Current Issue

This issue is an exceptional collection of field-defining essays by leading feminist scholars. It brings together work originally presented at the 35 Years of Feminist Scholarship conference honoring Editorial Director Claire Moses upon her retirement. The authors, all of whom served (or currently serve) on the Feminist Studies editorial collective, will be well known to readers for their own pioneering scholarship. In presenting their work in this special issue, Feminist Studies proudly celebrates their role in shaping a field and shepherding the work of an entire generation of scholars through to publication.

Following overviews by Deborah Rosenfelt and Suzanne Raitt of the journal’s history under Moses’s leadership, we include work that highlights not only the interdisciplinarity of the journal but also the multiple genres—research, commentary, creative writing, and art work—that are its particular hallmark. Nancy Hewitt urges us to reframe feminist movement history as multiple, parallel, radio waves rather than as successive oceanic waves. Martha Vicinus builds on the conceptual ambivalence of "lesbian" to expansively review lesbian history, while Judith Gardiner critically evaluates psychoanalytic and genderqueer understandings of female masculinity. Ruth Milkman and Veronica Terriquez document how women's leadership shapes the US immigrant rights movement. Leisa Meyer explores the potential for counterhegemonic sexual expression in 1950s black popular culture magazines. Claire Moses's own essay traces the origins and varying scope of the label "feminism" from 1880s France to the present. The art featured in this issue is by Siona Benjamin, whose paintings portray the manifold influences on this Indian-Jewish artist from Mumbai. In our poetry cluster, Rachel Blau DuPlessis finds beauty in the minutiae of the everyday; Shirley Lim uses the alphabet of her childhood to convey the dire stakes of adulthood; and Minnie Bruce Pratt and Alicia Ostriker convene with nature in crafting insights on aging, human demise, and renewal.