Aims and Trajectory
Articulations is an open-access, peer-reviewed digital journal of the Freie Universität Berlin, Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective.” It is dedicated to advancing innovative forms of humanities research and to shaping the future of scholarly publishing in the humanities.
Conceived as a shared intellectual environment, the journal provides a space for sustained critical reorientation of humanities research through the perspectives of literary and cultural studies. Its conceptual point of departure is the notion of temporal communities, which designates the dynamic networks through which literature extends across time and space, continually reconstituting itself through dialogue with other arts, media, and forms of knowledge. Understood as a transcultural and transtemporal phenomenon unfolding in deep time, literature is approached as a performative and intermedial mode of social action. From this perspective, literary activity operates within complex constellations of human and non-human actors and becomes global through spatial circulation, as well as enduring, recursive, and transformative temporal entanglements. Articulations offers a publication framework in which these processes are explored and expanded across theoretical reflection, case-based research, and experimental scholarly formats.
What began as a journal closely aligned with a specific collaborative research context has, over time, articulated a distinctive editorial vision and technical infrastructure oriented toward the future of humanities research. This development has positioned Articulations to extend and recalibrate the theoretical and methodological impulses conceived of within its founding environment, continuing to publish work emerging from the Cluster while simultaneously opening the journal to expansion in new directions and to a broader, international community of scholars and artistic collaborators.
The journal is committed to open-access publishing, peer review, born-digital scholarship, connected and enriched contributions, and the cultivation of open, sustained scholarly conversations across disciplines, media, and institutional contexts.
Scope
Articulations has become a hub for collaborative, interdisciplinary, and transmedial research. Its content reflects the diversity of scholarly practices fostered within and beyond the Cluster, including contributions by early career researchers, established scholars, international fellows, and artists in residence, as well as work developed through workshops, conferences, and sustained research collaborations.
A central feature of the journal is its publication of curated collections. These thematic constellations serve as impulses for sustained scholarly dialogue, bringing together multiple perspectives around shared conceptual questions. Designed to foreground connection, response, and methodological plurality, the collections remain open to extension, anticipating new contributions and future research directions that are published in ongoing relation to them.
Alongside curated collections, Articulations also publishes individual contributions that engage with, extend, or productively challenge the journal’s core concerns. Across all formats, the emphasis lies on relational scholarship: work that situates itself within broader conversations and invites further response.
An Expanding Publishing Vision
Articulations understands publication an ongoing scholarly process. Its editorial workflow is designed to be transparent, collaborative, and supportive, enabling authors and curators to develop their work in dialogue with editors, reviewers, and one another while maintaining rigorous academic standards.
The journal publishes several formats of contribution, Case Studies, Insights, and Sparks, as well as inviting alternative formats such as video essays, visual essays, and data-based work. Together, these formats accommodate research at different stages of development and reflect the diverse practices of contemporary humanities scholarship. Shorter and experimental contributions enable the testing of new ideas, while more extensive formats allow for sustained intervention in scholarly debates.
Building on the experience gained through its initial phase of development, Articulations is now positioned to engage with a broader international readership, carrying forward the conceptual, editorial, and technical frameworks that fostered its initial collaboration. Readers are warmly invited to explore the journal’s diverse and growing content using the various viewing and navigation options provided by the platform.
Literary and cultural studies continue to play a leading role within this framework, not as a bounded discipline, but as a field that has proven particularly adept at theorising relationality, temporality, digitality and mediation, which are concerns that increasingly shape humanities research today.
Partnerships
Articulations is edited by Prof. Dr Anne Eusterschulte and Prof. Dr Andrew James Johnston, with Dr Rebecca Hardie serving as Managing Editor. The journal’s editorial and peer-review processes, as well as its technical development, were shaped in close collaboration with Research Area 5, “Building Digital Communities,” and an international Editorial Board.
The journal is developed in partnership with the Open Encyclopedia System (OES), an open-source software framework created under the auspices of FUB-IT, Department of E-Learning and E-Research at Freie Universität Berlin. This collaboration has enabled Articulations to function not only as a publication venue, but also as a site for experimenting with and advancing digital infrastructures for humanities scholarship.
Articulations is generously funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy, within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” (EXC 2020), Project ID 390608380.