Call for Papers: Art / Jews / Canada

Special Volume: Jews / Art / Canada

Guest Editor: Hailey Kobrin (York University)

Is it the identity of the artist or the content of the artwork that makes Jewish art Jewish or Canadian art Canadian? These sorts of questions have long preoccupied various ethnic communities participating in the global art world since the 1980s, when identity politics exploded as a provocative new way to navigate conceptions of self, as well as national art communities and scholars long before. In recent decades, the art world has witnessed the emergence of a constellation of community-specific aesthetics, with scholarship mapping the ways that ethnic and cultural identity can produce shared visual languages amongst artists. Yet, a specifically Jewish aesthetic vocabulary is comparatively underdeveloped. Jewish art follows a long, near-ancient lineage, but an artist’s connection to their Jewish identity is rarely acknowledged outside of the context of specialized Jewish museums. Works by Marc Chagall and Diane Arbus are seldom exhibited alongside Jewish artists in public galleries or museums.

Canadian Jewish artists are perhaps even less frequently acknowledged as such. Despite Canada hosting the fourth-largest Jewish population in the world, there is no national museum or gallery dedicated to the creative outputs of the Jewish community, and no sub-field of Canadian Jewish art studies where scholars, artists, and commentators focus sustained or regular conversation about Canadian Jewish art. There are, however, some important smaller institutions, initiatives, and collections, and there is plenty of artwork. Together, it expresses the cultures, spiritualities, politics, aesthetics, and religions of Canadian Jews, encompassing the complexities of the Jewish experience in Canada, making it essential to acknowledge these practices as Jewish in the writing of Canadian art history.

For this special volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, we welcome submissions that explore these underrecognized Jewish contributions to the world of Canadian visual culture, and aim to help build out a new subfield of Canadian Jewish studies devoted to art. We are interested in works about Jewish artists whose work integrates Jewish themes, as well as non-Jewish artists who have depicted Jewish life in Canada or produced work that has touched on Jewishness in a meaningful way.

We are also interested in the relationships and intersections between Canadian Jewish artists and the (Jewish and non-Jewish) art dealers, art collectors, art educators, critics, gallerists, scholars, and curators who influence the broader ecosystem through which Canadian Jewish art travels. These individuals, like their artist counterparts, have impacted and shaped the rhythms of Canadian visual culture and of the art world / art market over time and space—from both Jewish and non-Jewish perspectives.

Avenues of inquiry include but are not limited to articles that treat:

• Jewish Art and Identity in Canada
• Canadian Jewish Art Exhibitions
• The Canadian Jewish Artist Experience
• Canadian Jewish Art and Education
• The Evolution of Canadian Jewish Art
• Jews and the Art Market in Canada
• Art and Religion in Canadian Jewish Life
• Transnational Connections among Jewish Art and Artists
• Comparative Studies of Jewish & Non-Jewish Canadian Art
• Comparative Studies of Canadian and Non-Canadian Jewish Art

The journal welcomes contributions from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including but not limited to history and art history, literature, visual arts, anthropology, gender studies, religious studies, education, policy, and practitioner research. In addition to original articles that will undergo peer review, the journal also regularly solicits contributions for several non-peer-reviewed subsections:

• The Archives Matter: short essays on holdings in Jewish and non-Jewish Canadian archives organized around a central theme.
• Roundtables: scholarly and often interdisciplinary discussions featuring several voices and organized around a central theme.
• Translations: translations of historical or contemporary sources (broadly defined) dealing with the Canadian Jewish experience in languages other than English or French.
• Field Notes: non-standard academic writing on contemporary literary, cultural, intellectual, and communal events of interest relevant to the Canadian Jewish experience. More information about this section can be found here.
• Reflections: personal essays by academics or practitioners about their careers in the field.

We welcome expressions of interest for all subsections—including roundtable topics and possible participants—that sit at the intersection of Art / Jews / Canada.

In an effort to stimulate original, comparative, and intersectional research involving Canadian Jewish content and both non-Jewish CanCon and non-Canadian Jewish content, the journal welcomes submissions from researcher-author pairs committed to producing collaborative scholarship. The journal offers co-author collaboration grants of $500 in support of this work. Please note in your submission if you and your co-author seek consideration for this grant. More information can be found here.

The journal is accepting completed manuscripts until March 1, 2027. We anticipate publishing the special volume in late 2027 or early 2028. Please contact the editors directly if you are interested in contributing non-peer-reviewed work to any one of the subsections described above. Deadlines for non-peer-reviewed contributions will be negotiated upon acceptance for publication.

• For original articles to be submitted for peer review, please include a tentative title, a short abstract (250 words), and a brief biography. The journal also accepts completed manuscripts in the range of 6,000 to 10,000 words, including endnotes.
• For submissions to one of our subsections, please include a short abstract (200 words) clearly stating the subject of the proposed reflection, translation, field note, etc., how it relates to the special volume, and why you are best positioned to explore it.

Please refer to the journal’s policies and submission preparation checklist on our website. Completed manuscripts that do not comply with our guidelines may be returned to authors.

For inquiries and submissions, please contact the special volume editor Hailey Kobrin (hkobrin@yorku.ca), the journal’s editor-in-chief David Koffman (koffman@yorku.ca), or its managing editor Joshua Tapper (jtapper@yorku.ca).

Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes is an open access, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal devoted to original scholarship that illuminates any and all aspects of the Canadian Jewish experience. It is published twice annually, in English and French, under the auspices of the Association for Canadian Jewish Studies / Association d’études juives canadiennes. The journal is freely accessible on our website.