This issue of Feminist Studies offers contributions to major debates within feminist scholarship and activism on the state, ecofeminism, and postmodernism. Each of these topics has called forth crucial but uneasy conversations linking practical and theoretical concerns. We hope these articles will provide "food for thought" for feminists working at many levels.

Unlike their European counterparts, who tend to live in contradictory and often-crumbling social democracies whose parties and policies they quickly identified and evaluated, U.S. feminists have come to their interest in the state relatively late. Although specific debates about protective legislation, affirmative action, and public patriarchy have surfaced throughout second wave feminism, a systematic focus on the benefits and burdens of state policy is still emerging here. Perhaps because the legacy of our work on "the private domain" has been so rich, perhaps because our deconstructions of citizenship as male have been so profound, we have barely begun to query "what do women want?" from the state.

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Wendy Brown
Finding the Man in the State

Priscilla Ferguson Clement
Nineteenth-Century Welfare Policy, Programs,
and Poor Women: Philadelphia as a Case Study

Jane Lewis and Gertrude Âstrôm
Equality, Difference, and State Welfare:
Labor Market and Family Policies in Sweden

Terry Gips
Art Essay

Elizabeth Meese
When Virginia Looked at Vita, What Did She See; or, Lesbian : Feminist Woman-What's the Differ(e/a)nce?

Bina Agarwal
The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India

Susan Bordo
Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern Bodies (Review Essay)

Susan J. Leonardi
A Portrait of the Abbess as a Young Nun