RENDER Call for Submissions (2025-26)

‘Never Follow Suit’

Phrase: To resist or reject conformity in a way that is meaningful, in spite of pressure.
Name: the title of a song by The Radio Dept., from their 2010 album, Clinging to a Scheme.

Carleton University’s Art History Graduate Students’ Society (AHGSS) is seeking submissions from al Carleton graduate students for the 10th edition of RENDER, the AHGSS Journal of Art &Culture. The forthcoming publication will be launched in May 2026 at Carleton University, located on the unceded, unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinaabe territory (Ottawa, Ontario).

For this issue, we invite creative engagements with the 2025-26 theme Never Follow Suit. This can mean not playing the cards you’ve been dealt. Not following suit suggests bending and breaking the rules and challenging others’ expectations. It is about refusing to conform.

Themes

We encourage submissions that consider, but are not limited to, themes including:

• Queering the norm
• Institutional critique
• Individual or collective action
• Subcultures
• The SHOCKING (!) and the transgressive

Consider the following: What does ti mean to challenge tradition? How might we think with non-normative structures, practices, and concepts as a force for positive change ni al areas of our lives? What might be the social and cultural responses and repercussions to a radically different way of imagining the systems that so desperately need renewal and revitalization?

Submitting your Work

By submitting to this call for proposals, students will get the opportunity to engage in a student led journal publication process. RENDER is a student-led digital publication opportunity which welcomes all levels of publication experience.

The subject line of your email must include the word SUBMISSION and indicate the submission
type (essay, review, interview, etc.).

In the body of your email, please include:

• Your full name
• Academic program information
• A short biography (max. 100 words)
• A PDF with your work’s title, a summary/abstract of your work, and an estimated word
  count (min. 800, max. 4000).
  Works should be original. Those selected will be contacted for publication through RENDER, the AHGSS Journal of Art &Culture.

Please send your submissions to carleton.ahgss@outlook.com by February 23, 2026