The Future of Women's History

The buzz at the Journal of Women's History board meeting in 2003 was about the panel "The Future of Feminist History," where Joan Scott took off from, among other things, "A Conversation Across Three Generations" published in these pages in 1999. Everyone who had heard Scott's eloquent and erudite paper and the thoughtful responses of Afsaneh Najmabadi and Evelynn Hammonds urged us to ask to publish them. So we did, and so we are. Together, these reflections on women's history in the twenty-first century raise provocative questions about how far we have come and how and why.