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 & Visual Culture Features
Review Essays
Other Forms of Writing and Visual Expression

Call for Papers

Feminist Studies welcomes submissions on all topics. From time to time, we also welcome contributions on the specific topics that we expect to produce special issues on, which will we announce on this site.

Call for Content: Textiles

This call is for innovative submissions about feminism and textiles, including empirical studies, theoretical studies, art essays, narratives, creative writing, pedagogical reflections, news-based commentaries, and review essays. Cloth “endures, but it is mortal,” writes Peter Stallybrass, reminding us that textiles are alive, saturated with the smells, sweat, and epidermal residues of their makers and users, shaped by the “memory” embedded in the elbow or knee of a garment, in patterns of wear or fading. Imbued with identities, kinship ties, and social relations, textiles preserve wanted and unwanted stories, cherished memories and profound forms of grief, traces of violence and menders’ tender ministrations. As records of daily life, textiles illuminate both intimate personal experiences and broader histories, geographies, and social structures. Shaped by gender, sexuality, race, class, coloniality, nationality, religion, and embodiment, textiles function as means of oppression and agency, discipline and resistance. As material goods, textiles are at once sources of life-sustaining beauty and sources of unjust labor practices and environmental devastation. They are fragile historical records and stubbornly persistent toxic waste. Some textiles occupy central roles in museums and collections while others figure solely as absences, as silent reminders of presences deemed unworthy of preservation.

For this special issue of Feminist Studies, we invite essays (up to 10,500 words, including footnotes) and art (with accompanying text) that engage with textiles through a feminist lens. We welcome submissions that approach textiles through the broad range of genres listed above and from various disciplinary perspectives (e.g., history, politics, science, environmental studies, material culture, sociology, art history, anthropology, literary and cultural studies, fiber studies). We also welcome forums featuring a group of people in conversation.

The due date for submissions is March 1, 2025. Please send your submission to submit@feministstudies.org. We invite you to consult our submission guidelines for details and to also access recent issues to get a sense of our typical content.

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Call for Content: Pedagogical Reflections

In the coming months, the journal Feminist Studies will inaugurate a new genre called Pedagogical Reflections. We will publish short reflections (under 2000 words) about the topics below. We invite you to articulate specifically feminist approaches to these topics:

• Teaching and mental health post-COVID
• Teaching in the age of AI
• Teaching in right-wing contexts
• Teaching and disability support (DSR) accommodations
• Teaching and learning in the age of social media
• Teaching critical race theory
• Teaching in prisons

We also welcome forums on these topics where a group of people are in conversation. How might feminists intervene in provocative ways? How has teaching changed in these contexts? What does it mean to be a feminist teacher/pedagogue today? Send your reflections to submit@feministstudies.org

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 footnotes. Please consult the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style for proper manuscript form and footnote citation style.

How to Submit:

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

• An electronic copy to submit@feministstudies.org. Please send the electronic file as a Word document, not as a PDF.
• A 200-word (or fewer) abstract
• A cover note with mailing and email 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 15 pages, or about 5,500 words.

We have rolling deadlines for submissions of creative work. All creative work is reviewed by our creative writing editor who makes recommendations, which are read anonymously by our editorial collective.

How to Submit:

• Email an electronic version of your work to creative@feministstudies.org.

Art & Visual Culture Features

Each issue of Feminist Studies features an essay focused on visual art and/or culture that is accompanied by a multi-page, full-color, glossy spread of images. These essays take the form either of a short essay or artist’s statement (approximately 1,500 to 4,000 words) that focuses on a contemporary artist or artists, or a full-length, scholarly, peer-reviewed article (up to 10,500 words), following the same guidelines as those essays submitted under the rubric of “Research and Criticism.” Essays may also be illustrated with black and white images, when appropriate.

The art feature testifies to the journal’s longstanding commitment to feminist art from around the world. Although we often publish work by established artists (e.g., Betye Saar, vol. 30, no. 1; Wangechi Mutu, vol. 42, no, 2) or those no longer living (e.g., Alice Neel, vol. 28, no. 2), we especially wish to introduce emerging artists to our readers—or artists who have not yet received widespread attention in an interdisciplinary scholarly context. 

We are interested in various types of art and visual culture, including but not limited to painting, sculpture, craft, installation, and photography. We encourage artists to submit essays featuring their own work and/or to collaborate with others to submit a sequence of images accompanied by an introductory, critical essay.

Guidelines to submit a short essay or statement on art and/or visual culture:

• The essay/statement may be written by the artist or by a scholar, critic, or other writer of some kind. Often artists work with critics to submit a set of images of their work. The primary readership will be academic, so the goal should be to situate the work alongside others in its genre and to explain its contributions.
• Send the essay as a Word file (not a PDF) in an email attachment to art@feministstudies.org.
• Include a Word document or PDF with the images you intend to feature, clearly labeled. (These can be low-resolution images at this point; in the event your submission is accepted, we will need to obtain high-resolution files of the images.)
• Include a 50-word biographical note (each) for the artist and the author.

Guidelines to submit a scholarly, peer-reviewed article on art and/or visual culture:

• Follow the guidelines for scholarly articles but address your submission to art@feministstudies.org.
• Include a Word document or PDF with the images you intend to feature, clearly labeled. (These can be low-resolution images at this point; in the event your submission is accepted, we will need to obtain high-resolution files of the images.)

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:

• Email 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:

• Email 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 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Basic Format documentation style, for footnotes only, without a bibliography. See the CMS general guidelines 14.19–14.36 and the detailed citation information from 14.72 on.

We do not publish discursive footnotes, unless such notes include essential information. Whenever possible, please combine footnotes and eliminate long footnotes 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 footnote types.