Call for submissions: Thresholds 50: Before // After

“‘Where were you when…?’ A familiar phrase conjoining geography and a moment in time that marks out a sense of before and after. A collective stop. A turning point. A threshold.”

On the occasion of its 50th issue, Thresholds will publish a special edition of the journal, looking backward and forward, at pasts, past futures, and present possibilities. We invite submissions of scholarly articles, interdisciplinary investigations, and creative contributions from art, architecture, and related fields that explore the thematic concerns of before and/or after.

Possible topics include the events or circumstances of specific moments of anticipation—the necessity of being prior to some imagined future—or specific moments of retrospection—the awareness of a near or distant relation to a concluded past. Submissions might reflect on the aesthetic consequences of significant dates of expectation, encounter, or independence in cultures that measure duration in calendrical time—the year 1000, 1492, 1945, 2100. In cultures that measure time in other ways, how have patterns of repetition and their interruption given rise to specific architectural and artistic responses?

The poignancies of moments of time may be registered by individuals—think of a first kiss, a first vote—or by societies—the first flicker of an Edison bulb, the drawing of a border—and each leaves impressions, memories, or consequences that resonate through aesthetic practices and technological forms. Lifespans, inventions, chronologies, dead-ends, emancipations, delays, revisions, revivals, postponements, schedules, inheritances, restorations—concepts and instruments such as these can be taken as examples of the possible connections of topics to the issue theme. Submissions may pursue the before and/or after in any region or historical period.

Recognizing the profound disruptions and the urgent crises that now encompass contemporary life, Thresholds 50: Before // After wants to be neither valedictory nor eulogistic—it aims to explore the thresholds of before and after to gain insight into the experience of stops and starts, conclusions and inventions, stasis and change. From losses of faith to confident expectations, Thresholds 50 seeks to thicken the threshold of before and after.

Submission deadline: May 1, 2021

Article submissions may be historical or theoretical or critical in approach. They should be in English, approx. 3,000 words, and formatted in accordance with the Chicago Manual of Style. Submissions should include a brief cover letter, contact information and bio of under 50 words for each author. Attach supplementary images and texts as needed as separate documents. Other creative proposals are not limited in size or medium for consideration for inclusion in the journal.

All material and correspondence should be submitted to thresh@mit.edu.

About  
Thresholds is an annual peer-reviewed journal produced by the Department of Architecture, MIT School of Architecture and published by the MIT Press. Established in 1992, Thresholds first started as a monthly zine. Today, editors produce an independently themed journal once a year, and include submissions from the history and theory of art and architecture, visual culture, media arts and sciences, film, photography, and related fields. Thresholds is held in over 150 university art and architecture libraries around the world. Content features leading and emerging scholars and practitioners from the fields of architecture, art, and culture.

Thresholds 50: Before // After is edited by Jola Idowu, Antonio Pacheco, Ardalan SadeghiKivi, and Meriam Soltan