Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

@signsjournal

The leading international journal in women's studies, Signs has since 1975 been at the forefront of new directions in feminist scholarship. | | Published by @uchicagopress.bsky.social linktr.ee/signsjournal

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Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society@signsjournal· Oct 9

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

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society@signsjournal· Oct 6

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

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society@signsjournal· Oct 6

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."

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society@signsjournal· May 9

Libby Adler (@libbyadler.bsky.social) discusses the potential effects of the US military's ban on trans service members. Read or listen to the full conversation: signsjournal.org/trumps-anti-...

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society@signsjournal· Apr 9

For line-by-line analysis and more, explore FCAP’s Anti-Trans Executive Orders archive: buff.ly/bwlU09J

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society@signsjournal· Apr 9

Explore FCAP's Anti-Trans Executive Orders Archive here: signsjournal.org/feministresi...

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society@signsjournal· Mar 13

Submissions for our upcoming special issue "Feminism, Antifeminism, and the Mobilization of Regret," are due May 1, 2025! Check out the full call at signsjournal.org/for-authors/...

Feminism, Antifeminism, and the Mobilization of Regret
Guest edited by Laura Green (Northeastern University) and Chris Bobel (University of Massachusetts Boston)
Feminism is forward-looking and world-building. Feminists everywhere can call to mind the manifestos, mobilizations, solidarities, creative inspirations, legal propositions, and revolutionary paradigms that inspire us to action and move us toward more just futures. At the same time, we may also be haunted by obstacles encountered, losses experienced, and regrets felt along the way. With over fifty years of feminist history behind the journal—and, we hope, another fifty years of feminist troublemaking ahead—Signs seeks essays that delineate both how feminists may experience, theorize, and productively apply the concept of regret and how it may, alternatively, thwart the development of feminist futures.
We seek essays that make theoretical, analytical, and/or activist interventions. We welcome papers that engage the complex dynamics and larger contexts of regret, from the personal, emotional, and creative realms to the social, political, and empirical; or that consider how regret converges with or departs from related affective terrains of shame, guilt, grief, or nostalgia. As always, Signs encourages transdisciplinary and transnational essays that address substantive feminist questions, debates, and forms of literary, artistic, and cultural representation and that minimize disciplinary or academic jargon.
Scan the QR code or visit www.signsjournal.org/cfps for the full call for papers and submission instructions.

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society@signsjournal· Nov 15

If you are at #NWSA2024, check out our latest call for papers on "Feminism, Antifeminism, and The Mobilization of Regret." Deadline May 1. signsjournal.org/for-authors/... #NWSA #CFP #feminism

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society@signsjournal· Nov 14

Catharine Stimpson, the founding editor of Signs, discusses the political moment and the need to hold on to your utopia (recorded in 2023). The full video--plus interviews with other editors--is available as part of our 50th anniversary celebration: signsjournal.org/50th-anniver...