Fall 2026
https://www.bu.edu/sequitur
CFP: “Ephemera”
Deadline: September 28, 2026
The editors of SEQUITUR, the graduate student journal published by the Department of History of Art & Architecture at Boston University, invite current and recent MA, MFA, and PhD students to submit content on the theme of “Ephemera” for our Fall 2026 issue.
This issue invites submissions that consider material ephemera and its temporal connotations. “Ephemera” refers to the short-lived: fragments, traces, and remnants of material culture, survived in physical form or in memory alone. We encourage submissions that deal not only with physical objects, but with artworks, ideas, and texts that memorialize or reference things past.
Ephemera takes many forms, including letters, notes, doodles, waste, newspapers, trinkets, receipts, clothing, digital articles, or other transitory objects. It invites a consideration of fragmentary materials—pieces of ceramics, scraps of fabric or paper, archaeological remnants, among other parts of a whole. Ephemera also refers to short-lived events—pageants, parades, spectacles, and performances, whether unrecorded or reenacted—or it may be commemorative in its intertextuality, allusion, or indexicality.
In 1589, the Medici staged a mock sea battle—a naumachia—at the Palazzo Pitti as one of several events to celebrate the marriage of Christine of Lorraine to Ferdinando de Medici. The event is recorded in text but elaborated in an etching by Orazio Scarabelli, the only visual evidence from that grandiose celebration. While the event was a spectacle, it is preserved through a print, easily distributable and quotidian in comparison to the event. And yet, it is the print that indexes the performance.
Ephemera also relates to the temporal dimensions of memory that an object holds onto. As Andreas Huyssen argues, the past persists in the present like a palimpsest, meaning our access to the past is inevitably mediated by the present, even as traces of the past continue to shape how the present is experienced. Such temporal layering complicates any attempt to encounter an object solely through the historical moment of its production or from the perspective of the present. Ephemera are thus self-referential: their material or immaterial presence points toward what has passed, while the traces they accumulate make visible the distance between then and now. Remembering, in this sense, does not necessarily preserve the past intact. Whether oral, visual, material, digital, or embodied, it can reconstruct, fragment, or reactivate the past, at times pushing against the coherence and authority of official historical narratives.
This issue seeks to collect scholarship spanning antiquity to the present that investigates the traces, scraps, fragments, and mementos of daily life—extant or refuse, partial or whole, indexical or commemorative.
Potential subjects may include but are not limited to:
material culture, temporary materials, traditional or non-traditional archival materials, mementos, remnants, ruins, photographs, newspapers, notes, letters, cards, postcards, trinkets, tickets, receipts, stickers, organic matter, fabric, scraps, junk, compostable material, disposable/plastic/single use objects, waste, garbage, unpublished materials, advertisements, flyers, digital ephemera (texts, social media, emails), digital memory, database, preservation, conservation, fragmentary, partial, reconstruction, reenactment, tribute, memory, memorializing, remembering, mnemonic traces, commemorative, personal memory, collective memory, generational memory, legacy, heritage, referentiality, the picturesque, temporality, anachronism, palimpsest, forgetting, amnesia, post-memory
SEQUITUR welcomes submissions from graduate students in the disciplines of art history, architecture, archaeology, fine arts, material culture, visual culture, literary studies, queer and gender studies, disability studies, memory studies, and environmental studies, among others. We encourage submissions that take advantage of the digital format of the journal.
Founded in 2014, SEQUITUR is an online biannual scholarly journal dedicated to addressing events, issues, and ideas in art and architectural history. SEQUITUR, edited by graduate students at Boston University, engages with and expands current conversations in the field by promoting the perspectives of graduate students from around the world. It seeks to contribute to existing scholarship by focusing on valuable but often overlooked parts of art and architectural history.
Previous issues of SEQUITUR can be found here.
We invite full submissions in the following categories. Please submit your material in full for consideration in the publication:
Feature essays (1,500 words)
Content should present original material that falls within the stipulated word limit (1,500 words). Please adhere to the formatting guidelines available here.
Visual and creative essays (250 words, up to 10 works)
We invite M.Arch. or M.F.A. students to showcase a selection of original work in or reproduced in a digital format. We welcome various kinds of creative projects that take advantage of the online format of the journal, such as works that include sound or video.
Submissions should consist of a 250-word artist statement and up to 10 works in JPEG, HTML, or MP4 format. All image submissions must be numbered and captioned and should be of good quality and high resolution.
We invite proposals for the following categories. Please write an abstract of no more than 200 words outlining your intended project:
Exhibition reviews (500 words)
We are especially interested in exhibitions currently on display or very recently closed. We typically prioritize reviews of exhibitions in the Massachusetts and New England area.
Book or exhibition catalog reviews (500 words)
We are especially interested in reviews of recently published (1-3 years old) books and catalogs.
Interviews (750 words)
Please include documentation of the interviewee’s affirmation that they will participate in an interview with you.
Plan to provide either a full written transcript or a recording of the interview (video or audio).
Research spotlights (750 words)
Short summaries of ongoing research written in a more casual format than a feature essay or formal paper.
For research spotlights, we typically, but not universally, prioritize doctoral candidates who plan to use this platform to share ongoing dissertation research or work of a comparable scale.
To submit:
Email all material to sequitur@bu.edu
Include in the email:
Your proposal or submission
A recent CV
A brief 50-word bio
Your contact information in the body of the email: name, institution, program, year in program, and email
“SEQUITUR Fall 2026” and the type of submission/proposal as the subject line
Additional reminders:
All submissions and proposals are due September 28, 2026.
Please remember to adhere to the formatting guidelines available here.
Text must be in the form of a Word document, and images should be sent as .jpeg files.
While we welcome as many images as possible, at least ONE must be very high resolution and large format. All other creative media should be sent as weblinks, HTML, or MP4 files if submitting video or other multimedia work.
Please note that authors are responsible for obtaining all image copyright releases before publication.
Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their submission or proposal the week of October 16, 2026, for publication in January 2027.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the SEQUITUR editors at sequitur@bu.edu.
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The SEQUITUR Editorial Team
Ada, Emma, Hamin, Hannah, Isaline, and Jenna
SEQUITUR. we follow art
ACRAH 