesthetics ā€“ like the experience of selfhood, the nature of subjectivity, the texture of our relations to each other, our existence in nature and time, the political situation of modernity, the centrality of character in fiction, the challenge of aesthetically representing a person, the nature of pictures, the difference between painting and narrative art ā€“ this lacuna is deplorable. This special issue aims to address this lacuna and give Woolfā€™s philosophical depth its due in academic philosophical discussions.

The guest editors encourage prospective authors to approach Woolf in an open, sensitive, and responsive spirit. We wish to avoid rushing to conclusions about Woolfā€™s status as a ā€˜philosophical novelistā€™; and discourage attempts to ā€˜pluckā€™ philosophy from the lines of To the Lighthouse, The Waves, The Common Readers, and so on. Rather, we hope to follow in Stuart Hampshireā€™s footsteps when he writes that it is a mistake to think of Woolfā€™s novels as ā€˜a continuing inquiry into some independently recognized problemā€™.

The guest editors are happy to accept submissions on any aspect of Woolfā€™s written work: novels, short stories, essays, diaries, and so on. They are also excited to receive submissions that range over different philosophical topics and approach Woolf from a variety of methodological orientations. Lastly, since philosophy nowadays seems to many as literature did to Woolf and contemporaries ā€“ overworked, worn out, maybe even moribund ā€“ the guest editors are particularly keen to read essays that, while remaining accessible to readers, attempt modest reinventions of the form following Woolfā€™s own example.

We invite papers exploring themes in Woolf including, but not limited to:

• The experience of selfhood
• The nature of subjectivity
• The texture of our relations to each other
• Our existence in nature and time
• The political situation of modernity
• The centrality of character in fiction
• The challenge of aesthetically representing a person
• The nature of pictures
• The difference between painting and narrative art

Papers should conform to the usual BJA requirements and be submitted for consideration through the BJA submissions site by April 20, 2027. Any queries should be addressed to the editors: Paloma Atencia Linares (patencia@fsof.uned.es) & Derek Matravers (derek.matravers@open.ac.uk).

The European Network for the Philosophy of Music (ENPM) invites submissions of paper abstracts for its third conference, which will be hosted by the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. The conference is organized in partnership with the Poznań Musical Spring Festival, a yearly festival dedicated to contemporary music. The ENPM welcomes submissions on any topic in the philosophy of music, particularly those focused on the relationships between Centre and Periphery in the Philosophy of Music. The confirmed keynote speakers are David Davies (McGill University) and Mihailo Antović (University of NiÅ”).

In collaboration with the Poznań Musical Spring Festival, the conference will feature a panel discussion with Festival artists. All conference speakers will also be guests of the Festival and will be able to freely attend some concerts. In addition, the program will include an informal concert performed by ENPM members.

The deadline for submissions is 1st October 2026. More info and submission .

The aim of the conference is to bring together scholars working in ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of art, philosophy of education, philosophy of wellbeing, Aristotleā€™s philosophy, educational science and other domains of the humanities, with the aims of exploring our current educational practices and the way they advance development of our virtues, our moral and epistemic characters, and provide the necessary foundation for our individual and social wellbeing.  

In particular, the conference places special emphasis on the role of virtues, emotions, and character formation in education, as well as on their contribution to human flourishing. We are interested in philosophical accounts that explore how educational practices shape not only cognitive capacities but also moral and emotional dispositions, and how these, in turn, support individual and collective wellbeing. This includes questions about the cultivation of intellectual and moral virtues, the role of art in learning and moral development, and the extent to which education can and should aim at fostering flourishing lives. We are also interested in exploring the role of arts within education, and their capacity to contribute to the refinement of our moral characters, development of moral virtues (or vices) and overall capacity to achieve and maintain wellbeing and social stability.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Virtue and character education: aims, methods, and limits
• Moral and intellectual virtues in educational contexts
• The role of emotions in moral development and learning
• Education and human flourishing: philosophical perspectives
• Habituation, practical wisdom, and the formation of character
• The place of Aristotleā€™s ethics in contemporary philosophy of education
• Epistemic virtues and intellectual character formation
• The role of exemplars, role models, and narratives in education
• Emotional education: empathy, compassion, and emotional regulation
• The risks of moral education: indoctrination, paternalism, and autonomy
• Virtues and civic education: friendship, trust, and social cohesion
• The role of art in education
• Questions of art censorship in schools: dangerous and harmful art, cancel culture
• Virtue aesthetics
• Aesthetics as moral propaedeutic

 The conference will take place at the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, September 17th and 18th 2026.

