Call for Papers

Special Issue on “Action, Care, and Aesthetic Education”

As a discipline and practice, aesthetics and, by extension, aesthetic education, might seem peripheral in the face of unprecedented social, environmental, and economic challenges, including catastrophic climate change and the Faustian pact we seem to be forging with AI. Despite its long and exclusive history in teaching and study of beauty and artistic expression, in contemporary literature aesthetics has evolved to include the development of ethical awareness, understanding, compassion and action--qualities arguably essential in times of crisis.

What is the role of aesthetic education in cultivating the imperative for care and action in response to our planetary crisis? How can aesthetic education address the urgent need for positive change in this context?

For the “Action, Care, and Aesthetic Education,” Spring 2026 Special Issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, we invite papers that explore these critical issues. We particularly encourage contributions that investigate how aesthetic education can support and inspire communities of practice committed to action for positive change, driven by empathy, care, and compassion.

Potential questions contributors might address include:

• How can aesthetic education be reimagined to address global crises such as climate change, social injustice, and technological disruption?
• In what ways can aesthetic education foster the development of empathy, ethical reasoning, and social responsibility among students?
• How can aesthetic education be integrated with other disciplines to create holistic approaches to problem-solving in the context of global challenges?
• What pedagogical strategies can be employed in aesthetic education to encourage active engagement with environmental and social issues?
• How does aesthetic education contribute to the cultivation of critical consciousness and the capacity for transformative action in students?
• What roles do creativity and artistic practice play in aesthetic education as tools for responding to crises?
• How can aesthetic education prepare students to navigate and critically assess the ethical implications of AI and digital technologies?

We welcome papers that offer innovative perspectives on how aesthetic education can be a powerful tool for addressing the most pressing issues of our time.

Manuscript deadline: December 31, 2024

Please submit your manuscript through the Scholastica portal, indicating that the manuscript is being submitted for this special issue.

Editors

Editor
Tracie Costantino
Provost
California Institute of the Arts
24700 McBean Parkway
Valencia, CA 91355-2340
tcostantino@calarts.edu

Editorial Assistant
Haerim Lee, University of Illinois
jaeediting@gmail.com

PDF Policy

PDFs are permitted and issued for the following:

• Tenure dossier.
• Special workshops the author is moderating.
• Other requests to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
• All PDFs will include a statement of copyright and a provision that the articles will not be photocopied, distributed, or used for purposes other than the terms agreed to by UIP.

Preprints are permitted for:

• University repositories; UIP requires a publication statement to be posted along with the preprint.
• Some journals have their own established policies and procedures for preprints. Please be sure to first check their respective Web sites before sending your request.

Postprints are permitted for:

• Non-profit archives and repositories; Articles must be at least one year old. UIP requires a publication statement to be posted along with the postprint and a link back to the journal of publication's home page on the UIP website.
• Personal and commercial Web sites; Articles must be at least three years old. UIP requires a publication statement to be posted along with the postprint and a link back to the journal of publication's home page on the UIP website.

Please contact the Intellectual Property Manager for more information.

Please send all requests to:

Angela Burton
Intellectual Property Manager
UIP-RIGHTS@uillinois.edu

Submissions

The Journal of Aesthetic Education is a peer-reviewed journal that seeks to clarify the issues of aesthetic education understood in its most extensive meaning and explicating philosophical and theoretical approaches that address and clarify these issues.

General guidelines:

Manuscripts must be submitted in an electronic format, preferably in a Word or rich text file transmitted to our electronic manuscript submission system. This secure, personalized resource will allow you to track your manuscript through each step of the acceptance and production process. To begin, click the link below to be taken to our Scholastica page and set up your personal account and upload your submission.  

Authors should follow Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) in preparing their manuscripts, using endnotes as the method of citation. Endnotes should be numbered within the text in accordance with the format given in the Chicago Manual of Style.

No editorial consideration will be given to manuscripts that have been published elsewhere or are under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The Editor usually assigns book reviews for the journal. If any author is willing to review a book for the journal, please send an e-mail at jaeediting@gmail.com.

Guidelines for copyrighted images and text:

It is the responsibility of the author to obtain authorization from copyright holders for images and text reprinted in the Journal of Aesthetic Education. Electronic and print rights are required. All illustrations are reproduced in black-and-white.

The author is required to submit the original permission letters for all copyrighted material used in his/her manuscripts to the Press. It is encouraged that the authors submit images separately from their contributions, with call-outs inserted into the text where the images would appear (for example, <Insert Figure 1 near here>). Images should be formatted as 300 dpi grayscale TIFFs and line art should have a resolution of 1200 dpi or better.

The author should send the permission letter(s) to the following address:

Journal of Aesthetic Education
University of Illinois Press
1325 S. Oak St.
Champaign, IL 61820

The journal is maintained as an open forum of discussion and as a channel of communication. All articles and editorials appearing in it are to be regarded as the expressions of the viewpoints of the particular writers and not as the official position of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, the College of Education, or the University of Illinois.

 View our Publications Ethics and Malpractice Statement

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