Editorial Introduction

As we enter our fourth and final year as editors of the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, we look back with pride and forward with continued excitement. We have published a number of thematic article sections, including on Egyptian women writers, militarization and war, gendered and sexual mobilities, everyday intimacies, and borders and margins.

The Third Space section introduced in 2015 has opened a forum for timely initiatives focused on the contemporary challenges faced by autonomous feminist formations in the region (March, July, and November 2015), the implications of the Turkish military coup attempt (March 2017), and feminist reactions to the Trump presidency (November 2017).

Third Space also provides a site for interviews, such as the one published in this issue between Kathryn Medien and Jasbir K. Puar. Art Concept essays by cover artists and editors in Third Space are innovations that, combined with vibrant cover art and stellar Duke University Press design, allowed JMEWS to win the 2015 Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) Award for Best Journal Design.

Visually based essays; individual reviews; review essays about museum exhibits, books, panels, and films; and invited prefaces on particular themes help widen the reach of the journal and ensure that it includes voices from all over the world working in multiple languages, disciplines, and sites.

Overseeing this interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary transnational feminist forum, the JMEWS editorial office has actively integrated double-blind expert manuscript evaluators and authors whose specialty is not necessarily Middle East studies.

To facilitate access beyond subscribers and academics, the editorial office made multiple Third Space initiatives available online at jmews.org in advance of print publication. For similar reasons, Duke University Press makes some content in each issue freely available electronically for a limited period of time.

This issue continues our efforts to cultivate and publish the highest-quality work, not only on women but also on sexualities and masculinities in the region. It includes the article that won the 2017 Graduate Student Paper Prize, by Pelle Valentin Olsen; a set of review essays by Zeina G. Halabi and Sofian Merabet on Rashid al-Daif and Joachim Helfer's What Makes a Man? Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin; and a collection of original essays honoring the contributions of editor miriam cooke.