Guidelines

Feminist Studies is committed to publishing an interdisciplinary body of feminist knowledge that sees intersections of gender with racial identity, sexual orientation, economic means, geographical location, and physical ability as the touchstone for our politics and our intellectual analysis. Whether work is drawn from the complex past or the shifting present, the articles and essays that appear in Feminist Studies address social and political issues that intimately and significantly affect women and men in the United States and around the world.

Feminist Studies welcomes submissions across multiple genres and topics. Although we have some specific calls for manuscripts, we still welcome articles on other topics. Most of the articles we publish are on a variety of topics and are not part of special issues or clusters.

We accept submssions in the following categories:

Research & Criticism
Creative Writing
Art & Art Essays
Review Essays
Other Forms of Writing and Visual Expression

Call for Papers

Feminist Studies welcomes submissions on all topics. In addition, Feminist Studies welcomes contributions on the following topics that we expect to produce special issues on over the next few years:

1) Food, Water, Ecology

What insights do feminist analytics bring to studying the food and water we consume? What does ethical feminist practice look like, in the realm of production, distribution, and processing of food and water? What new ideas do feminist scholars offer on issues such as eating and identity, food security, water scarcity, fair trade, or food and biotechnology, for example? We seek to connect and advance conversations in the fields of feminist political economy, environmental justice, and transnational cultural studies through this special issue or cluster.

We welcome full-length research manuscripts (10,500 words), review essays, short commentaries on polices, creative writing, and art essays. Please e-mail Editorial Director Ashwini Tambe to signal your interest in submitting material.

Deadline for submitting manuscripts: July 1, 2013.

2) Africa Reconfigured

How does feminist scholarship on African regions push conventional disciplinary boundaries? How does feminist work in cinema studies, linguistics, cultural studies, literature, history, and anthropology, for example, reconfigure how Africa is represented in the broader academy? Feminist Studies welcomes submissions on a variety of topics dealing broadly with the continent of Africa, with the goal of featuring exciting feminist scholarship in African Studies and questioning representations of Africa for feminist readers outside the area.

We welcome full-length research manuscripts (10,500 words), review essays, short commentaries on polices, creative writing, and art essays. Please e-mail Editorial Director Ashwini Tambe to signal your interest in submitting material.

Deadline for submitting manuscripts: December 1, 2012.

3) Forum on Women’s Studies and Sexuality Studies

For over a decade now, the proliferation of donor funding and student enthusiasm for Sexuality Studies has spurred the creation of new programs and research centers across campuses. Many of these new sites have been established as distinct and separate from pre-existing Women’s Studies units—at times in response to donor mandates, and in other cases to reflect intellectual/ political leanings.  More recently, however, several university administrations have attempted to fuse LGBTQ studies and Women’s Studies units (along with other related units) in the name of cutting costs. In other settings, faculty have proposed consolidation in the interest of fostering intellectual synergies. Yet another context is that of newer Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies units that incorporate a variety of impulses, but which are nonetheless under restructuring pressure to consolidate with other campus units.

We at the journal Feminist Studies seek to invite a cross-national conversation foregrounding the question “whither feminisms?” as these institutional changes unfold. What are the implications, as institutional homes mutate, for interdisciplinary and politically charged feminist work? What do separate institutional spaces for studying sexuality, gender, and women signal? What is gained and what is lost when consolidation occurs?

We would like to receive 1000-word, thoughtful commentaries or position statements from administrators, teachers, and students by September 1, 2012. We envision publishing a peer-reviewed forum on this topic in 2013. Please signal your interest by writing to the journal’s editorial director, Professor Ashwini Tambe at atambe@umd.edu

Deadline for submitting manuscripts: December 1, 2012.

Research and Criticism

Feminist Studies publishes research and criticism that address theoretical issues and offer analyses of interest to feminist scholars across disciplines. Although many, if not most, of the articles we publish draw on the methodology of a single discipline, we especially encourage scholars to pursue truly interdisciplinary research and research methodologies that not only showcase but integrate contributions from multiple disciplines.

Submissions should not exceed 10,500 words, approximately 35 pages, including endnotes. Please consult the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style for proper manuscript form and endnote citation style.

How to Submit:

For your submission to be complete, please send all of the following:

• One double-spaced hard copy mailed to Feminist Studies, 0103 Taliaferro Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. (In order to protect anonymity, the author's name should appear only a separate title page and not on the manuscript itself.)
• An electronic copy to submit@feministstudies.org. (Alternatively, you may include a CD with the mailed hard copy.) Please send the electronic file as a Word or WordPerfect document, not as a PDF.
• A 200-word (or fewer) abstract
• A cover note with mailing and e-mail addresses.

Creative Writing

Feminist Studies is deeply committed to publishing creative work. Beginning with our very first issue published in 1972, we have included creative work in every issue. We have published such distinguished authors as Meena Alexander, Nicole Brossard, Jayne Cortez, Toi Derricotte, Diane Glancy, Marilyn Hacker, Lyn Hejinian, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Sharon Olds, Grace Paley, Ruth Stone, and Mitsuye Yamada.

