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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 1d

Signs is seeking submissions for a new special issue: "Crisis," edited by Jih-Fei Cheng, Cati Connell, and Gowri Vijayakumar. For the full CFP go to signsjournal.org/for-authors/...

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: March 1, 2026

Feminists are no strangers to crisis. In the context of rapidly escalating population-threatening catastrophes—the global rise of fascism; war and genocide; climate crisis and Indigenous dispossession; sharp rises in unhoused, migrant, and refugee populations and their subsequent criminalization; increased normalization and legalization of gendered and sexual violence; lethal threats to public and reproductive health; the upward distribution of resources and wealth; and the crisis of the university—feminist theorizing feels both as urgent and as under threat as it was during the dawning of women’s studies as an academic enterprise.

This special issue invites contributions theorizing and responding to crisis. Where and how do we locate crisis (or crises)? What enables crisis conditions, and how do we—feminists and feminism—survive them? Feminist, queer, and trans theorists are uniquely positioned to offer critical readings of crisis within the longer temporal frame of slow violence and everyday brutality.

Guest Editors: Jih-Fei Cheng (Scripps College), Cati Connell (Boston University), and Gowri Vijayakumar (Brandeis University).

For the full call for papers and submission instructions, visit www.signsjournal.org/cfp

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 1d

Signs presents a new symposium: “Ask a Lesbian Feminist!” Scholars tackle reproductive justice, AI, protecting trans/queer youth, fascism, police violence, climate crisis & borders. Vital lesbian feminist perspectives on today’s most urgent issues (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 1d

What was ‘lesbian AIDS’? Emily Lim Rogers’ new article explores how chronic fatigue syndrome was politicized during the AIDS crisis, examining contested illness definitions & their impact on lesbian identity, community & health activism (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 2d

New from Signs: Nikita Shephard explores “carceral equality” — how lesbian cops became symbols of LGBTQ progress while reinforcing state violence. A critical analysis of feminist politics, representation, and the contradictions of inclusion (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 2d

“...Sligh’s work goes beyond the mainstream logics of lesbian and trans community building and sees the gender policing between them as tied into slavery’s impact on the present.” — Virginia C. Thomas on Clarissa Sligh’s “Wrongly Bodied” (sub. req’d):

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society | Vol 51, No 1

This introduction to “Lesbian Studies, Now” reflects on the affective, intellectual, and political stakes of invoking “lesbian” as a generative scholarly category in the present as well as the three…

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 3d

New from Signs: Nikita Shephard explores “carceral equality” — how lesbian cops became symbols of LGBTQ progress while reinforcing state violence. A critical analysis of feminist politics, representation, and the contradictions of inclusion (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 3d

In our latest issue, Sarah Luna examines how Mexico City’s lenchas & transfeministas transform violence into pleasure through radical pedagogy—ejaculation workshops, intergalactic dildos and lucha libre wrestling in flaxseed lube. Read more here (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 3d

While Brazil’s military dictatorship crushed dissent, lesbian activists went underground, publishing secret bulletins and building networks of resistance. Augusta da Silveira de Oliveira reveals this vital history of resilience under authoritarianism (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 3d

Check out Clara Bradbury-Rance’s “Defensive Spectatorship, or, Watching as a Butch/Lesbian,” which explores masculinity, lesbian studies, and ambivalent spectatorial desire (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 3d

New from Signs: “Lesbian Studies, Now” traces the figure of the lesbian in feminist theory, history, and politics — confronting nostalgia, critique, and the possibilities of survival. Check it out here (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 4d

Rejected everywhere, staged as a hoax, and finally published in a lesbian sex mag — Sarah Schulman’s “A Short Story About a Penis” has quite a history. Rachel Corbman uncovers its fascinating legacy in Signs’ new issue: check it out here! (sub. req’d):

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society | Vol 51, No 1

This introduction to “Lesbian Studies, Now” reflects on the affective, intellectual, and political stakes of invoking “lesbian” as a generative scholarly category in the present as well as the three…

buff.ly

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 4d

In our new issue, Julia Golda Harris dives into the 1970s women’s music scene — where trans and butch musicians claimed lesbian identity through music amid fierce battles over inclusion. Read it here (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 4d

Signs presents “Lesbian Studies, Now” — exploring lesbian feminism’s vital role in contemporary scholarship, from gender nonconformity to revolutionary fervor. Special issue out now! (sub. req’d): buff.ly/MxJWVvm

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society | Vol 51, No 1

This introduction to “Lesbian Studies, Now” reflects on the affective, intellectual, and political stakes of invoking “lesbian” as a generative scholarly category in the present as well as the three…

buff.ly

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 4d

What does “lesbian” do — as identity, politics, analytic — in the 21st century? Signs’ fall issue, “Lesbian Studies, Now,” stages the debates shaping feminism’s past, present, and future. Read it here (sub. req’d): www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/signs/20...

