The Journal of Somaesthetics is a peer-reviewed, online, academic research journal devoted to research that advances the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics, understood as the critical study and meliorative cultivation of the experience and performance of the living body (or soma) as a site of sensory appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-stylization. The journal therefore welcomes contributions exploring the field of somaesthetics through one -or more- of the many disciplines that already inform this field: philosophy, aesthetics, arts and design research, technology studies, somatic, health, and social sciences, history, physiology, psychology and pedagogy.
The Journal of Somaesthetics will be published twice a year, and each issue will be principally structured on a particular theme or topic. Supported by a distinguished multidisciplinary and international editorial board of advisors,
The Journal of Somaesthetics is edited by Else-Marie Bukdahl (Denmark), Richard Shusterman (USA), Stahl Stenslie (Denmark/Norway).
Current Issue
#1: Somaesthetics and Visual Art
Future Issues
#2: Somaesthetics and Food (Upcoming)
#3: Somaesthetics and Bodies of Belief (Upcoming)
#4: Somaesthetics and Technology (Upcoming)
What is Somaesthetics?
http://www.interaction-design.org/
Somaesthetics is an interdisciplinary research product devoted to the critical study and meliorative cultivation of the experience and use of the living body (or soma) as a site of sensory appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-stylization. An ameliorative discipline of both theory and practice, somaesthetics seeks to enrich not only our discursive knowledge of the body but also our lived somatic experience and performance; it aims to improve the meaning, understanding, efficacy, and beauty of our movements and of the environments to which our actions contribute and from which they also derive their energies and significance. To pursue these aims, somaesthetics is concerned with a wide diversity of knowledge forms, discourses, social practices and institutions, cultural traditions and values, and bodily disciplines that structure (or could improve) such somatic understanding and cultivation, and it is therefore an interdisciplinary project, in which theory and practice are closely connected and reciprocally nourish each other. It is not limited to one theoretical field, academic or professional vocabulary, cultural ideology, or particular set of bodily disciplines. Rather it aims to provide an overarching theoretical structure and a set of basic and versatile conceptual tools to enable a more fruitful interaction and integration of the very diverse forms of somatic knowledge currently being practiced and pursued. There is an impressive, even overwhelming abundance of discourse about the body in many disciplines of contemporary theory and commercial enterprise. But such somatic discourse typically lacks two important features. First, a structuring overview or architectonic that could integrate their very different discourses into a more productively coherent or interrelated field. It would be useful to have a broad framework (which does not mean a unified, highly consistent system) that could connect, for example, the discourse of biopolitics to the therapies of bioenergetics, the neuroscience of hand gestures to their aesthetic meaning in Nõ theater. The second feature lacking in most academic discourse on embodiment is a clear pragmatic orientation — something that the individual can clearly employ or apply to his or her life in terms of disciplines of improved somatic practice. Somaesthetics offers a way to address both these deficiencies.
Relevant Links
The Somaesthetics Google Group
The Center for Body, Mind, and Culture
Richard Shusterman’s website
Somaesthetics Wiktionary
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Call for Papers: Bodies of Belief
The Journal of Somaesthetics invites submissions from any disciplinary perspective that address the relationship between the soma and belief.
Deadline: July 1, 2015
Posted: 2015-01-29More...
Call for Papers: Somaesthetics and Food
The past decades have seen both an increase in the interest in academic work related to food and drink, and the development of the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. Yet to date, there has been less attention given to food within the field of somaesthetics as one might anticipate for a field dedicated to the investigation and improvement of the body. This special issue of the Journal of Somaesthetics invites papers on any topic, from any disciplinary perspective, that explore the intersection of somaesthetics and food. For the purposes of this issue, “food” and “eating” are construed broadly to include drinking as well.
Posted: 2014-11-04More...
Bodies of Belief: Somaesthetics of Faith and Protest
The Center for Body, Mind, and Culture invites proposals for papers to be presented at a 3-day conference, January 29–31, 2015, at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton.
Posted: 2014-09-02More...
More Announcements...
The Journal of Somaesthetics is published in association with the Research Program in Body, Art & Technology at Aalborg University (Denmark) and the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at Florida Atlantic University. It is published by Aalborg University Press with the generous support of The Obel Family Foundation and Schmidt Family Foundation.