We invite submissions for 30 minute presentations, followed by 15 minutes of Q&A. If you are interested in presenting your work, please send the title and the abstract of max. 300 words by June 20th 2026 toĢżvirtue.education.rijeka@gmail.com. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by July 1st. There is no conference fee.

Organizing committee: Iris Vidmar Jovanović (University of Rijeka), Ana Gavran MiloÅ” (University of Rijeka), Ema Luna Lalić (University of Rijeka), Monika Jovanović (University of Belgrade)

Contact person:Ģżanag@ffri.uniri.hrĢż (Ana Gavran MiloÅ”)

Co-edited by Eleen Deprez and Una Rey 

Issue 46:2 | Wirltuti / Spring (August ā€“ November 2026)

As global crises escalate, issue 46:2 focusses on wit, humour, and satire in contemporary art as a means to subvert, unsettle, and criticiseā€¦ and to have a good laugh. The writing will also explore the ethical and paradoxical nature of comedy in art, whoā€™s telling the joke and how, and where we might find shared punchlines as our collective humanity is being interrogated from all sides. In the seriousness and complexity of such precarity, can we afford the joke at all?

The editors encourage inventive responses to the theme and welcome a range of formats: scholarly (or witty) essays, critical (or ironic) reviews, (provocative) interviews and co-authored submissions. Artlink highlights writers and artists, curators, and collectives working in Australia and the Asia-Pacific within a global context. We commission articles between 800ā€“3000 words for print and digital publication.

Key Dates:

22 March 2026
EOI submissions close

7 ā€“ 10 April 2026
All submissions notified; successful EOIs contracted by Artlink. 

31 May 2026
Writerā€™s Deadline. All content due (text, images and image captions).

Please use to submit your 150 words (max) Expression of Interest.

1. Shame, Power and Cultural Identity in Media, an edited volume for Bloomsbury Publications
2. Watching with Shame: Affects and Ethics in Media Spectatorship, a Special Issue of Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind

Editors: Mette Kramer, Catalin Brylla & Karen Adkins
Deadline for abstract submissions: 3 April 2026

Shame is a uniquely complex and ambivalent emotion, simultaneously self-protective and self-effacing, socially regulated and deeply internalised (Brown 2006). Its survival-oriented and self-reflective dimensions make it a potent tool for media persuasion, capable of producing both critical awareness and conformity, which we hope to critically address in the two volumes.

Shame is not only experienced personally, intersubjectively and socially, but also para-socially, operating across different modes of expression, reception and communication. For this reason, a wide range of disciplines across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences have examined the mechanisms and effects of shame.

Beyond its subjective and interpersonal dimensions, shame is often structurally produced through dominant cultural narratives and social norms that privilege certain identities while rendering others deviant, deficient or burdensome (Ahmed 2004). Within marginalised groups, this dynamic frequently operates through exposure to, and internalisation of, stigmatising representations, whereby media consumers absorb and reproduce hegemonic beliefs that frame their social positioning as ā€˜inferiorā€™ (Brylla & Hughes 2017). Shame, in this sense, functions as a mechanism of social control – an affective technology that reinforces existing hierarchies by discouraging resistance and sustaining self-surveillance. Contemporary political cultures have further intensified this dynamic through forms of strategic or performative shamelessness, prominent in alt-right, conservative movements and populist political discourse (Bowden 2021). These not only reject shame at the moral level of the political actor but actively weaponise it against marginalised groups through practices of public othering and discrimination (Wodak 2019). Nevertheless, shame can also serve as a tool for social resistance, serving as a social indictment of people who are complicit in oppressive norms and structural injustice (Lebron, 2013).

In psychology, shame is considered ā€œan acutely painful emotion that is typically accompanied by a sense of shrinking or “being small,” and by a sense of worthlessness and powerlessness. Shamed people also feel exposed. Although shame does not necessarily involve an actual observing audience to witness one’s shortcomings, there is often the imagery of how one’s defective self would appear to others.ā€ (Leary and Tangney 2004: 18). Shame thus constitutes a complex higher-order social emotion that can be both destructive and adaptive. Research has focused on its functions and origins, as well as its distinction from related self-conscious emotions such as guilt. Directed inward, shame arises when individuals perceive themselves as deficient or morally wrong in the eyes of the social world (Sheikh and Janoff-Bullman 2010). As a self-conscious emotion, it can inhibit both self-oriented and other-oriented empathy, at times activating primitive survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze or fawn (Kaufman 1996). At the same time, shame engages higher-order moral processes that regulate social norms and ego ideals. It can also function as a catalyst for self-reflection and vulnerability, underscoring its deeply ambivalent role in emotional and social life (Piretti et al 2023).

