coming in fall 2023 from

Childhood Art: An International Journal of Research is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by University of Arkansas Press and sponsored by the Center for the Study of Childhood Art in the School of Art the University of Arkansas.

Childhood art has long been a subject of interest for researchers and educators, not only in the field of art education but in other fields study as well. The matter of what children create, how they come to engage in this work, the social milieus in which it occurs, and the various rationales that underlie this activity remains at the forefront of existing research and theory.

Childhood Art provides a site for emerging and established scholars to advance these considerations and more, addressing issues and ideas pertinent to the artistic, play-based, and aesthetic practices of children in both historical and contemporary childhoods. Featuring contemporary research based on substantive qualitative field work and historical inquiries, as well as theoretically and visually oriented essays, Childhood Art is committed to representing scholarly inquiries informed by a range of perspectives and orientations, which may include but is not limited to:

–       scholarship seeking to address the variable contexts and approaches that exist and remain necessary to facilitate equitable and inclusive art experiences with and for children

–       scholarship focused on gaining insights into the child and childhood, for example, studies attending to the child’s physical, social, emotional, and cognitive state, as well as key traits and developmental trajectories

–       scholarship interested in the child’s understanding and experiences of the world around them, with special care given to the social and cultural influences that shape and supplement the child’s artistic, play-based, and aesthetic work

–       scholarship informed by a range of theoretical approaches, for example, sociocultural, critical, poststructuralist, posthumanist, feminist new materialisms, postcolonial, place-based, decolonial, and multimodal, with the aim of attending to processes, experiences, and entanglements of childhood art 

–       scholarship that proposes new conceptual and methodological tools to reconceptualize the study and practice of childhood art, and broadens the perspectives used to frame how this work matters to our understanding of historical and contemporary childhoods

Childhood Art is especially interested in scholarship representing majority world voices, practices, and perspectives, as well as work that aims to challenge dominant discourses, particularly those which have a history of disempowering children, decontextualizing their lives, and delegitimizing their creative work.