From the Editors
We are delighted to announce the second issue of the Journal of Feminist Scholarship(JFS). The fundamental aims of JFS are to offer an open-access academic forum for the publication of innovative, peer-reviewed feminist scholarship across the disciplines and to encourage productive debates among scholars and activists interested in examining methodological directions and political contexts and ramifications of feminist inquiry.
The Journal of Feminist Scholarship is pleased to announce the formation of our Advisory Board. We are joined by distinguished feminist scholars working across the disciplines and in the community: Debra Ann Castillo, Elora Chowdhury, Agnieszka Graff, Elizabeth Grosz, Joy A. James, Carla Kaplan, Michael Kimmel, Gary Lemons, Robyn Ochs, Karen Offen, and Nikki Sullivan. We extend a warm welcome to our new Advisory Board members and appreciate their willingness to contribute to the mission of the journal.
The articles we have chosen for the main section of our second issue build upon the breadth of contemporary feminist inquiry demonstrated by the first issue of JFS. The second issue has at its core three insightful and in-depth analyses ranging from an examination of the 1972 feminist text Novas Cartas Portuguesas and its intersections with French and Anglo-American theorizing to a challenge to US Women's Studies curricular models for study abroad and global perspectives on women and gender to an article that asks readers to not only better understand intersex identities but also reconceptualize how we approach difference. Each article is firmly grounded in feminist theory and invites readers to rethink ongoing issues in our culture.
For example, in "Staying Home While Studying Abroad: Anti-Imperial Praxis for Globalizing Feminist Visions," Shireen Roshanravan challenges the field of US Women's Studies to question what Chandra Mohanty has identified as the "feminist-as-tourist" curricular model. Specifically, Roshanravan argues against current study-abroad opportunities that claim to introduce students to global perspectives on women and gender while continuing to skirt the problem of US-centrism in Women's Studies. Instead, Roshanravan suggests a need for the field to approach the practice of study abroad through a reinvestment in understanding and applying the radical genealogies and epistemologies of US Women of Color, a strategy she identifies as "the anti-imperial feminist praxis of 'staying home.'"
Ana Margarida Dias Martins turns our attention to the feminist literary and theoretical canon as she focuses on the text Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters), published in 1972 and co-authored by Portuguese writers Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa. Martins reassesses the internationalization of Novas Cartas Portuguesas in order to understand what forces, both theoretical and political, kept the text from becoming an established part of feminist literary canons in Europe or the United States, while also exposing how it contributed to 1970s feminist intellectual conversations and movement. In doing so, Martins also argues for further reanalysis of Novas Cartas Portuguesas in order to understand the often overlooked relationship between French and Anglo-American feminisms and texts from outside the Franco-Anglophone spectrum.
The issue's third article comes from Amy Falvey who offers an incisive analysis of the rhetoric of protection that emerges around intersex infants who face the prospect of normalizing surgeries. Falvey argues that the typical justification for normalizing surgeries from both physicians and parents is the "protection" of the child whose body does not conform to social, morphological, and biological norms. Pressing on this central notion, Falvey asks whether there are other narratives or concepts of protection that can also be employed in such contexts. Ultimately, her discussion leads us to consider how we understand—and respond to—physical difference.
The final article in the issue is a "Viewpoint." As we established with our first issue, "Viewpoint" is a space to showcase new directions in feminist inquiry and practice and to feature commentaries on ongoing debates in contemporary feminist scholarship and pedagogy. We also see "Viewpoint" as a forum for reconsiderations of issues central to feminism at large, as well as a space to share information on innovative and useful resources for feminist studies. Kimala Price's essay discusses the challenges of crossing disciplinary boundaries in the academy, drawing both on her own experiences and on the academic literature on interdisciplinarity. She points out that there is surprisingly little work done on the experiences and challenges of those working across disciplines in the field of Women's Studies. The "Viewpoint" format allows Price to make sense of her own particular experiences, experiences she believes are shared by others in interdisciplinary programs.
In closing, we would also like announce the appointment of Anna M. Klobucka to the position of Executive Editor of the Journal of Feminist Scholarship for a two-year term. Co-editors Catherine Villanueva Gardner and Jeannette E. Riley are pleased to see Anna taking the helm as we build the scope and audience for JFS.
The double-anonymous review process followed by JFS necessitates that our manuscript reviewers remain unnamed, but we would like to take this opportunity to extend a thank-you to them as a group.
Catherine Villanueva Gardner · cgardner@umassd.edu
Anna M. Klobucka · aklobucka@umassd.edu
Jeannette E. Riley · jen.riley@umassd.edu