Ars Longa is a new, independent online journal and blog dedicated to Early Modern art and visual/material culture. Our aim is to create an open-access, creative platform where early career scholars and advanced graduate students can share their research and current projects. We present work that challenges conventional forms and categories, that is often open-ended and exploratory—but always based on a foundation of rigorous scholarship. We publish journal-quality work without the strictures of academic writing.

Our scope is global and we encourage a diversity of formats and methodologies. We welcome a variety of subject matter and interdisciplinary approaches, as long as they are in some way related to the visual art of the Early Modern, which we roughly define as the period from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ca. 1400-1800.

Long-form, research-oriented work should be submitted to our journal, which will be published twice a year. Each issue will be centered around a particular theme. The theme of our inaugural issue, "Plague, politics and portents", addresses our current reality, living in a time marked by a pandemic as well as by political and economic instability. For our inaugural issue, we welcome submissions related—but not limited—to the following topics: epidemics, plagues, and sickness; prophesies, omens and portents; marvels, wonders, and prodigies; eschatology; flood, famine, and other natural disasters; memento mori, memorials, and mourning; political upheaval, uprisings, revolts, and war.

For consideration, please send your abstract (250 words) along with a CV to arslongajournalgmail.com by March 15.

Short essays, book, gallery, or exhibition reviews, thought and humor pieces, poetry, object or site highlights, illustrations, and cartoons can be submitted to our blog. The Ars Longa blog offers a space for informal, original, and playful conversation on art of the Early Modern period (think Hyperallergic or Cabinet). As our blog is intended to be interdisciplinary and dynamic in nature, we invite artists and scholars from all fields to contribute, as long as their submissions in some way touch on early modern art or visual and material culture. Nor is our blog limited in temporal scope, as we welcome pieces that also deal with contemporary art and or popular/current culture, so long as they are linked to some aspect of Early Modern visual culture.

Please send blog submissions to arslongajournalgmail.com. The blog reviews and publishes work on a rolling basis.

Visit our site at http://arslongajournal.org