Video of the Signs@40: Feminist Scholarship through Four Decades event held at Rutgers University’s Douglass Library is below. Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, speakers explore the history of feminist publishing and the use of digital humanities techniques to map the field. Hosted by Professor Mary Hawkesworth, outgoing Editor […]
Read MoreWelcome to the website for Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. This site features content available exclusively online, as well as information about current and upcoming issues, general information about the journal, and guidelines for authors.
Our Current Issue
The Winter 2015 issue of Signs begins with a comparative perspectives symposium titled “Politics of the Sensing Subject: Gender, Perception, Art,” edited and introduced by Anne Keefe. Other articles in the issue explore new materialism; women who regret becoming mothers; emerging representations of autistic subjects; race, gender, and affect from a historical perspective; the affective labor of drag and nursing; and the contemporary relationship between the United States and India through US women’s memoirs. Read more about the issue here or view the issue itself on JSTOR.
Virtual Issue: Visibility and Visuality
“Visibility and Visuality: Reframing Gender in the Middle East, North Africa, and Their Diasporas” is a virtual issue of Signs (open access for a limited time) produced in collaboration with the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art in celebration of the Fertile Crescent: Art, Gender, and Society project. This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary collection explores political engagement and protest; sexuality, marriage and family life; Islamicization and secularism; the politics of resistance in public and private spheres; cultural production and translation; migration and diaspora; labor and class within and across nations; agency and identity; and conflict and postconflict situations.
From the Blog
Inaugural Editorial: Thinking and Doing Feminism
This editorial by Suzanna Danuta Walters, the incoming editor of Signs, will appear in the Spring 2015 issue. It is with great pride and pleasure that I join the distinguished ranks of editors of Signs. Along with my colleague Carla Kaplan, who will serve as Chair of the Board of Associate Editors, I am excited to begin […]
Read MoreSigns Events at NWSA 2014 Conference
Editors from Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society will be holding several events at the upcoming National Women’s Studies Association conference, Feminist Transgressions, which will provide opportunities to discuss the world of feminist academic publishing and hear pragmatic advice from experts in the field. Saturday, November 15: Chat with Signs Editors: Join Signs Deputy Editor […]
Read MoreAutumn 2014 (vol. 40, no. 1)
The most recent issue of Signs (available on JSTOR) begins with a Comparative Perspectives Symposium on “Gendered Bodies in the Protest Sphere,” edited by Miranda Outman-Kramer and Susana Galán. Inspired by the wave of grassroots protests that swept the world beginning in 2011, this symposium sets out to consider the politics of the protesting body—a […]
Read MoreNext Editorial Team of Signs Announced
The University of Chicago Press has recently announced the next home of the Signs editorial office. Under the leadership of Professors Suzanna Danuta Walters and Carla Kaplan, the Signs editorial office will be housed at Northeastern University, beginning in 2015. The longstanding tradition of rotating the editorship of Signs ensures that new voices and perspectives […]
Read MoreHighlights for the American Sociological Association’s 2014 Annual Meeting
To mark the 109th annual conference of the American Sociological Association, which will feature many Signs authors, Signs is making three articles freely available for a limited period. These recent articles, all written by conference attendees, demonstrate the conceptual and methodological innovations of feminist research on economic inequality published in Signs, as well as its […]
Read MoreFilms for the Feminist Classroom: New Issue and New Home
A new issue of Films for the Feminist Classroom, an online, open-access journal of films reviews, lesson plans, and other essays, has just been published. This issue marks the first to be published under the auspices of the Department of Women’s Studies at Texas Woman’s University and the editorship of Agatha Beins. FFC, which was formerly housed in the […]
Read MoreSummer 2014 (vol. 39, no. 4)
The Summer 2014 issue of Signs (available on JSTOR) begins with a comparative perspective symposium on the theme of “Gender, Media, and Social Change,” edited by Christina Dunbar-Hester. Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh opens the symposium with an exploration of how the Iranian women’s movement turned to virtual spaces to forge connections between different social groups and to […]
Read MoreSymposium Essays in International Languages
To accompany the comparative perspectives symposium on “Translation, Feminist Scholarship, and the Hegemony of English” in the latest issue, Signs and the University of Chicago Press are making available versions of five of the symposium essays in international languages as an online-only special feature. Francine Descarries’s “Language Is Not Neutral” is available in French, Lola Sánchez’s “Translations That […]
