Theatre Journal seeks submissions by December 1, 2024 for a special issue on "Magic." Full CFP available at https://www.jhuptheatre.org/theatre-journal/call-papers-upcoming-2025-special-issues.

For this special issue on “Magic,” Theatre Journal invites submissions that consider magic as concept and practice, broadly construed, with a particular interest in how magic aligns with other terms like alchemy, transformation, trickery, prophecy, conjuring, and ceremony. Submissions might address magic and its technologies, affects, dramaturgies and sensations; magic’s connection to the performance of community roles like knowledge holding and ancestral memory; the use of “magic” to brand various performance practices and as a driver of performance’s economics; the myriad ways that magic is colonized, gendered, and racialized in performance history and theory; and critical approaches to various artists for whom magic is a core element of their practice. Overarching questions of the special issue include: How might we understand performance histories and theories via practices of magic considered commercial, vernacular, ritual, and/or experimental? How do performances of magic function as methods of organization, community-building, social formation, and political articulation? What alternatives to the limitations of empiricism can magic offer to theatre, performance, and dance studies as world-making endeavors?

Submissions might address magic and its technologies, affects, dramaturgies and sensations; magic’s connection to the performance of community roles like knowledge holding and ancestral memory; the use of “magic” to brand various performance practices and as a driver of performance’s economics; the myriad ways that magic is colonized, gendered, and racialized in performance history and theory; and critical approaches to various artists for whom magic is a core element of their practice. Overarching questions of the special issue include: How might we understand performance histories and theories via practices of magic considered commercial, vernacular, ritual, and/or experimental? How do performances of magic function as methods of organization, community-building, social formation, and political articulation? What alternatives to the limitations of empiricism can magic offer to theatre, performance, and dance studies as world-making endeavors?

This special issue will be edited by Theatre Journal coeditor Ariel Nereson. We will consider both full length essays for the print edition (6,000-9,000 words) as well as proposals for short provocations, video and/or photo essays, and other creative, multimedia material for our online platform (500-2,000 words). For information about submission, visit: https://jhuptheatre.org/theatre-journal/author-guidelines.

Article submissions (6,000-9,000 words) should reach us by December 1, 2024. If this deadline is not possible for you due to extenuating circumstances, please contact Ariel Nereson to inquire about a possible extension. She welcomes questions and inquiries at anereson@buffalo.edu.
The deadline for submissions to the online platform (500-2,000 words) is April 1, 2025. Online editor Tarryn Chun welcomes questions and inquiries regarding submissions to the online platform at tchun@nd.edu.

Submit via ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/theatrejournal.