Call for Papers

Shift welcomes academic papers, exhibition and book reviews, as well as discussions concerning other art-related events. Please see Submission and Style Guidelines for appropriate guidelines.

The committee welcomes submissions dealing with visual and material culture from any discipline in the humanities. Papers may address a full range of topics and historical periods. Topics may include, but are not limited to, art and propaganda, patronage, gender and identity, spirituality and art, nationalisms and regionalisms, modernism and modernity, performance art, photography and film, perspectives in theory, methodology, and historiography, collection and representation, art and technology.

Selection Process

For each issue, submitted papers will be reviewed by an Editorial Committee composed of current graduate students from Queen’s University and The University of Western Ontario. Papers considered the strongest will be sent to the Editorial Board, which is composed of upper-level graduate students and established scholars. Papers judged by the Editorial Board as contributing to existing scholarship will be accepted for publication in the journal.

All papers are selected by blind jury panel, and are therefore considered refereed.

Submission Deadline

This journal is an online publication. All manuscripts should be sent by email to editors@shiftjournal.org. Papers must be submitted to the editors of Shift by 01 APRIL 2011. The journal launch will take place 01 October 2011.

Submission and Style Guidelines

Please read the following points carefully before submitting to the Queen’s Graduate Journal of Visual and Material Culture. Submissions that do not follow these regulations will not be considered for publication.

  1. All papers must conform to the style guidelines as outlined in The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th or newer edition.
  2. All papers must be double spaced with 1” margins. Font must be Arial 11. All papers must be paginated, including the first page, with numbers located on the bottom right hand corner.
  3. Images should be placed in-text throughout the paper, not located together at the end. All images and figures should be properly captioned according to The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th or newer edition. If accepted for publication, authors are responsible for obtaining any and all copyrights for images and figures used within their paper.
  4. In order to ensure blind readings from the Editorial Committee and Editorial Board, please do not include any identifying information anywhere in your paper. You must, however, submit a separate document with your name, title of paper, institution, email address, and phone number. Please also include an abstract of 250 words or less.
  5. There are differing length restrictions depending on the type of manuscript submitted to the journal. Academic papers must be 2500 to 6250 words, while reviews for exhibitions, books, and other art-related events must be 1000 to 1500 words.
  6. This journal is online only. All manuscripts should be sent by email to editors@shiftjournal.org. Papers must be submitted to the editors of Shift by 01 APRIL 2011.
  7. The journal launch will take place 01 October 2011.