Costellazioni, Rivista di Lingue e Letterature

Issue:
Realism in the arts (and beyond)

In recent years, an overt turn back towards the domain of the real has occurred in the arts, with efforts in this direction being witnessed in the visual arts, in music, and in literature alike. In parallel, the status of reality within our linguistic, emotive, and cognitive practices continues to provoke a heated debate among philosophers.

Instead of such answers as might be supplied by rigid philosophical paradigms, it seems to us that the debate over the status of reality demands an open dialogue and the contribution of diverse modes of enquiry and reflection. Focussing primarily on realism in the arts (ranging from the visual arts to cinema, music, literature, etc.), we wish to approach the issue of realism from the angle of aesthetics and of the theories and criticism of art and literature, as well as in the light of the mutual contributions of philosophy and the sciences (which recently appear to have taken a new turn, as in the instance of the non-restrictive paradigm of cognitive processes with which neuroscience is currently engaged).

Contributions on the following topics are thus especially welcomed:

1) The theoretical, philosophical, and scientific status of realism;
2) Transformations in the notion of realism in the wake of the demise of strong ideologies and of the crisis of postmodernity;
3) The real as experienced in the new media and in multimedia practices;
4) The notion of mimesis in the light of emerging trends in the representation of reality;
5) Realism as historical and political documentation, and as ethical or political claim;
6) Developments in the arts arising from the need to narrate contemporary reality, and as reformulation of traditional artistic modes (as in the graphic novel, in street art, etc.)

Languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish

Please send abstracts for proposals to rivistacostellazionigmail.com by December 31st 2016.

For more information see: http://www.rivistacostellazioni.org