Words are nothing but fragments sliced from a body that existed before them. (Paul Claudel)
Based on links and echoes, this open issue provides a perspective on current issues (cultural and geopolitical) and the imaginary figures attached to them. Balancing between the investigation of tangible phenomena and the examination of vivid images made of symbols and senses, the different papers in this issue address the possible connections between our human, spatial and physical presence and the waves of culture that flow through us and move us from within.
This issue has no guest editor. It is what we describe as an open issue, which is a bit of a misnomer because all our issues are open access. This one is open thematically. This issue also has two managing editors, and the whole team wishes to welcome Margot Mellet!
I, Margot, joined the journal in the Winter 2024, in the middle of this current issue, discovering a wealth of analysis and catching up with a carriage already well on the rails thanks to the work and dedication of Brent Ryan Bellamy.
I, Brent, am thrilled to be co-managing editor with Margot who has editorial experience working with Sens public and brings much knowledge and energy to Imaginations. The carriage is righted and racing once more!
This open issue crystallizes the perfect portal into the Imagination’s ethos as a crossroads between the democratization of knowledge and the exploration of shared culture perspectives through the studies of images and their sensitive, meaningful and political impact. Portrait of a publishing horizon, this issue is also an opportunity to announce a new tradition for the journal, as it evolves with new practices and writings.
Every year or every two years, the Imaginations editorial chain will develop an open publication, in the Issues category or in the Elicitations category, to welcome proposals that are out-of-frame, out-of-the-ordinary but exceptional. As mentioned above, this “openess” is therefore an invitation to new standards of academic publishing or even to cultural studies in general.
Coming soon! An issue following on from the Symposium “A Research-creation Episteme? Practice-based Research and Institutional Critique” on September 27, 2023: the issue is directed by Agata Mergler (York University) and Joshua Synenko (Trent University). It explores and catalogues the new epistemologies of research-creation.
Finally, We are taking part in a cross-platform publication with The Goose and Engaged Scholar Journal to produce an issue on the topic of Sustainable Publishing. This issue considers sustainability in several ways. First, environmentally, we are interested in the carbon footprint of an online journal’s web hosting or the sourcing of recycled paper for printed issues; second, socially, we aim to sustain a range and diversity of voices, topics and academic languages (in both a traditional and metaphoric sense) that makes space for the local, the parochial, and the peripheral; third, in terms of labour, we strive to develop reasonable and equitable working conditions; fourth, fiscally, we seek to maintain healthy revenue streams; and fifth, politically, we champion sustaining publishing practices that are scholar-led rather than driven by oligopolistic for-profit publishers. This rich and nuanced sense of sustainable publishing is the launching pad for the issue, which will be simultaneously published and hosted across the three journals. You can access the CFP at this imaginations link or this link from the Goose.
That’s what you can expect from us moving forward into 2025. We are always looking out for Guest Editors to pitch issues our way. Please email brent.ryan.bellamy@gmail.com, margot.mellet@umontreal.ca, imaginat@ualberta.ca, and/or mreisenleitner@gmail.com.