Within Western philosophy, shame has been examined in relation to respect and its valence as a moral emotion. A central debate concerns whether shame is universal and grounded in human dignity and recognition, or whether it is conditional, tied to achievement, social roles, and thus susceptible to use as a mechanism of status improvement or decline (Darwall 1977, Nussbaum 2004). Within this moral framework, some psychologists and philosophers debate the moral utility and danger of shame, while others conceptualise it as a cognitive emotion oriented towards self-knowledge, which gives shame the propensity to be both an internal and external regulator.

We are soliciting contributions for two publications on shame:

1) Edited Volume: Shame, Power and Cultural Identity (Bloomsbury Publishing)

This edited volume approaches shame through a broad, interdisciplinary lens, with a particular focus on its role in shaping cultural identity. It invites contributions from across disciplines, with an emphasis on media texts, platforms, production and reception (not limited to film), examined from interdisciplinary perspectives. Given the substantive differences in how shame is conceptualised, whether as a universal human emotion or as culturally and contextually specific, the volume aims to juxtapose overlapping and divergent interpretations of shame across fields. It further seeks to examine how shame, within contemporary cultural and political landscapes, shapes identities across different communities and individuals, with consequences for how we perceive ourselves and others, and how we negotiate contexts of shame.

For this edited volume, we welcome theoretical and methodological contributions from across the humanities, social and natural sciences, including psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, media and cultural studies, health and medicine, that draw on interdisciplinary approaches to shame, power and cultural identity. We particularly encourage submissions that engage with diverse cultural, geopolitical and socio-historical contexts, including perspectives and case studies from the Global South.

Following abstract acceptance, the word count for chapters will be 6000-8000 words (excluding footnotes and references).

Bloomsburyā€™s mission and values can be found .

2) Special Issue: Watching with Shame: Affects and Ethics in Media Spectatorship (Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind)

Cognitive film theory has extensively examined basic emotions in audiences, yet higher-order cognitive emotions such as shame and guilt have received comparatively less attention, making shame a particularly timely focus for the journal. This special issue invites contributions that explore shame as a force in film and media spectatorship: as both a persuasive and self-reflective emotion mobilised in ideological contexts and as a hegemonic mechanism that governs the emotional lives and self-conceptions of viewers, especially those situated within marginalised communities. The representation and elicitation of shame can generate powerful spectatorial responses, prompting affective and cognitive shifts that engage viewersā€™ negotiations of intersecting social identities such as class, culture, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and disability. These processes may also involve individual journeys with therapeutic and introspective objectives that negotiate vulnerability and self-awareness.

For this special issue, we welcome theoretical and methodological contributions from across media psychology, the humanities and the social and natural sciences, drawing on interdisciplinary approaches to shame and spectatorship across a wide range of media forms, in line with the journalā€™s remit. We particularly encourage submissions engaging with media and cultural practices in the Global South. The issue will include contributions from Professor Emeritus Torben Grodal and other invited authors.

Following abstract acceptance, articles should not exceed 8,000 words (excluding footnotes and references).

Projectionsā€™ Aims and Scope can be found .

Submission Guidelines (for both publications)

Please submit:

• the title of your proposed contribution
• a 300 word abstract
• up to five key references (APA or MLA)

All submissions must be fully anonymised for peer review. Please include a separate document containing the title of your submission, your name, institutional affiliation and contact details. The editors will consider all submissions for both publications; contributors are invited to indicate any strong preference for book or journal publication in their submission. Abstracts should be submitted to all editors.

For further information or queries, please contact the editors:

Mette Kramer: kramermette1@gmail.com
Catalin Brylla: cbrylla@yahoo.com
Karen Adkins: kmookins@msn.com

Supported by the ĢĒŠÄŹÓʵ

How can artistic practice produce knowledge? How can artists learn how to generate knowledge via their practice and articulate it? And how can philosophy and cognitive science help us understand ā€” and perhaps even expand ā€” this epistemic potential? By bringing practice, theory, and empirical inquiry into dialogue, this three-day symposium will explore how artā€™s epistemic potential can be better understood, communicated, and cultivated ā€” both within and beyond the academy.

