EMAJ (Electronic Melbourne Art Journal) was an online, refereed art history journal published in Melbourne, Australia between 2005 and 2018. EMAJ aimed to provide an international forum for the publication of original academic research in all areas and periods of art history. Topics covered include fine arts, architecture, curatorship, politics and aesthetics, visual culture, philosophy, historiography and museum studies. EMAJ welcomed monographic articles about specific artists or art collectives as well as thematic or theoretical analyses on aspects of art history.
EMAJ was founded in 2005 as a research platform for postgraduate art historians. While the journal focussed on the work of emerging scholars, submissions were open to all researchers investigating the history of art. The motivation for a refereed art history journal that spans all media and historical periods was twofold. Firstly, it provided a point of cohesion: EMAJ was designed to unite disparate threads of art historical scholarship within a single frame. Secondly, in presenting a diverse array of research, EMAJ encouraged dialogue between traditionally segregated fields of enquiry, asking: What might a new media analyst learn from a researcher working on Renaissance perspective? How might an historian of Japanese wood-block prints benefit from publishing their work in tandem with a history of Baroque stage design? In publishing articles that diverge in focus and yet remain within the scope of the discipline, EMAJ both highlighted the diversity of histories of art and supported interaction between scholars working in different fields.
(ISSN (elec): 1835-6656, DOI: https://doi.org/10.38030/emaj)