Manifest #4: The American Ocean

Oceans surround us. They connect and separate. They give life and receive our dead. Oceans are homes and forbidden zones. They are open, but sometimes closed, known and unknown. There are oceans beneath our feet, in the skies, and in outer space. At the same time, an ocean is a substance teeming with animals large and small, as well as a domain where rocks and minerals have held sway for innumerable epochs. Oceans are delimited and limned, committed to maps and swirling in our mind. Oceans are everywhere. They are everything.

The fourth issue of Manifest: A Journal of the Americas begins with a simple prompt: what is The American Ocean? Whereas previous issues have been concerned with defining American environments, landscapes, and buildings (“Looking Inward”), intersections of faith and space (“Kingdoms of God”), as well as immensities of scale (“Bigger Than Big”), The American Ocean asks how artists, designers, and writers have looked to the ocean as sites of inspiration, contestation, and imagination. In other words, how do we look beyond more normative evocations to consider The American Ocean in all its guises and complexities, its materialities and abstractions. This is to say that The American Ocean is not beholden to a single idea, but is committed instead to many Americas and many Oceans.

We seek contributions from a wide range of fields and disciplines, including (but not limited to) the histories of art and architecture, environmental studies, landscape history, and other related realms of inquiry. The term “realms of inquiry” is taken seriously, for we are also looking for unconventional ways of addressing the concept of The American Ocean that may take the form of fiction or autofiction, sound works, and other works of art.

Please send proposals to editors@manifestproject.org by November 1, 2022