In recent decades, both philosophers of art and practicing artists have challenged the traditional view of art as purely expressive or aesthetic, proposing instead that artistic practice may constitute a distinct form of research and yield genuine knowledge. Crucially, this knowledge is not divided into separate domains of embodiment, cognition, and perception; rather, it emerges from their deep intertwinement. Artistic knowing is at once experiential, embodied, and conceptual ā€” a dynamic interplay in which perception and bodily engagement are inseparable from reflective and conceptual understanding. Yet articulating the character of this integrated knowledge ā€” and relating it to more familiar scientific or philosophical frameworks ā€” remains an ongoing challenge, particularly if oneā€™s expertise lies, first and foremost, in an art practice. At the same time, developments in cognitive science and philosophy of mind offer promising tools and frameworks: from predictive processing and embodied cognition to empirical aesthetics and experimental philosophy. These approaches can help make sense of how artistic practice shapes and is shaped by perceptual-cognitive capacities.

This symposium brings together artistic researchers, philosophers, and cognitive scientists to explore how these three strands of research can learn from each other.

We invite scholars from any of these three fields, broadly construed, to submit proposals for traditional papers, posters, or artistic works with posters. Questions that proposals may address include, but are not limited to:

• In what ways can the creation of art be genuinely epistemic? What sorts of knowledge or understanding can the creation of art foster ā€“ and how?
• Is there a particular epistemic value that attends the creation of art? Is it of the same value as other sorts of epistemic goods?
• How can philosophical and cognitive frameworks support, rather than constrain, artistic research?
• How might an aesthetic education, informed by empirical philosophy, cultivate perceptual-cognitive capacities that matter not only to artists but to society at large?
• What tools and methods ā€” from video-essays to practice-led inquiry and reflective writing ā€” can help articulate the knowledge art produces?

Submission details

Please prepare a coversheet with the names of the author(s), institutional affiliation(s), and 50-100 word bio statement(s) and an anonymized proposal that includes:

• Mode of presentation (paper, poster, artistic work with poster)
• Title
• Abstract (250-500 words)
• Reference list
• For artistic works with poster, any details about requirements for presentation. Please note artistic works will be accepted for presentation subject to the organizersā€™ ability to meet presentation requirements and the organizersā€™ will not be liable for any loss or damage that may occur.Ģż

Proposals should be submitted no later than 1 March 2026 to the conference organisers via mindartknowledge@gmail.com or the online portal at 

Further details about the symposium can be found here: 

Confirmed speakers include:

Dr Daisy Dixon (Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Cardiff)
Dr Christopher Earley (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Edinburgh)
Dr Jacopo Frascaroli (Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology, University of Turin)
Dr Marina Iosifian (Senior Research Fellow, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews)
Dr Iris Vidmar Jovanovic (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Rijeka)
Prof Marc Leman (Methusalem Research Professor in Systematic Musicology, Ghent University)
Prof Hans Maes (Vice-Dean of Research, LUCA School of Arts)
Prof Elisabeth Schellekens (Chair Professor of Aesthetics, University of Uppsala)
Prof MurrayĢżSmith (Professor of Philosophy, Art, and Film, University of Kent)
Dr Sander Van De Cruys (Postdoctoral Researcher, Antwerp Social Lab, University of Antwerp)

The Mind, Art, Knowledge Symposium will adhere to the BPA/SWIP Good Practice Scheme. It is funded with the generous support of:

ĢĒŠÄŹÓʵ
Film EU Centre of Excellence FILMIND
The Research Foundation ā€“ Flanders (FWO)
LUCA School of Arts (The associated Faculty of Arts of KU Leuven)
The Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image

Guest Editor: Alexander Wilļ¬ng (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics invites submissions for a special issue on Eduard Hanslickā€™s seminal treatise On the Musically Beautiful (1854). Conļ¬rmed contributors to the special issue are Jane Hines (University of Cambridge) and Stephen Hinton (Stanford University).

Even after more than a century of sustained research, Hanslickā€™s On the Musically Beautiful (OMB) continues to challenge musicologists and philosophers of music alike. This special issue welcomes contributions addressing a broad range of questions about the origins, reception, and philosophical interpretation of Hanslickā€™s aesthetics.