We continue to welcome all forms of written creative expression, including but not limited to poetry and short fiction in all forms. We are interested in work that addresses questions of interest to the Feminist Studies audience, particularly work that pushes past the boundaries of what has been done before. We look for creative work that is intellectually challenging and aesthetically adventurous, that is in complicated dialogue with feminist ideas and concepts, and that shifts our readers into new perspectives on women/gender.

We only consider original work that is not under review elsewhere. Since creative work will not be returned, authors should retain a copy of their work. If other work is cited in the piece, please use our citation style. Because of space constraints we are unable to publish individual pieces that run longer than 25 pages.

Deadlines for submission of creative work are May 1 and December 1. After each deadline, all work will be reviewed by our creative writing editor. Her recommendations will then be read anonymously by our editorial collective who will make the final decisions. Authors will receive notice of the collective's decision by mid-July and mid-February.

How to Submit:

• Mail one hard copy to Feminist Studies, 0103 Taliaferro Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
• E-mail an electronic version of your work to creative@feministstudies.org.

Art & Art Essays

Each issue of Feminist Studies features feminist art from around the world. Although we often run retrospectives of established artists (e.g. Betye Saar, vol. 30, no. 1) or those no longer living (e.g. Alice Neel, vol. 28, no. 2), we especially wish to introduce new artists to our readers.

We are interested in various types of art, including but not limited to paintings, sculpture, crafts, installations, and photography, that reflect the range and scope of an artist's portfolio. Currently, we are able to showcase a limited number of artists' works in color. We can run black and white images more frequently and encourage artists also to submit black and white art and photographs.

For art essays, we also publish an artist's statement or an essay written either by the artist or another author along with art work.

The Feminist Studies collective accepts art work three times a year at our board meetings. At the meetings we also select the images we will eventually publish.

How to Submit:

• Send e-mail attachments of art images to: art@feministstudies.org. We prefer that these be submitted as TIFF files at 300 dpi (preferably) or as high quality JPEG files. If the file size is too large, you may use a site such as www.yousendit.com for emailing large files.
• Or mail high-quality prints of the work. (Do not send original works of art or anything that must be returned.)
• Include an already-written art essay or artist's statement, or suggestions about who could write an accompanying art essay. (Please include a curriculum vitae and writing sample for art essay proposals.)

Review Essays

The Feminist Studies collective publishes one or more review essays in each issue. Review essays examine a cluster of important books or films on a general theme with the aim of providing our interdisciplinary audience an engaged overview of developments in feminist scholarship. Our review essays are original pieces in their own right that not only review important works but offer a sustained argument about theoretical trends and new research developments that would be of interest to our diverse readership.

Although we often commission review essays, we also welcome unsolicited proposals. Such proposals should identify the books or films to be reviewed, state why these books are important and deserve consideration as a cluster, and briefly present the concepts or questions that will be developed in the essay. (If a book has only minor merits, it should not be included in the review at all.) Along with the proposal, please submit a writing sample and a CV/resume.

Proposals will be discussed by the editorial collective at one of its regular meetings (held three times a year). On the basis of this discussion at the board meeting, the editors will either commission the review essay, in which case you will be assigned an editor with whom you will work directly, or the proposal will be rejected. Click here for our set of guidelines for writing the review essay; they should be considered when preparing a proposal.

How to Submit:

• E-mail proposal idea, curriculum vitae, and a writing sample to review@feministstudies.org.

Other Forms of Writing and Visual Expression

We are actively seeking political and social commentaries, activist reports from the field, political manifestos, interviews, and other forms of writing that are not easily categorized. To this end, we encourage authors and artists to submit individual or collaborative projects that cross established boundaries of scholarship, activism, visual culture, memoirs, et cetera. Through such work we hope to ensure that Feminist Studies continues to engage, challenge, and reevaluate standard domains of inquiry to create new forms and objects of knowledge.

Please send work to our editorial and business office, along with a cover letter explaining your project. Depending on the nature of the work, we will either send it out for anonymous review or will review it at one of our tri-annual editorial collective meetings.

How to Submit:

• Mail one double-spaced hard copy to Feminist Studies, 0103 Taliaferro Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. (Names should appear only on a separate title page.)
• E-mail an electronic copy (not a PDF) to submit@feministstudies.org.
• Include contact information, including mailing and e-mail addresses.

Citation and References Guide

Feminist Studies articles follow the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) documentation style I, but we use endnotes only, without a bibliography. See the CMS general guidelines 14.14–14.32 and the detailed citation information from 14.68 on.

We do not publish discursive endnotes, unless such notes include essential information. Whenever possible, please combine endnotes and eliminate long endnotes that are not essential to the argument at hand. Please be careful to supply all required information, including full name for authors, numbers of volumes of a multi-volume work, name of publisher, issue number or month/season for periodicals, and the page(s) upon which specific information, whether a direct quote or not, is based.

Below are some examples of common endnote types.