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Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ) is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal of women’s studies published each June and December and currently publishes creative nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and scholarly articles. The journal is published by The Feminist Press, which was founded by Florence Howe in 1970. Before changing its name to Women’s Studies Quarterly in 1981, the publication was titled Women’s Studies Newsletter. The name change indicated a shift in the publication’s purpose and content. In their explanation for the change, the 1981 editorial states that it “will deepen coverage of growing and mature women's studies programs, their institutional structures, their responsibility not only for the development of interdisciplinary women's studies courses.” The first newsletter was published in 1972 and was published for each season. Sometimes there were less than four publications per year because editions condensed two seasons into one publication. As a newsletter, the topics were focused on women’s studies curriculum in all grade levels, children’s books, and receiving funding for women’s studies programs and faculty. The newsletter created the core network that transformed into the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) in 1977. According to NWSA’s website, their primary objectives to “promote and support the production and dissemination of knowledge about women and gender through teaching, learning, research and service in academic and other settings” were established at its official inception in 1977. WSQ was a foundational publication in the formation of Women’s Studies as an academic discipline because it created a space for interested individuals to organize, share ideas, and exchange experiences.

The Feminist Press website states that it “began as a crucial publishing component of second wave feminism, reprinting feminist classics by writers, and providing much-needed texts for the developing field of women’s studies” since its inception in 1970. According to Howe, she had been pitching the idea to publishers and directors after her students began questioning why no women were included on their course syllabi. Following rejection, she attended a meeting of Baltimore Women’s Liberation to inquire about a feminist press. Months later, she returned to her home to find her mailbox full of letters addressed to the Feminist Press. The Baltimore Women’s Liberation Newsletter actually announced the start of the Feminist Press, contributing the idea to Florence Howe, without informing her of this decision first. From here, the organizing of the press began. In 1971, the press moved from Groucher College, where Howe had been working, to Old Westbury, where she was offered a tenure position. Two years later, as a continuation of Howe’s work, the Women’s Studies Newsletter began.

The first issue of Women’s Studies Newsletter released in Fall 1972 begins the Front Matter with a section describing The Clearinghouse on Women’s Studies. The Clearinghouse on Women’s Studies began in 1969 in Florence Howe’s office at Goucher College. During the 1960s, feminist professors were interested in teaching work by women as opposed to the dominant male-centric syllabi. One essential intervention in this movement was the work of The Clearhinghouse. Howe’s work-study student, Carol Ahlum, “added faculty to a growing list of those interested in what was in those days sometimes called ‘women’s’ studies, sometimes ‘female’ studies, and more rarely ‘feminist’ studies.”  The academic field of Women’s Studies in the United States was in its early stages, and the Clearhousing on Women’s Studies was a way to connect the growing community of women’s studies scholars. In 1970, Howe held the position of the Chair of the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) Commission on the Status and Education of Women. She asked the MLA’s executive council for “permission to broaden the commission’s purview beyond the status of women to include curriculum.” This enabled the Clearinghouse on Women’s Studies to issue the first “Guide to Women’s Studies Courses and Programs.” In fact, three “Guides,” or lists of women’s studies courses, were issued by the Clearinghouse between October 1971 and the summer of 1973. To note, the Women’s Studies Newsletter was a project of Clearinghouse, which was “an education project of the Feminist Press.” Most importantly, the Women’s Studies Newsletter was a collaborative way for people interested in Women’s Studies to share their efforts and struggles as well as hear from others who were doing the similar things.

The Front Matter of the 1972 newsletter dates its origins to an east coast women’s studies conference in Pittsburgh where “a group decided to organize a women’s studies newsletter.” The newsletter was aimed to “be a forum throughout the country for the women’s studies movement.” During this time, the newsletter was concerned with feminism and women’s studies being taught in schools—elementary, middle, and high school, as well as higher education. Building on this topic, individuals reading and engaging with the newsletter were interested in how to get funding for women’s studies programs and how to create jobs for people to teach these types of classes. Referencing the collaborative nature and idea-sharing throughout the publications from 1975-1982, Howe explained that “the Feminist Press’s WSQ served as an organization’s journal.” Topics included news updates from Clearinghouse and other ongoing initiatives, academic reviews and articles, case studies from certain schools or universities, reading lists, and other topics pertinent to the expanding discipline of women’s studies throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s.

As the third issue went to press, Howe notes that the newsletter has “upwards of 500 subscribers.” Subscription costs ranged between one and two dollars per issue. However, once the newsletter entered its fifth year of publication (1976), the subscription list had stagnated at just under 2,000, which did not equate to the compiled list of women’s studies teachers in higher education that had grown to over 5,500. This disparity caused the newsletter to increase subscription costs moving forward. Although NWSA is officially established in 1977, its early organizing began throughout the 1976 newsletters. In the Fall 1976 issue, there was a proposal for a founding convention placed next to the edition’s editorial. The convention was to be hosted in San Francisco in January of 1977. Following the fall edition, Else Greene published The Case for a National Women’s Studies Association in the Winter 1976 issue, which explained the founding convention and argued for the establishment of regional women’s studies conferences and an enhanced national network. NWSA became a co-publisher of the Women’s Studies Newsletter throughout 1982, at which point it returned to solely being produced by the Feminist Press.

Currently, WSQ’s bi-annual publications are based on themes. For example the latest forthcoming edition, December 2018, is about protest, which is described on the website as an “ exploration of the tactics for liberation, survival, and decolonization developed by movements, artists, and individuals addressing social and material conditions of state and colonial violence.” This differs from the newsletter structure that was concerned with establishing women’s studies as a discipline, and the current issues accept a wider range of submission types. Each article, poem, visual art, and creative nonfiction chosen for an edition are submitted with the preliminary theme already established. Other recent themes for WSQ issues have included precarious work (Fall/Winter 2017), mother (Fall Winter 2009), market (Fall/Winter 2010), and looking across the lens (Spring/Summer 2002). The Feminist Press, which is now housed at the CUNY Graduate Center in Midtown Manhattan, is still the sole publisher for each issue of WSQ issue.