Cover of the Signs Special Issue "Lesbian Studies Now" featuring Nicole Eisenman's "Lesbian Recruitment Booth."

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Reposted by Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

rachel corbman @rachelcorbman.bsky.social · 7d

The lesbian studies issue of @signsjournal.org is on the internet! It includes my article about Sarah Schulman’s slideshow about a fake lesbian writer & her real short story about a lesbian who wakes up with a penis.

In March 1983, Sarah Schulman finished a draft of a short story about a lesbian who wakes up one day with a penis, descriptively titled “A Short Story About a Penis.” Though now a well-known writer, Schulman enjoyed limited success placing her fiction as a young writer in the early 1980s. In the middle of the feminist sex wars, “A Short Story About a Penis” racked up rejections from every significant lesbian literary magazine before finally appearing in On Our Backs, a newly launched lesbian sex magazine, in March 1986. While still struggling to place her story, Schulman created a performance piece to vent her frustration with the lesbian publishing scene. In her performance, Schulman read “A Short Story About a Penis,” which, she claimed, was the recently discovered work of a long-forgotten lesbian writer from the 1930s. In this article, I reconstruct the history of “A Short Story About a Penis” based on conversations with Schulman and the archival footprint of the performance in her personal papers. In offering an intellectual history of Schulman’s thinking on gender, sexuality, lesbian identity, and history, this article places Schulman within a genealogy of what came to be known as queer and trans, without obscuring the fraught history of lesbian in the 1980s.

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 7d

"So much ... violence ... proceeds along lines that track conventional sorts of masculinities, that are about protection, control, and force." - Angela P. Harris

Click here and listen to this Short Takes episode on Gender and Gun Violence!

Gender and Gun Violence: A Conversation with Angela P. Harris and Amy Farrell

Angela P. Harris and Amy Farrell discuss gender, race, and gun violence.

signsjournal.org

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 10d

www.jstor.org/stable/3174209

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 15d

Happy birthday to the amazing author and feminist, bell hooks! Read this 1995 Signs interview featuring hooks and Tanya McKinnon, to hear more about hooks's life from the author herself.

Sisterhood: Beyond Public and Private on JSTOR

bell hooks, Tanya McKinnon, Sisterhood: Beyond Public and Private, Signs, Vol. 21, No. 4, Feminist Theory and Practice (Summer, 1996), pp. 814-829

www.jstor.org

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 17d

Sunday, September 21st, was International Day of Peace. To honor the day, check out the Signs symposium "Feminists Reconceptualize Peace". Here you'll find peaceful perspectives applied to discussions of maternal roles, men at war, violence against women, and more. (sub. req’d):

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society | Vol 36, No 3

www.journals.uchicago.edu

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 22d

Monday, September 15th, marked the start of Hispanic Heritage Month. To celebrate, check out this Signs article, which discusses the Mexican-American feminist movement known as the Chicana movement or "El Movimiento"! (sub. req’d):

Chicana Feminism and Postmodernist Theory | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society: Vol 26, No 2

www.journals.uchicago.edu

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 23d

"If the post-Roe years have made anything clear, it is that no federal protection, no court ruling, and no institutional framework can be relied upon entirely to safeguard reproductive autonomy for the long haul." — @kellyodonn.bsky.social

Rebecca Grant’s Access

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 23d

"The activists profiled in the book aren’t focused on what is legal; they are focused on what is accessible.... Access is an account of people who prioritized the needs of abortion seekers over fears of personal risk." —Katrina Kimport

Rebecca Grant’s Access

signsjournal.org

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 24d

"Legality is not the same as justice, and ... access is not the same as rights. The formal systems may shift—and with Dobbs, they collapsed—but abortion seekers and their helpers have never waited for permission." —@rhartholder.bsky.social

Rebecca Grant’s Access

signsjournal.org

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 24d

New Short Takes! @rhartholder.bsky.social, Katrina Kimport, and @kellyodonn.bsky.social discuss @rebeccaggrant.bsky.social's Access: Inside the Abortion Underground and the 60-Year Battle for Reproductive Freedom!

Rebecca Grant’s Access

signsjournal.org

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society @signsjournal.org · 28d

Check out this interview, “To Interpret the World and to Change It: An Interview with Nancy Fraser” to hear about how Nancy Fraser uses philosophy to address issues facing feminist politics.

To Interpret the World and to Change It: An Interview with Nancy Fraser | Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society: Vol 29, No 4

doi.org