Call for abstracts special Issue Simone Weil & Art

This special issue proposes a bilingual collaboration between Metaxy Journal. Filosofia, arte, riconoscimento and the E-Journal Attention on the life and legacy of Simone Weil.
We welcome applications from researchers and artists alike.
Simone Weil has influenced artists across different countries and traditions, including poets and authors such as Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, T. S. Eliot, Cristina Campo, Elsa Morante, Anne Carson, Jan Zwicky; musicians such as Patti Smith; theatre-makers, and filmmakers such as Liliana Cavani and Roberto Rossellini. At the same time, recent scholarship has explored both her philosophy of poetry and art more broadly, and the influence that poets and artists (from Sophocles to Paul Valéry, George Herbert, Paul Cézanne, and Gregorian music) exerted on her thought. Studies by scholars including Eric O. Springsted (1989), Katherine Brueck (1994), Cynthia Wallace (2024), Silvia Caprioglio Panizza and Philip Wilson (2023; 2024) and others have contributed to this growing field.
This special issue seeks to bring together researchers working on Weil and art from these different perspectives, offering a snapshot of the manifold connections between her philosophy and artistic practice. It also welcomes papers that explore new adaptations of Weil’s philosophy through art, as well as contributions that map less-studied or as yet unrecognised presences of Weil in artists’ work and, conversely, the presence of artists within Weil’s own philosophy.
The first part of this issue will be devoted to the Italian translation of a selection of key papers, originally written in English, that have made a fundamental contribution to the study of Weil and art. In parallel, the journal Attention will publish, in English translation, a selection of significant contributions from Italian scholarship on the subject. Each translated article will include a hyperlink to the partner journal, creating a virtual bridge between the two editions and encouraging cross-linguistic readership.
The second part of the issue will feature a bilingual selection of new contributions (in English and Italian) on the theme "Simone Weil and Art".
Contributions may address (but are not limited to) the following research areas:

• Weil’s influence on artists (we welcome any art form);
• Weilian characters or fictional representations of Weil in art forms;
• Artists’ influence on Weil;
• Weil’s philosophy of art;
• Artists’ creative responses to her thinking (we aim to give space to two photo essays).

All selected papers from the open call will be published in Metaxy Journal, in either Italian or English, according to the language of submission.

Prospective contributors are invited to submit an abstract (max. 300 words) by June 26th.
All abstracts must be sent in Word format to the following email address:

[email protected], with [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] in cc.

The subject line of the email should read: “Metaxy Weil Special Issue Proposal.”

This Special issue is developed in collaboration with the AIRE Research Collective, a Weil-inspired collective that advocates a non-individualistic, collaborative and attentive approach to academic research. In keeping with this ethos, the issue will experiment with an ‘attentive’ peer-review process, structured around guidelines that promote open (non-blind), collaborative, transparent and supportive forms of review.
Guest editors, Metaxy Journal: Dr Michela Dianetti & Marta Romagnoli in Collaboration with AIRE Research Collective.