The Sophia Review 2019
Introducing The Sophia Review
The Sophia Review is a journal published out of Concordia University’s Department of Philosophy, whose goal is to provoke theoretical engagements with contemporary phenomena and lend insight into our shared condition. The journal encourages a diversity of critical approaches to the topics relevant to students at Concordia, Montrealers, and the broader community interested in progressive ideas. We seek to embody the critical spirit of the philosophical tradition, and prioritize the material consequences of writing over the liberal ideal of free play in discourse.
The Review encourages a practice of writing that runs parallel to academic research, where concepts are used to understand life as we live it. The generalized meanings found in the canons we study are only important if they are used to arrive at a greater understanding of our particular situation. The journal covers social phenomena; the many sources of discourse that address themselves to us; as well as the cultural objects that are produced by our present society. We start where we live, looking behind the mask of particularity to understand how things relate to universal concepts.
Submission Guidelines
For our 2019 edition, The Sophia Review is looking for pieces of writing ranging from 200-2000 words. Some forms of writing we like to read include: responses to recent essays (published in venues academic or otherwise); reviews of books, films, music, and any other type of work produced in the recent past; personal stories or anecdotes of any length that provide insight into the nature of our shared condition. We also run interviews and profiles--if you are in contact with someone whose ideas or work you think our readership should know about, get in touch. Long-form reviews are a jumping-off point for an essay that stands on its own; shorter reviews, from 200-1000 words, should focus on highlighting one important idea contained in the object in question, and relating it to the present in an interesting way.
We publish essays that relate concepts and critical frameworks to things that affect us. Examples of the types of essay topics we want to read are not limited to the following: a Marxist analysis of the Concordia Student Union; an existentialist meditation on speaking in class; an anti-colonial investigation of the witchcraft trend in late 2010s horror films; an intervention into the culture of academia from a neo-Aristotelian perspective; a report on an art showing using your favourite Frankfurter’s conceptual apparatus; a feminist appraisal of Valérie Plante’s reign; a critical research paper on Deleuze’s influence on humanities department syllabi. The Sophia Review is a platform for you to operationalize modes of critique by applying them to life in the present.
We welcome completed drafts of essays that fit our mandate; please include a brief summary of your piece when submitting. We are especially interested in working with writers from the ground up: if you have an outline for a piece, whether it be fully formed or just the germ of an idea, send us a brief, well-researched pitch and we’ll get back to you—we respond to all submissions. If it fits what we’re looking for, expect to work closely with our editors.
We do not publish fiction, poetry, experimental prose, or artist portfolios; however, if you are a visual artist interested in exploring print and digital design in publishing, please get in touch. Our next issue will be printed and distributed for free at as many schools as possible, and will be available online.
The Sophia Review is published annually at the end of the Winter semester. To be included in the 2019 edition, please send your submission by end of day on January 28 to thesophiareviewjournal@gmail.com.
What to Expect in the 2019 Edition
The Sophia Review has been published in various forms for many years, but this edition is a landmark: for the first time, we have a mandate that distinguishes us from other Concordia publications, and which establishes us as something completely unlike other undergraduate philosophy journals. We are also working on additions to the Students of Philosophy Association (SOPHIA) bylaws that will guarantee us editorial independence and financial stability in the years to come.
Our model is the thriving community of “little magazines” and independent, progressive publications. Some of our favourites include n+1, The New Inquiry, Current Affairs, Endnotes, Viewpoint, Cabinet Magazine, Art in America, Borderlands, Brick, Commune Magazine, The New Yorker, and the London Review of Books. Here at Concordia, we see ourselves as living somewhere between The Link, the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH), and the Liberal Arts College’s journal Corpus. We look forward to hearing from you.