Regarding historical inļ¬‚uences and aesthetic context, contributors might explore what sources of inspiration Hanslick drew upon in formulating the basic tenets of OMB. Did he engage directly with central ļ¬gures of nineteenth-century thought such as Bernard Bolzano, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Theodor Vischer, or did he oļ¬€er an eclectic synthesis of contemporary inļ¬‚uences?

Questions of reception and legacy remain equally compelling. How were Hanslickā€™s ideas received by later aesthetic theorists such as Theodor W. Adorno, Roman Ingarden, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose work arguably exhibits traces of his supposed formalism? What transformations or critiques did his ideas undergo in subsequent aesthetic discourse?

The text of OMB itself raises persistent interpretative challenges. Did Hanslick allow for emotional expression in music, and if so, what kind? Did he identify the musical ā€˜workā€™ with the score, or did he consider auditory elements and performance essential to aesthetic judgment? Did he reļ¬‚ect on the historical dimension of music and musical beauty, or did he endorse an ahistorical formalism? Finally, does OMB present an inherently consistent argument, or does it contain theoretical tensions that may account for both the longevity and diverse interpretations of this work?

Contributions addressing these and related questions are warmly invited, providing fruitful avenues for both historical and systematic approaches to OMB. Submissions should not exceed 8,500 words (including footnotes and bibliography), must be written in English, and should be prepared for anonymous peer review. For detailed formatting guidelines, please consult the journalā€™s website.

Articles must be submitted by October 15, 2026, via https://estetikajournal.org. The special issue is planned for publication in September 2027. If you have any questions, please contact the editors.

Estetika is a leading journal for philosophical aesthetics in Europe, indexed in Web of Science and ranked Q1 in Philosophy, Literature and Literary Studies, and Visual Arts and Performing Arts. It is a diamond open access, non-proļ¬t journal supported by Charles University in Prague and Helsinki University Press.

Firm deadline for submissions: 15thĢżJune 2026
Please adhere to the deadline as we are on a strict production schedule.

Guest Editors:
Peg Brand Weiser (Indiana University, Emerita)
Sukhvinder Shahi (University of Arizona)
Ritwik Agrawal (University of Arizona)

Call for Papers:
This special issue invites work that treats art not as an object of ā€œdisinterestedā€ contemplation but as a site of action, coalition, and world-making across borders. We seek contributions that show what transnational feminisms and the arts can doā€”linking artistic practice to pedagogy, advocacy, and solidarity, and developing intersectional analysis tracking gender, race, class, nation, ecology, and power. Building on Marsha Meskimmonā€™s call to couple theory and practice (2020), the issue aims to decolonize methods and canons by working with and through artists, critics, theorists, and philosophers across regions and traditions.

The guest editors invite philosophical papers discussing topics that include but are not limited to:

• How has feminist aesthetics described/reinscribed basic notions such as ā€œart,ā€ ā€œartist,ā€ ā€œartwork,ā€ ā€œartworld,ā€ ā€œperception,ā€ ā€œinterpretation,ā€ ā€œcreativity,ā€ and ā€œaesthetic valueā€?
• How has the study of art by other cultures and traditionsā€”e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Islamic, African, Subaltern, etc.ā€”been realized within philosophical aesthetics?
• Does philosophical aesthetics admit of feminisms, much less transnational feminisms?
• How does adopting a disinterested stance preclude transnational feminist praxis and activism?
• Is there a feminist conception of the use of artificial intelligence, generative language models, and associated technologies in art making practices?
• Reflections on feminist perspectives on the ā€œright to sexā€ (Srinivasan 2022) and its relation to depictions of women on dating apps and platforms such as ā€œOnly Fansā€.
• The analysis of Deepfakes, Sexbots, and Digital Companions that present complex issues that intersect with feminist concerns about objectification, consent, and the portrayal of women in society.
• Philosophical reflections on depiction of feminity and sexuality in popular media, including streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, and in cinema, with a special focus on the increasing prominence of women of colour.
• Feminist conceptual art that emerged as a response to the male-dominated sphere of conceptual art and the broader socio-political landscape that often marginalized or ignored women’s experiences and contributions.
• Reflections on Women and LGTBQ+ artists who have addressed issues of objectification, beauty standards, and bodily autonomy, often using their own bodies as mediums or subjects of their art to reclaim the narrative around the female form.
• The work of artists who have focused on the domestic sphere, highlighting the undervaluation of women’s labour in both artistic and domestic contexts. This includes the use of materials traditionally associated with women’s work, such as textiles, and techniques deemed as craft rather than high art.

