Editor's Note

Abstract

Editor's Note As this issue went to press, all of the files, disks, and books, along with the worries and joys, of the Journal of Women's History were in the process of moving from Bloomington, Indiana to Columbus, Ohio. Our first issue will not appear until the spring of 1997, but starting July 1 we assume responsibility for the final stages of issues already put together at Indiana University. We at Ohio State are thrilled about this opportunity, and we are grateful to our predecessors and especially to editors Christie Farnham and Joan Hoff for trusting us with their "baby." I suspect that they feel both relief and some anxiety as we take over. I keep thinking of Madeleine Doty, an American member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, who wrote as she stepped down from the editorship of the organization's journal Pax in 1931, "It is a little bit a child to me as I have given so much of my time and strength to it." The Journal is already a sturdy child and we look forward to ushering her into her adolescence. As the journal of record for the international field of women's history, the Journal of Women's History is committed to publishing and reviewing feminist scholarship about women. For us, the contested term "feminist" means a recognition that gender is an important category of analysis; an assertion that women have been historically disadvantaged relative to men of their race, class, ethnicity, religion, or sexual identity; and a commitment to changing the structures that systematically privilege men over women. The Journal has never attempted to impose one feminist "line" but has recognized the multiple perspectives captured by the term "feminisms." Its central principle has been a focus on the study of women rather than gender systems. But we believe that the divide between "women's history" and "gender history" can be, and is, bridged by work on women that is sensitive to the particular historical constructions of gender that shape and are shaped by women's experiences. Our vision for the Journal of Women's History involves building on what we see as great strength. We hope to facilitate even more interaction among different national fields of women's history by seeking out explicitly comparative work and by publishing special thematic issues that juxtapose scholarship on different nations and regions of the globe. We will continue to include, in reviews and abstracts, books published in languages other than English. Martina Kramers, Dutch editor of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance journal Jus Sujfragii, insisted in 1907 on the need to translate material into English for the "poor monolingual © 1996 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8 No. 3 (Fall) 1996 Editor's Note 7 Americans," and we believe that bridging the language gap remains important. We intend to maintain and develop the extremely provocative dialogues —or what Claire Robertson likes to call "multilogues"—on conceptual frameworks in women's history, extending discussion on the uses of interdiciplinary and theoretical approaches such as poststructuralism, Marxism, womanism, subaltern studies, and queer theory for practitioners of women's history. By publishing responses and rejoinders, and seeking authors beyond the borders of the U.S., we hope to stimulate creative thinking about issues that sometimes divide us. And we want to continue the letters to the editor section, so we invite readers to write us with their thoughts and concerns about the field and the contents of the Journal. Finally, we plan to expand the "Documents" section by regularly including discussions of particular archival collections, oral history repositories , or other materials located anywhere in the world. We encourage submissions of this sort that might serve as a valuable resource for Journal readers. A final word about the new editorial staff. I had to decide about putting in a bid to take on the responsibilities of the editorship while my mother was dying in the spring of 1995. Given how difficult it was even to think about it, I am delighted to say that I think I made the right decision. As a women's historian interested in comparative and international women's history, I...