[Commlist] Call for Papers: Colonial Afterlives: Public Art and the Trans-Pacific World - Special Issue of Public Art Dialogue

Call for Papers: Colonial Afterlives: Public Art and the Trans-Pacific 
World - Special Issue of Public Art Dialogue.
Editors: Nicholas Parkinson (Lecturer of Art History & Fine Arts, 
American University of Paris) & Juan Carlos Guerrero-Hernández 
(Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Nevada at Reno)
Abstract Deadline: December 1, 2025

This special issue of Public Art Dialogue invites scholarly 
contributions (research articles, short essays, and artists’ projects) 
that examine the enduring visual, spatial, and ideological legacies of 
colonialism in public spaces across the Pacific world. It seeks to 
explore how imperial legacies forged transoceanic connections that 
continue to shape the public sphere through means including but not 
limited to monuments, architecture, civic rituals, theater, dance, 
street art, and performative acts.

Recent scholarship on the effects of the Spanish Empire in Latin America 
and Southeast Asia, particularly in engendering political and cultural 
exchange, provides an important starting point for a broader exploration 
of colonial legacies across the Pacific. In his classic 2005 text The 
Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the Anti-Colonial Imagination, 
Benedict Anderson demonstrated the key importance that globalization had 
on spreading resistance to the Spanish Empire across Asia and the 
Americas. Since then, a significant number of scholarly texts have 
further fleshed out how local resistance to European imperialism shaped 
connections in, around, and across spheres of Iberian colonial 
influence, illustrated by Koichi Hagimoto’s concept of intercolonial 
alliance, Pearlie Rose S. Baluyut’s triangular study of ‘visual 
histories of occupation’, and Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz’s articulation of 
peripheral internationalism. From an alternative perspective, Kristin L. 
Hoganson and Jay Sexton have likewise demonstrated the entangling force 
of globalization through their study of transimperial connections across 
colonial powers.

While these studies have made vital contributions to the global history 
of art, politics, and cultural resistance, the material connections that 
helped shape the trans-Pacific world remain under-explored, as does the 
role of public art in mediating the legacy of imperialism. This special 
issue seeks to fill that gap by foregrounding public art—broadly defined 
to include architecture, monuments, landscape design, performance, civic 
spectacle, commemorative practice, and video installations or 
interventions—as a central site where colonial transpacific power was 
embodied, contested, and reimagined in the Americas and Southeast Asia. 
We aim to extend the conversation beyond bilateral or national 
frameworks and encourage submissions that reveal the complex visual 
entanglements between these two regions across time, from early colonial 
encounters to contemporary postcolonial interventions.

For a description of what constitutes public art, please see Public Art 
Dialogue’s journal page: Journal — Public Art Dialogue 
(https://www.publicartdialogue.org/journal)

We invite submissions from a wide range of disciplines, including art 
history, architecture, anthropology, religious studies, political 
theory, cultural studies, performance and cinema/media studies, and history.

We welcome papers that engage, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Comparative studies of public monuments, urban design, and 
commemorative spaces shaped by imperial aesthetics in the Americas and 
Southeast Asia;
- Artistic and architectural forms emerging from or responding to 
trans-Pacific colonial circuits (e.g., the Manila-Acapulco galleon 
trade);•    Religious iconography and spatial practices as vehicles of 
colonial and postcolonial public expression;
- Contemporary interventions, removals, or reinterpretations of 
colonial-era public art and their political implications;
-The performance of nationalism and anticolonial resistance through 
public performance, pageantry, and ritual;
- Inter-Asian and inter-American artistic solidarities and circulations 
across the Pacific;
- Museological and curatorial politics of colonial heritage in global 
cities;
- Transimperial transformations of colonial legacies under concurrent or 
later regimes of foreign influence (e.g., Dutch, U.S., Japanese, etc.);
- Connections with other geographies of Iberian imperial influence, 
including Africa and South Asia;
- Philosophical or political essays;
- Presentations of, and reflections on, projects for artworks in public 
space.

Submission Instructions and Publication Timeline:
Please submit one  400-word abstract and a brief CV with the subject 
line “Public Art Dialogue Special Issue” to (contact /at/ globalperiphies.com) 
by December 1, 2025. Complete articles (6,000 - 8,000 words, including 
abstract, notes, and references), essays (2000-3000 words) and Artists’ 
Projects (at least 1000 words) will be due September 1, 2026, when they 
will undergo peer review. Articles selected for publication will appear 
in Public Art Dialogue in July 2027. We plan to hold a private and 
virtual colloquium in May 2026 with the selected proposals to enrich our 
reflections and research before the summer begins. A second and public 
colloquium will be held when the issue is published. Our aim is to build 
a research group and to potentiate the Global Peripheries Network.

Works Referenced:
Anderson, Benedit. The Age of Globalization: Anarchists and the 
Anti-Colonial Imagination. London: Verso, 2013. First published by Verso 
as Under Three Flags in 2005.
Baluyut, Pearlie Rose S. “Occupation, Resistance and Collaboration: 
Triangulating Japan, the Philippines and Singapore through Fernando 
Amorsolo’s Defend Thy Honour.” In Visual Histories of Occupation: A 
Transcultural Dialogue, edited by Jeremy E. Taylor, 97–120. London: 
Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
CuUnjieng Aboitiz, Nicole. Asian place, Filipino nation : a global 
intellectual history of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912. New York: 
Columbia University Press, 2020.
Hagimoto, Koichi. Between Empires : Martí, Rizal, and the Intercolonial 
Alliance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Hoganson, Kristin L., and Jay Sexton, eds. Crossing Empires: Taking U.S. 
History into Transimperial Terrain. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020
---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------