Read MoreSpring 2014 (vol. 39, no. 3)
This issue (available on JSTOR) begins with a comparative perspectives symposium on the theme of “Translation, Feminist Scholarship, and the Hegemony of English.” Claudia de Lima Costa and Sonia Alvarez open the symposium by signaling the importance of translation, conceived both linguistically and ontologically, to contemporary decolonial feminisms, and they examine the role of academic […]
Read MoreAbuse at Tutwiler Prison
Recent news reports detail a pattern of horrifying abuse at Alabama’s Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. Artists Toni Bowers and Natasha Ward, whose work appears on the cover of Signs’s special issue on Women, Gender, and Prison are inmates in this institution. Their work, their artists’s statement, and their bios are testimony to their extraordinary […]
Read MoreNadieszda Kizenko Awarded 2013 Distinguished Article Prize from Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture
Signs is very pleased to announce that Nadieszda Kizenko has been awarded the Association for the Study of Eastern Christian History and Culture‘s 2013 Distinguished Article Prize for her Signs article “Feminized Patriarchy? Orthodoxy and Gender in Post-Soviet Russia.” Please join us in congratulating her! Kizenko’s article investigates the tensions facing religious women in contemporary Russia. Kizenko […]
Read MoreHighlights for the Feminist Digital Pedagogies Conference, January 23-24, 2014
The Feminist Digital Pedagogies Conference, hosted by the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, will take place in New Brunswick, NJ, next week, on January 23 and 24. The conference will be streamed live, starting at 1 pm on Thursday, on the department’s website, and updates will be available through its Facebook page as well […]
Read MoreSigns Authors Win Florence Howe Awards at #MLA14
Two articles recently published in Signs have been awarded the Florence Howe Award for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship from the Women’s Caucus of the Modern Languages Association. The awards ceremony will take place at the MLA Convention in Chicago on Thursday, January 9, from 8:45-10:00 pm in Chicago VIII at the Sheraton Chicago. The awards will […]
Read MoreOn Nelson Mandela’s Passing
In tribute to the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela (1918–2013), Signs is offering open access to two articles on the changing, dynamic, inspiring, and still troubling situation in South Africa. Mandela’s extraordinary legacy—of the overthrow of apartheid and transition to democracy, of the unheralded, ongoing process of truth and reconciliation—stands as an inspiration to anyone […]
Read MoreWinter 2014 (vol. 39, no. 2)
This issue of Signs begins with two articles analyzing the literature of Japanese American internment, Sarah Dowling’s “‘How Lucky I Was to Be Free and Safe at Home’: Reading Humor in Miné Okubo’s Citizen 13660” and Cynthia Wu’s “Asian American Feminism’s Alliances with Men: Reading Hisaye Yamamoto’s ‘Seventeen Syllables.’” Dowling and Wu propose modes of […]
Read MoreSigns at the 2013 National Women’s Studies Association Conference
There are two opportunities to speak with Signs editors at the upcoming NWSA conference, Negotiating Points of Encounter. At the workshop “Academic Publishing in Women’s Studies: Journals,” Signs editor in chief Mary Hawkesworth will join editors of other top women’s studies journals–Gail Cohee of Feminist Teacher, Sandra Soto of Feminist Formations, and Ashwini Tambe of Feminist […]
Read MoreResponding to the Recent Spate of Anti-Roma News Stories
Over the past several months, mainstream media outlets in the European Union and United States have generated a resurgence of stories about the Roma that reinscribe racializing stereotypes and essentialist claims of cultural backwardness. Cases of suspected child abduction, deportation of Romani immigrants (and subsequent protests), and their illicitly acquired wealth have been afforded an intensified […]
Read MoreHighlights for the 2013 Critical Ethnic Studies Association Conference
The second Critical Ethnic Studies Association conference, which will feature presentations from many Signs authors, begins tomorrow. As scholars and activists at the conference grapple with the historical ruptures, epistemic breaks, and everyday violences produced by racism and colonization, Signs is providing open access to two articles from our recent special issue “Women, Gender, and […]
Read MoreWomen, Gender, and Prison: National and Global Perspectives (Autumn 2013; vol. 39, no.1)
The past forty years have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of women imprisoned worldwide; over half a million women are now incarcerated, and the growth rate of women’s imprisonment has outstripped that of men’s. Despite neoliberal commitments to cut back the state, many states have dramatically increased spending on policing and imprisonment at […]
Read MoreHighlights for the American Sociological Association’s 2013 Annual Meeting
In light of the fact that the 108th annual conference of the American Sociological Association kicks off in New York at the end of this week, Signs is making freely available, for a limited period, two articles of interest to ASA members, or to anyone with an interest in feminist sociology. These two articles demonstrate […]
Read MoreThe latest issue of Films for the Feminist Classroom is now available online!
