ARCHIVE
This is an archive of all past volumes of Contemporary Aesthetics, both annual volumes and special volumes. To access the current volume, visit www.contempaesthetics.org. All past volumes are directly accessible from that site as well.
The Journal
In recent years aesthetics has grown into a rich and varied discipline. Its scope has widened to embrace ethical, social, religious, environmental, and cultural concerns. As international communication increases through more frequent congresses and electronic communication, varied traditions have joined with its historically interdisciplinary character, making aesthetics a focal center of diverse and multiple interests. These need a forum that is universal and inclusive, easy to access, and unhampered by financial, political, and institutional barriers. An on-line publication offers an ideal opportunity for advancing these purposes and Contemporary Aesthetics hopes to provide that forum.
Archive: Volume 23 (2025)

The Soil You See…, (2023). Wendy Red Star, glass, granite 92 x 38 x 36 in. Courtesy of the artist and Sargent’s Daughters. Photo by Steve Weinik. Commissioned by Monument Lab; in the permanent collection of the Tippet Rise ArtCenter (Fishtail, MT). Installed in Washington, DC, near the Declaration of Independence Memorial. The latter includes the signatures of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. In contrast, Red Star’s memorial comprises the names in the form of a monumental thumbprint of 50 Apsáalooke tribal representatives who brokered treaties with the US government between 1825 and 1880. These Indigenous leaders ratified thetreaties with an X or a thumbprint. Red Star – herself Apsáalooke – evokes settler land appropriation and broken treaties in the heart of the nation’s capital.
Editorial
Notices
Recent Publications
Recent Publications
Editorial Office
Short Notes
A Note on the Weather
Arnold Berleant
On Incomprehensibility
Nicholas Romanos
Art, Trauma, And the Aesthetics of Paul Celan
Tania L. Abramson and Paul R. Abramson
Articles
Contemporary Fanfiction as Decoupled Participatory Sensemaking
Mingxi Xu and Christian Kronsted
In Praise of Dessert
Yujia Song
Uncovering the Flaws in A Philosophy of Cover Songs
Brandon Polite
Reflections on Cover Songs: Replies to Polite
P. D. Magnus
Contemporary Appropriation of Confucian Aesthetics in China: Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping’s Political Discourses on Art and Morality
Eva Kit Wah Man
Poiesis of Care: The Aesthetic-Performative Value of Delicacy
María Jesús Godoy Domínguez
Context and Form in Garden Classification
David Fenner
Poetic Lines and Social Thought
Adam Neikirk
Time and Atmosphere
Mǎdǎlina Diaconu
On Conversation, Its Modes, Pleasures, and Perils
Stephanie Ross
“A Place of Whites”: the History of Brazilian Art
Rachel Cecília de Oliveira
The SYMPOSIUM on Arnold Berleant's Works
Editorial Office
Arnold Berleant and the International Institute of Applied Aesthetics: Introduction to the Panel Discussion
Arto Haapala
Descriptive Aesthetics
Max Ryynänen
Arnold Berleant’s Engagement with the Aesthetics of Engagement
Fotini Vassiliou and Katerina Bantinaki
Aesthetic Engagement, Descriptive Aesthetics, and the Reformation of Aesthetics: Responses to Mäcklin, Ryynänen, and Vassiliou
Arnold Berleant
In Defense of Racebending
Cathleen Muller
Relational Perception, Ecological Transition, and Artisanal Intelligence: Towards an Aesthetics for the Future
Nicola Perullo
Cool as an Aesthetic Quality
James Kirwan