Tuesday, 09 February 2010
Critical Arts
Written by Tomaselli, Keyan   

CRITICAL ARTS is a non-profit project owned and produced by an independent group of academics who comprise its editors, associate editors, editorial consultants and regional organisers. Publication of the first issue occurred in 1980. 

The journal is currently located in the Centre for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban, where its editor-in-chief, Prof. Keyan Tomaselli, is director.

The journal's editorial consultants and editorial associates are presently drawn from South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe in Africa, and scholars in Scandinavia, England, USA, Canada and Australia. The editor-in-chief is Keyan G. Tomaselli, and associate editors are Tom O'Regan, Ruth Teer-Tomaselli and Joe Muller. Managing editor is Dorothy Roome.

CRITICAL ARTS has achieved a remarkable international reception since it was first published in 1980. A review in the prestigious Canadian cultural studies journal, BORDER/LINES, ranked CRITICAL ARTS above many of its First World contemporaries. Ioan Davies commented:

CRITICAL ARTS's nervousness about what stance would be appropriate to coming to terms with culture in Africa seems to be perfectly in tune with anyone's nervousness with coming to terms with Africa. As Wole Soyinka has remarked, the black nationalism and militarism of Nigeria is the twin brother of South Africa's apartheid, with the corollary that the task of creating a critical black consciousness in South Africa requires more than simply having a black South African nationalism.

CRITICAL ARTS regularly receives submissions from the rest of Africa (eg. Nigeria, Lesotho, Malawi, Ghana, Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, Ivory Coast etc). Other submissions have come from India, Australia, USA, UK, Britain, Belgium, France and Ireland. Our early authors included Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, and internationally lauded writers like JM Coetzee, and Andre Brink. Added to these South Africans have been articles by eminent scholars Robert Stam, Richard Collins, Ien Ang, and Sam Paltridge amongst others.

Theme issue editors have been appointed from South Africa, Namibia, USA, UK and Australia. CRITICAL ARTS is a truly international journal - an international authorship, an international editorial board and international readership.

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