The Summer 2013 issue is now available here. This issue’s special feature, Women, Education, and Activism, edited by Anne Keefe, contains two interviews paired with film reviews: An Interview with Charlotte Bunch by Alyssa Rorke followed by a review of Passionate Politics: The Life and Work of Charlotte Bunch by Mary Hawkesworth, and An Interview […]
Read MoreSigns Article Wins 2013 Sex and Gender Distinguished Article Award
Ashley Currier’s Signs article “The Aftermath of Decolonization: Gender and Sexual Dissidence in Postindependence Namibia” has been awarded the 2013 Sex and Gender Distinguished Article Award from the Sex and Gender section of the American Sociological Association. Currier’s article, which was published in the Winter 2012 issue of Signs, explores the sociological effects of “political […]
Read MoreUpcoming US Supreme Court Decisions and Feminist Scholarship
The US Supreme Court is set to hand down a series of key decisions on gene patenting, same-sex marriage, and the Voting Rights Act—all subjects that have been explored in detail in recent issues of Signs. In Association for Molecular Pathology v. United States Patent and Trademark Office, the court will decide whether human genes […]
Read MoreIntersectionality: Theorizing Power, Empowering Theory (Summer 2013; vol. 38, no. 4)
Intersectionality has become one of feminist and critical race theory’s most generative concepts. The Summer 2013 issue of Signs, Intersectionality: Theorizing Power, Empowering Theory, guest edited by Sumi Cho, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, and Leslie McCall, provides a timely and critical assessment of this pathbreaking concept. Since its coinage in Crenshaw’s work in the late 1980s, […]
Read MoreSigns Is Now on Tumblr
Signs is now on Tumblr! Stay up to date with the latest articles, announcements, and Signs events, all on your Tumblr feed. Follow us here: http://signsjournal.tumblr.com/.
Read MoreSigns for E-Readers Now Available
The University of Chicago Press is now making each new issue of Signs (and all Chicago journals) available as an e-book edition for individual subscribers, meaning that subscribers can read Signs on their iPad, Kindle, Nook, or any other other e-reader. Subscribers can download the Spring 2013 issue in both .epub and .mobi formats, and […]
Read MoreHighlights for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies 2013 Conference
In light of the fact that the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference kicks off in Chicago next week, Signs is making available, for a limited period, several articles of interest to SCMS members, or to anyone with an interest in feminist scholarship on cinema, media, and popular culture. This collection of four […]
Read MoreSpring 2013 (vol. 38, no. 3)
Leading off this issue of Signs is Anna Hájková’s “Sexual Barter in Times of Genocide: Negotiating the Sexual Economy of the Theresienstadt Ghetto,” the winner of the 2013 Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship. The article draws on archival material, memoirs, and interview data to relate a remarkable story about gender power in a […]
Read MoreFortieth Anniversary of Roe v. Wade
On the fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Signs would like to highlight some of the work on reproductive rights and reproductive justice that has been published in the journal, emphasizing in particular how feminist scholarship has broadened the conversations around abortion in ways that both insist on the necessity of access to abortion and […]
Read MoreSigns and the MLA’s 2013 Annual Convention
In anticipation of the Modern Language Association’s 2013 Convention and its theme, “Avenues of Access,” we would like to highlight some content of particular interest to conference attendees, as well as information about Signs’ presence at the conference. First, we are offering open access to two recent articles. Ellen Samuels’s “Examining Millie and Christine McKoy: […]
Read MoreWinter 2013 (vol. 38, no. 2)
The articles in Signs’s Winter 2013 issue span a range of disciplines, theoretical vantage points, and topics of study. Jonneke Koomen’s “Without These Women, the Tribunal Cannot Do Anything” explores the limits justice revealed in the nexus of prosecutors, translators, and survivors of genocide, among others, during the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Megan Moodie […]
Read MoreSigns Events at the NWSA 2012 Conference
Signs will have several events at the National Women’s Studies Association’s upcoming annual conference, Feminism Unbound: Imagining a Feminist Future, November 8-11, 2012. Join Signs editor in chief Mary Hawkesworth, along with the editors of several other leading feminist journals, for the panel “Academic Publishing in Women’s Studies: Journals” on Friday, November 9, from 9:25-10:40 […]
Read MoreForthcoming Issue: Volume 38, Number 2 — Winter 2013
