Critical Arts

Aims & Scope

From its inception, Critical Arts examined the relationship between texts and contexts, cultural formations and popular forms of expression, mainly in the Third World, but after the 1994 transition in South Africa Critical Arts repositioned itself in the South-North and East-West nexus focusing on developing transdisciplinary epistemologies.

Critical Arts ' authors are Africans debating Africa with the rest; and the rest debating Africa and the South and with each other.

The journal is rigorously peer reviewed, via ScholarONE Manuscripts, and aims to shape theory on the topics it covers.

Cutting edge theorisation (supported by empirical evidence) rather than the reporting of formulaic case studies are preferred as submissions.

Submissions are sought from both established and new researchers, and recent topics have included political economy of the media, political communication, intellectual property rights, visual anthropology and indigeneity, the ethnographic turn in art, and of course cultural studies.

Submissions must, perhaps, aim to restore the vision of earlier theorists and historians, for whom ‘culture’ was a kind of synthesis arising from the contradictions between human society and the politics of nations.

Under the pressures of globalization, this kind of understanding becomes more relevant at every turn.

Critical Arts seeks to profile those approaches to issues that are amenable to a cultural studies-derived intervention, on the basis that ‘culture’ is a marker of deeper continuities than the immediate conflicts under the fire of which so many must somehow live their lives.

View Aims & Scope

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Metrics & Ranking

Impact Factor

Year	Value
2025	0.5
2024	1.10

Journal Rank

Year	Value
2024	20800

Journal Citation Indicator

Year	Value
2024	78

SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

Year	Value
2024	0.206

Quartile

Year	Value
2024	Q2

h-index

Year	Value
2024	23

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Abstracting & Indexing

Journal is indexed in leading academic databases, ensuring global visibility and accessibility of our peer-reviewed research.

• Scopus
• Google Scholar
• Web of Science

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Subjects & Keywords

Journal’s research areas, covering key disciplines and specialized sub-topics in Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences, designed to support cutting-edge academic discovery.

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Most Cited Articles

The Most Cited Articles section features the journal's most impactful research, based on citation counts. These articles have been referenced frequently by other researchers, indicating their significant contribution to their respective fields.

• Ubuntu in South Africa: a sociolinguistic perspective to a pan-African concept

  Citation: 157

  Authors: Nkonko M.

• In search of a real freedom:<i>Ubuntu</i>and the media

  Citation: 72

  Authors: Ngaire

• Media Representations of China: A Comparison of<i>China Daily</i>and<i>Financial Times</i>in Reporting on the Belt and Road Initiative

  Citation: 54

  Authors: Lejin, Doreen

• Criticising images: critical discourse analysis of visual semiosis in picture news

  Citation: 44

  Authors: Jiayu

• Secret San of the Drakensberg and their rock art legacy

  Citation: 44

  Authors: Frans E.

• Revisiting the ethnographic turn in contemporary art

  Citation: 42

  Authors: Kris, An, Ronald

• Participatory photography as theory, method and praxis: analyzing an entertainment-education project in India1

  Citation: 37

  Authors: Arvind, Lynn M., Ketan, Devendra

• Which public? Whose interest? The South African Media and its role during the first ten years of democracy

  Citation: 34

  Authors: Herman, Arnold

• Increasing equity, affirming the power of narrative and expanding dialogue: the evolution of entertainment education over two decades

  Citation: 33

  Authors: Douglas, Suruchi

• Afropessimism: a genealogy of discourse

  Citation: 32

  Authors: Boulou Ebanda, P. Eric

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