Papers should conform to the usual  and be submitted for consideration through  by June 15th, 2026. All submissions will undergo blind review.

Enquires should be directed to bjafeministaesthetics@gmail.com

Department of Music, Dublin City University; Thursday and Friday, 9^th-10^th 2026

Call for Papers for Themed Sessions

Themed Sessions invite papers centred on a shared topic. These sessions run in addition to Free Paper Sessions and Associate Sessions. The MPSG committee and the session convenors invite proposals for 20-minute (in person) papers related to the three Themed Sessions below.

To propose a paper, please send a paper title and abstract of no more than 350 words to the session convenor by the deadline of Friday 31^st October. The decision regarding the acceptance of proposals will be communicated in December.

Themed Session 1: ā€˜Recession Pop: Music in the Ruins of Neoliberalismā€™

Session convenor: Dr Jacob Downs (jacob.downs@music.ox.ac.uk)

What happens to commercial music when economies collapse? To speak of music ā€˜in the ruins of neoliberalismā€™ (Brown 2019) is to register a contemporary world in which the economic and cultural project of neoliberal capitalism has buckled but not fallen. While the 2008 financial crash and its aftermath certainly exposed neoliberalismā€™s contradictions, its familiar infrastructuresā€”precarious labour, financial volatility, and austerityā€”endure: too broken to function, yet too entrenched to dismantle. We might say that neoliberalism persists today as a cultural wasteland of hollowed-out futures, littered with the debris of capitalist realism (Fisher 2009).

Pop music made during and soon after the crash often registered these conditions. Hits such as Keshaā€™s ā€˜TiK ToKā€™, Lady Gagaā€™s ā€˜Just Danceā€™, and the Black Eyed Peasā€™ ā€˜I Gotta Feelingā€™ offered alcohol-drenched anthems of excessā€”songs of abandon launched into a world of foreclosures and lay-offs. A decade later, a second wave has emerged: Gaga and Kesha have returned with an updated sound, joined by newcomers: Charli XCX, flaunting hedonism edged with exhaustion; PinkPantheress, pulling hooks from the vestiges of UK garage; Chappell Roan, staging extravagance as both mask and release; and many more. This new wave is haunted by Y2K aestheticsā€”shiny surfaces and millennial optimism recycled just as their promises of prosperity ring most hollow. Why this return, and why now? What futures, if any, can pop sound in these ruins?

This session positions recession pop as a category demanding conceptual labour in the form of interventions that mobilize continental philosophy, critical theory, and related traditions to interrogate its aesthetics and politics. What is recession pop? What does it mean for pop music to aestheticize austerity, to recycle its past, or to imagine futurity from within collapse? How might we grasp the contradictory pleasures and anxieties encoded in recession pop? And what, if anything, can this music tell us about the possibility of survival, critique, and speculative futures in the ruins of neoliberalism?

Themed Session 2: ā€˜Music and Philosophy Studies in Contemporary China: Dialogue between West and Eastā€™

Session convenor: Prof. Luna Sun (sunyue@shcmusic.edu.cn)

In recent decades, the field of music and philosophy has undergone significant expansion worldwide, and China has become an increasingly dynamic participant in these conversations. The session ā€œMusic and Philosophy Studies in Contemporary China: Dialogue between West and Eastā€ seeks to explore the distinctive approaches, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks emerging from Chinese scholarship, as well as the interactions between global traditions and local intellectual resources.

Music and philosophy in China today unfold across multiple dimensions: the re-reading of classical Chinese thought (Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist) in relation to aesthetics of sound and musical practice; the reception and transformation of Western philosophical perspectives (from Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche, Adorno, and contemporary theorists); and the interdisciplinary dialogues between philosophy, musicology, cultural studies, and aesthetics. By addressing these areas, the session aims to highlight both the continuities with Chinese intellectual traditions and the creative innovations arising from the countryā€™s rapidly changing cultural and academic environment. We are enthusiastically expecting dialogues between East and West on music and philosophy.

We invite papers that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

ā€¢ Reinterpretations of Chinese classical philosophy in relation to music and sound.

ā€¢ Engagement with Western philosophical thought in Chinese music scholarship.

ā€¢ Comparative studies of aesthetics, ethics, and ontology of music in Chinese and international contexts.

ā€¢ Contemporary Chinese contributions to global debates in philosophy of music.

