Norms create categories, and categories create norms. Such processes are circular, communal, and inflected by history and culture, as this special issue of Feminist Studies illustrates with respect to sexuality and gender. One roundtable of scholars debates lesbian history, turning the discussion of identities into a debate on the place of lesbian studies, and sexuality studies more broadly, in contemporary US universities. Another roundtable queries future directions for women’s studies and sexuality studies; this forum becomes a lively discussion on the political effects of names and labels. Major essays in this volume advance our understanding of the possibilities present in non-solidified categories, such as gender identities formed by Thai women living in urban dormitories, or the increasingly expansive de-medicalized understanding of asexuality. Categories are also layered by historical and political contexts: an insightful review essay on “Queer Ethnic and Indigenous Studies” traces links between this new field of study and prior feminist theories and critical race studies. The ideas of Mary Daly, a pioneer of woman-centered theology in the United States, are re-examined for their subterranean streak of Roman Catholicism and even Mariolatry. The psych ward looms in another essay as a place where friendships among women are intersected by medical and bureaucratic lines of authority, while the poetry of women of color configures an additional perspective on feminist history and the texts taught in gender studies courses. A poem in this issue, “Researcher as Hostess,” riffs on a graduate student’s multiple roles, while fluid identities influence even the art essay focused on the work of painter Laura Molloy, the blurred faces of whose subjects remain as evocative as they are indefinite.

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Megan Sinnott
Dormitories and Other Queer Spaces: An Anthropology of Space, Gender, and the Visibility of Female Homoeroticism in Thailand
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FORUM: Lesbian Generations

• Leila J. Rupp  Thinking About “Lesbian History”
• Nan Alamilla Boyd  The History of the Idea of the Lesbian as a Kind of Person
• Ruth Vanita  Playing the Field
• Matt Richardson  Good and Messy: Lesbian and Transgender Identities
• Susan Stryker  Lesbian Generations—Transsexual … Lesbian … Feminist…

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Michael Hames-García
What’s After Queer Theory? Queer Ethnic and Indigenous Studies (Review Essay)
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CJ DeLuzio Chasin
Reconsidering Asexuality and Its Radical Potential
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Alison Townsend
At the Bottom of the Ocean: Psych Ward, 1986 (Creative Nonfiction)
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Sam Maddra
Laura Molloy: shifting focus (Art Essay)
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Elizabeth Hedrick
The Early Career of Mary Daly: A Retrospective
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Sophie Tamas
Researcher as Hostess: Power, Gender, Loss, and Cookies (Poem)
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FORUM: W/G/S Studies

• Women’s Studies and Sexuality Studies in Conversation
• Breanne Fahs  Diving (Back) into the Wreck: Finding, Transforming, and Reimagining Women’s Studies and Sexuality Studies in the Academy
• Laura Briggs  Whither Feminism in Higher Education in the Current Crisis?
• Marilee Lindemann  Building (and Rebuilding) LGBT Studies at the University of Maryland
• Ann Braithwaite and Catherine M. Orr  Feminism’s Attachments
• Sharra L. Vostral  Whither or Wither Feminisms?
• Erica Lorraine Williams  Women’s Studies and Sexuality Studies at HBCUs: The Audre Lorde Project at Spelman College

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Becky Thompson
Way Before the Word: Queer Organizing and Race When Beauty Still Counts
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News and Views

Rachel F. Seidman
Who Needs Feminism? Lessons from a Digital World
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Karla Mantilla
Gendertrolling: Misogyny Adapts to New Media
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Cover Art

Front cover: In the Studio (Shift I and II), 2007, 2008.
Back cover: Shift V (Sébastien), 2012.

All Art: Laura Molloy