Refract: An Open Access Visual Studies Journal

Refract is an online journal founded and operated by graduate students in 2016 and dedicated to conversations about visual culture, non-canonical methodologies, and divergent histories. We publish early-career and established scholars, students, and artists in the genres of the academic essay, critical review, creative work, and experimental artist statement/essay. We are interested in work that employs visuality as a lens to engage geographies and histories that diverge from U.S. political and academic empire, and uses the tools and methods of visual studies and artistic practice in pursuit of equity and justice. We encourage submissions from multiple academic fields, expansive considerations of artistic practice/s, and multiple ways of knowing. We seek pieces that theorize, dream, and imagine as intervention, as well as pieces that challenge the author's, artist's, and editorial board's intellectual commitments as they reflect on the visual as a site of encounter, entanglement, and social change.