A revolution in the understanding of human consciousness is underway: in the past decade, the new cognitive neurosciences, along with associated fields (environmental psychology, cognitive linguistics, and so on) have reconfigured our conception of how we, as people, perceive, think, analyze, and develop an awareness of ourselves as selves in the world. This scientific revolution, facilitated in part by new studies of brain-damaged patients and newly available technologies in brain imaging, offers many new insights into how consciousness develops through sensory perception, human emotion, and memory.

This new understanding of the mind has enormous implications for how we, as informed observers of the built environment, approach our topic of study. Issue 3 of Positions seeks submissions that place the human body—and mind—centrally in the study of modern architecture and urbanism. We welcome essays on the methodology of architectural history and theory; on specific design works, practitioners, or firms; on theorists whose ideas pertain to the embodied mind; and on pertinent themes, such as other theories of the human body and its relationship to the built environment (phenomenology, eugenics, phrenology), specific building typologies (health care facilities, educational buildings), specific transcultural formal tropes or types.

Positions is a peer-reviewed journal aiming to broaden the scope of reflection and theorizing on issues pertaining to architecture and urbanism after 1900. Authors are asked to submit papers to the editors, preferably in English, by 5 April 2010. Papers should be 5,000 - 7,500 words, in addition to complete citations in the form of endnotes. They should be accompanied by no more than ten images. If a paper is accepted for publication, the author will have the responsibility to obtain world rights to publish these images.

E-mail submissions to: positions.on.modernism@gmail.com