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Material Matters 2026 Issue, Call for Papers:

“Animal Materialities”

All submissions and proposals are due Friday, June 5, 2026 at 11:59pm ET

Submit here via this Google Form (https://forms.gle/PRGruuzFC4DV72tKA)

The editors of the Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture (CMSMC), a non-profit online publication about material culture run by fellow master’s scholars, invite submissions around the theme of “Animal Materialities” for our 2026 issue of Material Matters. 

“Animal Materialities” invites papers that center animals as material, epistemological, and political actors rather than symbolic backdrops within human histories. As the field increasingly attends to the agency and ‘thingness’ of objects,  it is equally important to remember that humans do not share the world with things alone. Agency theory, as noted by scholar Jennifer Roberts, refuses, “any absolute ontological distinction between humans and things. Objects are not and never have been separate from and subordinate to humans, but something closer to collaborators.” Animals are as integral to human history as objects, and perhaps even more visibly so, as they possess their own vital agencies that actively shape how they move through and transform the world through their bodies, labor, and byproducts. 

In order to broaden the scope and potential for scholarly inquiry, “Animal Materialities” asks scholars to engage with animals in material culture. What happens to our understanding or interpretation of an object or a work of art when we not only see, but engage, the animal? At the heart of this topic is an assertion that the lives and presence of animals in cultural production is fundamentally related to the history of humanity and as such, deserves due attention in the field.

CMSMC accepts submissions from master’s scholars (those earning or possessing a master’s degree). We are also open to the work of PhD students who are in their coursework and working towards an MA in their program. PhD candidates and higher are not eligible.

This issue will build upon our 2026 “Animal Materialities” symposium held on April 11, 2026. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:  

  • Animal bodies as material agents: flesh, bone, hide, hair, feather, and their afterlives

  • Animals as laborers: work, exploitation, training, care, and resistance

  • Animal agency and co-presence within human–nonhuman collectives

  • Animals in museums, scientific collections, and exhibition practices

  • Indigenous relationships to animals: kinship, sovereignty, knowledge, and reciprocity

  • Visualizing animal agency in art, material culture, and media

  • Zooarchaeology and faunal analysis 

  • Animals as epistemological actors: how animals produce, transmit, or disrupt knowledge

  • Movement and mobility: migration, circulation, captivity, and forced displacement of animals

  • Animals and environments: landscape, ecology, and multispecies worlds

  • Human–animal relationships: care, affection, violence, and dependency

  • Commodification and consumption: animals as goods, resources, and property

  • Temporality and animal life: lifespan, extinction, futurity, and deep time

  • Posthumanism, new materialism, and multispecies theory

  • Animals and resistance to humanist narratives of agency and meaning  

The mission of the Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture (CMSMC) is to provide a platform for emerging master’s scholars, who are at a crucial point in their academic careers, to publish their work and contribute to the expanding field of Material Culture. CMSMC seeks to foster interdisciplinary discussions and address a diverse pool of topics. The Coalition desires to amplify emerging voices who can bring fresh and diverse perspectives to the field. Furthermore, CMSMC is dedicated to disseminating information that is publicly accessible while maintaining rigorous academic standards.

Submission Guidelines

We invite full submissions for:

  • Scholarly articles (1,500 to 5,000 words)

    • Full draft

    • Original research

We invite proposals (200 words max) for the following pieces:

  • Exhibition reviews (500 - 750 words) 

    • Ideally exhibitions currently on display or recently closed

  • Book reviews (500 - 1,000 words)

    • Ideally reviews of recent books and catalogues

  • Research on the rise (1,500 words)

    • Short, informal works that highlight ongoing research

Please submit via this Google Form (https://forms.gle/PRGruuzFC4DV72tKA). When submitting, please remember:

  • All submissions and proposals are due Friday, June 5, 2026 at 11:59pm ET

  • Text must be in the form of a Word document

  • All submissions should be cited in the Chicago Manual of Style

  • We ask that images are limited to 10 images per piece, unless otherwise approved, and it is the author’s responsibility to have image permissions before publication 

  • Please also include a recent CV and a brief 50-word bio

Authors will be notified of the acceptance of their submission or proposal by late June/early July, for publication in October 2026. Please note that authors are responsible for obtaining all image copyright releases prior to publication.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Editor-in-Chief, Hope Gillespie, at admin@cmsmc.org.