ā€¢ Reflections on the institutional and disciplinary conditions of musicā€“philosophy research in present-day China.

Submission guidelines: Abstracts must be submitted in English (maximum length as required by MPSG 26 guidelines). Contributions from scholars based in China and abroad are equally welcome.

Themed Session 3: ā€˜Liminal Musicking: Dreams, Imagination, Thoughtā€™

Session convenors: Dr Christine Dysers and Malte Kobel (liminalmusicking@gmail.com)

What is ā€˜musical thoughtā€™? Can music be considered a form of thinking? How to think in, with or through music?

In times of planetary crises, traditional modes of thinking and being in the world increasingly fall short. Music, by definition engaged with sociality, has the agency to access, highlight and challenge existing socio-political formations, and might therefore imagine alternative ways of being in the world.

Marking the start of a larger, collaborative research project, we hypothesise musicking as a mode of thought in its own right; one that differs from and raises challenges to a normative phonologocentrism of (Western) traditional rationality and its disembodied understanding of thinking. In that respect, we speculate that musicking is a liminal and transient practice that shares certain affinities with (lucid) dreaming and the imaginary.

This themed session aims to foster cross-disciplinary conversation on liminal musicking and its surrounding topics. We invite proposals for short provocations of up to ten minutes in the broadly defined fields of music studies and philosophy, and welcome speculative, theoretical, and practical perspectives from across genres, cultures, histories and traditions on topics including, but not necessarily limited to:

ā€¢ Musical epistemologies: music as thought, musicking as thought-in-action, sonic thinking, more-than-human musical sensibilities, feminist and decolonial perspectives and methodologies

ā€¢ Imaginary musics: imagined, fictional, and surrealist musics, music and mental imagery, music and memory

ā€¢ Music in/and dreams: irrational, illogical, unreal, incoherent, or associative musics, strange and warped temporalities, disorientation, dream logics

ā€¢ Multi-modal reasoning and affect: non-sonic musical sensibilities (touch, smell, taste, etc.), feeling-thinking, d/Deaf perspectives

Further details of the conference, including the Call for Papers for Free Sessions on any area of music and philosophy (deadline: 31^st October), can be found on the MPSG website:  

The editors of ā€˜Debates in Aestheticsā€™ are pleased to invite submissions for the 2026 General Issue (Vol.21, No. 1).

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 9th January 2026

For this issue we welcome original articles, book reviews, and interviews on any topic in philosophy of art or aesthetics. Submissions should be accessible and concise ā€“ around 3,000-3,500 words for articles and around 1,000-1,500 words for book reviews. Proposals for interviews should be no more than 500 words, with the length of the final interview being 3ā€™000-3ā€™500 words. All submissions should be anonymised for blind review and in Word Document Format (.docx). Detailed submission guidelines are available on our website.

Articles

3,000-3,500 words

The journal publishes articles on a wide range of topics, from defining satire to photography, musical expression, feminism, fictional truth, aesthetic realism, or expressive qualities in animals, and moreā€¦ For this issue we welcome work on any topic from philosophical aesthetics.

Interviews

500 word proposal (final interview should be 3,000-3,500 words)

Sometimes the finest philosophical discussion happens in conversation. The journal has published some excellent interviews with philosophers and artists alike, including Angela Leighton, NoĆ«l Carroll, Alexander Nehamas, Dominic McIver Lopes, and Santiago Sierra. If you are interested in conducting an interview for the journal, please submit a short proposal of no more than 500 words detailing who you intend to interview, why you think an interview with that person would be of interest to the readership of Debates in Aesthetics, and the relevance of the intervieweeā€™s work to philosophical aesthetics. We especially encourage proposals for interviews with philosophers and artists from underrepresented groups.

Book Reviews

1,000-1,500 words

The journal also welcomes book reviews or critical summaries on books relevant to our field. These should be on a recent publication, and around 1,000-1,500 words. If you would like to review a book, it might be worth looking at publisherā€™s websites, such as Oxford University Press or Routledge, for new and upcoming releases in aesthetics.

Please email all submissions to editor@debatesinaesthetics.org

For submission guidelines please visit 

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Debates in Aesthetics is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal for articles, interviews and book reviews. Published by the ĢĒŠÄŹÓʵ, the journalā€™s principal aim is to provide the philosophical community with a dedicated venue for debate in aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

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Christopher Earley & Ben Campion

Co-Editors 

Debates in Aesthetics