Guidelines

Feminist Studies invites submissions that are not presently under consideration elsewhere.

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 pieces 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.

Please scroll down to the type of submission you are interested in for the specific submission guidelines.

Call for Papers

Feminist Studies is planning several Special Issues over the next three to five years. As with all our issues, these issues will include articles from all disciplines, art work, poetry, fiction, memoir, interviews, and commentaries. If you are currently working in a field about which we are planning a special issue and are interested in submitting to us, please contact the Editorial Director, Claire Moses, to discuss your work with her.

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 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style for proper manuscript form and endnote citation style.

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

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. Because of space constraints we are unable to publish individual pieces that run longer than 25 pages.

We only consider original work that is not under review elsewhere. Authors should send a hard copy of their work, along with an electronic version to the Feminist Studies office. We will not process creative submissions until we receive both a hard copy and an electronic version, either by e-mail or on disk. 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.

Deadlines for submission of creative work are May 1 and December 1. At that point 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: Authors should mail one hard copy of their work to Feminist Studies, 0103 Taliaferro Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, along with a disk or CD electronic version, or mail one hard copy as indicated above and e-mail an electronic version 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. 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. Feel free to submit a statement with your work; if you have suggestions of someone who could write an accompanying art essay, please include their curriculum vitae and writing sample (or art essay).

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: Please send us images of art including but not limited to paintings, sculpture, crafts, installations, and photography, which reflect the range and scope of your portfolio. We prefer that these be submitted in digital format, as TIFF files at 300 dpi (preferably) or high quality JPEG files. We also accept prints, slides, or negatives. Do not send original works of art, or anything that must be returned. For electronic submissions send e-mail attachments to: art@feministstudies.org .

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. Below is 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.

Et cetera: 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. Authors should send two hard copies, double-spaced, and a disk copy of their manuscript. Names should appear only on a separate title page. Please include mailing and e-mail addresses.

Please send work to our editorial and business office, along with a cover letter explaining your project and a disk copy. 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: Authors should send two double-spaced hard copies to Feminist Studies, 0103 Taliaferro Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, and e-mail an electronic copy (not a PDF) to submit@feministstudies.org. Names should appear only on a separate title page. Please include contact information, including mailing and e-mail addresses.

Citation Style

Scholarly articles should follow Chicago Manual of Style (15th ed.). Feminist Studies articles use endnotes, limited to essential material and specific textual citation. We do not publish discursive notes.

Sample Endnote Form

1. Sarah Franklin and Helena Ragone, Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power, and Technological Innovation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 9.
2. Ibid., 13.
3. Sheryl Pimlott Kubiak and Lilia M. Cortina, “Gender, Victimization, and Outcomes: Re-Conceptualizing Risk,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 71 (June 2003): 39. [Issue number may be provided instead of month or season. Page number rather than inclusive pages is required when referencing a specific statement or idea.]
4. Rosalind Petchesky, “The Body as Property: A Feminist Re-vision,” in Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction, ed. Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 394.
5. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women on Top,” in her Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 124.
6. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 209.
7. Judith Kegan Gardiner, “Rethinking Collectivity: Chicago Feminism, Athenian Democracy, and the Consumer University,” 191-201; and Minoo Moallem, “Women of Color in the U.S.: Pedagogical Reflections on the Politics of ‘the Name,’” 368-82; both in Women Studies on Its Own, ed. Robyn Wiegman (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002). [Give inclusive pages only when citing the complete chapter rather than a particular statement.]
8. Franklin and Rogone, Reproducing Reproduction, 16. [For references already cited, a short title of 4 words or fewer is preferred.]
9. Diane Elam, “Taking Account of Women’s Studies,” in Women’s Studies on Its Own, 220. [Subsequent reference to an anthology should repeat title, not editor.]
10. William Farmwinkile, Humor of the American Midwest, vol. 2 of Survey of American Humor (Boston: Plenum Press, 1983), 132.
11. Phyllis Turnball, “The Politics of Toys: Politicization of Child Development” (Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii, 1978), 134.
12. Memorandum to Bill, 6 June 1942, Lilian Wald Papers, reel 94, Columbia University.
13. Pepe Karmel, “Behind Folk Forms, Classical Modes,” sec. C, New York Times, 27 Oct. 1995.
14. Antoinette Burton, introduction to Transforming the Public Sphere: The Dutch National Exhibition of Women’s Labor in 1898, by Maria Grever and Berteke Waaldijk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
15. Carla Williams, “Naked, Neutered, or Noble: Extremes of the Black Female Body and the Problem of Photographic History,” www.carlagirl.net.