An Interview with Brianne Waychoff and Red Washburn, General Editors, WSQ
- An Interview with Brianne Waychoff and Red Washburn, General Editors, WSQ
Each issue of WSQ features a section entitled “Classics Revisited” whereby contributors reflect on classic texts related to the theme of the issue. For 50!, the special issue devoted to the fiftieth anniversary of WSQ and a half-century of social justice activism within and outside the academy, we are inviting the editors of feminist publications to select an issue of their own journal that they see as a “classic.” Thinking about both the issues you’ve worked on, as well as the issues before your time, what stands out to you as a classic issue of WSQ and why?
In its fifty years thus far, WSQ has produced many key issues. Some recent issues that are striking to me are Queer Methods, Citizenship, Trans-, and Women, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System. I am passionate about scholarship that addresses LGBTQ issues, transnationalism and citizenship rights, and prison abolition. I am very excited about the forthcoming Nonbinary issue, as well. It is building and expanding upon the wonderful work of the Trans- issue, and Nonbinary will engage gender in the field in compelling and interesting ways. In addition, I have a deep value for issues that archive field formation like Women’s Studies Then and Now and Curricular and Institutional Change. I believe we must know our history, show gratitude for our intellectual ancestors, and preserve the field, especially during this critical moment when so many women’s, gender, and sexuality studies programs, departments, journals, and conferences, etc., are being defunded.
I’m not sure that I can identify a classic issue of WSQ. One thing that I love about women’s, gender, and sexuality studies in [End Page 289] general, and this journal specifically, is the interdisciplinary work we do. I think sometimes interdisciplinarity defies classification and thus finding a “classic” depends on your orientation. There are people doing great work in many disciplines, but I like the mixed methods that WGSS and many feminist journals highlight because they aren’t easily defined. What is a classic for me, coming from a communication and performance studies background, might be completely different from what is classic for someone who identifies as a historian. Or they might be the same. That’s what I find interesting about this work. And working with guest editors, who usually have different orientations on our themed issues, is such a treat. I love seeing how people think and the language they use. And I love seeing how that work translates to others.
What makes an issue of a journal a “classic”? Is it its popularity at the time of publication? Its reach? Its ability to resonate over time? A particular kind of prescience that marks it as ahead of its time? Or maybe the ability to capture key debates with nuance and complexity? How much it gets cited? Its teachability? Or, perhaps something else entirely? How would you measure a “classic”?
I think it is imperative to reimagine what a “classic” is and how to revisit it. WSQ is part of a feminist tradition of questioning knowledge and power, but like many historical classifications to which feminist historians have spoken, academic journals are not removed from reproducing canonical knowledge systems and hierarchal power. I recall asking my students in Classics in Feminist Theory this question the first day of classes a few years ago, and us thinking about the spectrum of difference, erasure, and marginalization in high art, the hard sciences, and mainstream (white and Western) social movements. Alternately, I like to think about “important” issues that have shaped ways of knowing. Oftentimes, a good marker is characterized not by academic fashionalism, citational popularity, scholarly rockstars, or neoliberalism’s problematic tokenism of scholars of color in the name of multiculturalism, but rather by how well it situates concepts and debates in a historical moment, how well it represents people and ideas often marginalized, how well it has shaped critical consciousness, and how well it impacts social change. The latter point is crucial, a “classic” as a...