Below is the table of contents for Signs‘s forthcoming Winter 2013 issue. Articles “Without These Women, the Tribunal Cannot Do Anything”: The Politics of Witness Testimony on Sexual Violence at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda Jonneke Koomen Microfinance and the Gender of Risk: The Case of Kiva.org Megan Moodie The Trouble with “Queerness”: Drag […]
Read MoreAnnoucing Issue 4.1 of Films for the Feminist Classroom
We are thrilled to announce that the latest issue of Films for the Feminist Classroom is now available at http://www.signs.rutgers.edu/ffc_home.html. In this issue’s special feature, edited and introduced by Agatha Beins, scholars and activists discuss their pedagogical approaches for using films in the 21st-century classroom. Focused on engaging and unconventional methods that resonate with students, […]
Read MoreAutumn 2012 (vol. 38, no. 1)
Signs’s Autumn 2012 issue begins with a symposium on Romani Feminisms, edited by Ethel C. Brooks. Bringing together scholars and activists, the symposium examines the complex ways that Romani women and feminists are positioned in relation to states, communities, and nongovernmental organizations, as well as their multivalent responses to such positionings. In response to the […]
Read MoreAnna Hájková Wins 2013 Catharine Stimpson Prize for Feminist Scholarship
The University of Chicago Press is pleased to announce the award of the 2013 Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship to Anna Hájková, a PhD candidate in History at the University of Toronto. Named in honor of the Founding Editor of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, the Catharine Stimpson Prize is […]
Read MoreSex: A Thematic Issue (Summer 2012; vol. 37, no. 4)
Taking an expansive approach to the many valences of “sex,” this issue brings together perspectives from sociologists, historians, anthropologists, and science studies scholars to consider the emergence of sex as a category, its surprising geographical and historical variability, and its imbrication with processes of regulation, racialization, and commodification. The issue challenges any attempt to ground […]
Read MoreSpring 2012 (vol. 37, no. 3)
This issue features a comparative perspectives symposium titled “Fish/Wives: Gender, Representation, and Agency in Coastal Communities,” edited by Valerie Burton. The symposium includes historical essays, ethnographic studies of contemporary fishing communities, and analyses of representations of fish/wives. Essays track historical and contemporary gendered labor practices and representations in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. […]
Read MoreSpecial Issue: Unfinished Revolutions (Winter 2012; vol. 37, no. 2)
Signs’s Winter 2012 issue is a special issue featuring feminist explorations of the intricacies of unfinished revolutions. In his introduction to the issue, guest editor Phillip Rothwell claims that “when assessing any revolution—whether it explicitly seeks political, aesthetic, or epistemological transformation—feminist experience teaches us that it is often best to analyze by looking for the […]
Read MoreAutumn 2011 (vol 37, no. 1)
The Autumn 2011 issue features a comparative perspectives symposium titled “Gloria E. Anzaldúa, An International Perspective,” edited by Norma Cantú. The symposium brings together voices impacted by Anzaldúa’s work on borders and border crossing from around the globe with articles on the Mediterranean, Poland, Ukraine, the Canary Islands, Mexico, and other geographical and contextual locations. […]
Read More
Signs on the Syllabus
Signs editor Mary Hawkesworth’s syllabus for the lower-division undergraduate course Feminist Practices is available online and as part of a digital course reader that contains course readings, a suggested syllabus, and original section introductions that situate the questions raised by the readings within contemporary global feminist struggles and broader political, social, and cultural dynamics. Exam copies of the digital reader are also available from the University of Chicago Press. Asking students to consider what makes a practice feminist and what is at stake in claiming the feminist label, the course contains units on many widely taught subjects, including women’s labor, the commodification of women’s sexuality and reproduction, violence against women, and varieties of activism.
Films for the Feminist Classroom
Films for the Feminist Classroom, an online, open-access journal, publishes film reviews that provide a critical assessment of the value of films as pedagogical tools in the feminist classroom. Special features, such as interviews with filmmakers, are included to further promote engagement and discussion. FFC endeavors to serve as a dynamic resource for teachers and librarians and to enhance feminist curricula, bringing film into the classroom via thought-provoking, relevant, and engaging reviews.
