"Stay-ing the Course"

Abstract

"Stay-ing the Course" The NWSA Journal moved to Iowa State University in June 2002, and in this new environment, and at the outset of the 21st century, the Journal is undergoing a variety of changes. For example, the editorial staff at Iowa State intends to place greater emphasis on women and science, a change evident in our first issue on the special topic, "(Re)gendering Science Fields," which was published in fall 2004. At the same time, we wish to acknowledge and sustain a sense of continuity with the past. For example, like founding editor Mary Jo Wagner, who introduced the first issue of the NWSA Journal in 1988, we expect to "raise critical questions in women's studies, with broad implications for the decades ahead" (2). Our editorial staff also remains committed to maintaining strong links between the National Women's Studies Association, with which the Journal is affiliated, as well as between the academy and feminist activism. We believe that academic feminism cannot preserve its vitality and engagement without a meaningful connection to feminist political practice. Women's Studies originated in feminist political practice, and in this era of backlash, the need for collaboration between activists and academics remains urgent. The NWSA Journal can more actively foster such collaboration by publishing more reports from the trenches and encouraging dialogue between academics and activists. In accord with this goal, we begin this issue with an interview with Ellen Messer-Davidow focused on her book, Disciplining Feminism. Messer-Davidow argues that because Women's Studies has become too removed from activism, a reorientation is needed to achieve feminist goals. Some readers may question Messer-Davidow's definition of activism, as do some interviewers at Iowa State; however, Disciplining Feminism raises important questions for feminists to consider. A number of essays in this volume focus upon activism—see, for example, "Stories 'That Only a Mother' Could Write: Midcentury Peace Activism, Maternalist Politics, and Judith Merril's Early Fiction"—and we plan to include more such essays in future issues. We also plan to include reports updating readers on the status of women's and gender studies programs/departments, and we intend to use interviews or forums to encourage conversations and collaborations between academics and activists to promote feminist goals in the academy and beyond. Feminists have had many successes in the past three decades, not the least of which is the institutionalization of women's studies programs in the United States; at the same time, women's freedoms are under increasing threat from fundamentalists, in the United States and internationally, who share a hatred of women. Such threats to women are the topic of a recent report from the National Women's Law Center entitled, [End Page vii] "Slip-Sliding Away: The Erosion of Hard-Won Gains for Women Under the Bush Administration and an Agenda for Moving Forward" (April 2004). Whether located in the United States or elsewhere, fundamentalists hate women who compete with men in the workplace, who decide when or whether to bear children, and who show independence about getting abortions. Fundamentalists also hate homosexuality and the wide range of sexual orientations that have always characterized human societies, and they wish to impose a rigid "truth," with simple certainties, on all individuals. How, then, can feminists work collectively to advance and protect the rights of all women while, at the same time, respecting differences? This question of how different women can work together remains as urgent now as it was when editor Wagner raised it in 1988. Wagner quotes board member Tucker Farley whose words remain relevant today: When I stand on a street corner with my friend, a woman from China, the world she sees and describes, and the world I see and describe, are not the same. Thus what is possible for each of us to be doing is not the same either. And yet a nuclear bomb could eliminate both worlds simultaneously; in a sense we are in the same world, and it would be senseless for either to fight about which of our versions of reality is the correct one, or to shrug and say it does not matter. It makes a...