Project MUSE®: Feminist Studies - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Feminist Studies.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 37 (2011) through current issueLatest Articles: Feminist StudiesTWOProject MUSE®Feminist Studies2153-38730046-3663Latest articles in Feminist Studies. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Notes from the New Editorial Director
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986997
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these are terrible times.All around us are signs of crumbling institutions, the gutting of the rule of law, and the elimination of the most fundamental of liberties. The public sphere is governed by xenophobia and anti-blackness, by misogyny and transphobia. Old forms of cruelty are newly on display and even celebrated.I find myself both unsurprised and utterly horrified. Over the course of the last year, Donald Trump has delivered on his campaign promises, and yet the catastrophic situation we find ourselves in feels worse than I could have imagined. When I begin to collect the individual stories of violence that have marked the last two years—the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, the detention of Rümeysa
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallNotes from the New Editorial Director2026-04-04text/htmlen-USNotes from the New Editorial Director2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®89912026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04Preface
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986999
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what do we gain by framing feminism as refusal? In violent times, shifting views of the past and means of navigating the future are acutely needed. The articles and pedagogical reflections featured in this double issue of Feminist Studies offer critical analyses and strategies for survival across geopolitical spaces in our troubled present moment. The authors challenge readers to revisit and unsettle histories of violence, real and figurative, from the activism of mothers of disappeared migrants, to exposing the scenes of sexual violence, to the racist and heteronormative imaginaries that shape seemingly liberatory narratives in the world of gaming. The wide-ranging research and writing in this issue reveal how
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallPreface2026-04-04text/htmlen-USPreface2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®124122026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04"Why Did You Send Them Away?": Moral Suffering and Maternal Activism Among Mothers of Disappeared Migrants
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987000
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in october 2018, a charter bus arrived at a border crossing between Mexico and Guatemala to pick up two dozen women, and a few men, who had traveled to Mexico from their homes in various communities across Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Like many others crossing the border, the group had been deeply impacted by mass displacement and border militarization, but they were not migrants. The gathering marked the beginning of the fourteenth annual Caravan of Central American Mothers of Disappeared Migrants. This annual action brings representatives of local committees from across Central America to Mexico to search for missing migrants and raise awareness about the violence that migrants are subjected
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmall"Why Did You Send Them Away?": Moral Suffering and Maternal Activism Among Mothers of Disappeared Migrants2026-04-04text/htmlen-US"Why Did You Send Them Away?": Moral Suffering and Maternal Activism Among Mothers of Disappeared Migrants2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®1181422026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04"Your Voice Rings Deep": Betrayal, Justice, and Care in the Memorial Landscape for Nokuthula Simelane
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987001
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"sikulindile/we are waiting for you," this plaintive and powerful address to Nokuthula Simelane, a political activist abducted by the South African Security Police in 1983, echoes through the memorial sites curated in her honor. Remembered as an "unsung heroine" in Mark Kaplan's documentary Betrayal1 and in the memorial statue designed by Ruhan Janse van Vuuren, located in her hometown of Bethal, Nokuthula Simelane's political work and life emerges as part of a layered memory landscape, illustrating the unique visual languages of these heritage markers as well as the citational practices resonating between them.2 Together, the film and the effigy offer alternative forms of memorialization that repurpose
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmall"Your Voice Rings Deep": Betrayal, Justice, and Care in the Memorial Landscape for Nokuthula Simelane2026-04-04text/htmlen-US"Your Voice Rings Deep": Betrayal, Justice, and Care in the Memorial Landscape for Nokuthula Simelane2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®1483972026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04The Orna's Secular Aesthetics and the Cultural Politics of Selfhood in Contemporary Bangladesh
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987002
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a few years ago, at a birthday lunch with several girlfriends, talk turned to the orna. We were eating at a restaurant in Dhaka's upscale Gulshan neighborhood and were wearing a diverse assortment of outfits—I had on a shalwar kameez (a set of loose pants and long shirt) but shoved the orna in my big bag as soon as I sat down. A friend wore t-shirt and jeans with an orna thrown over one shoulder for the walk she will have to make to her car that she herself drove (still a rare sight in this town), another wore a tank top and jeans with no orna, a third friend had on a loose kurta and pants with no orna, and a fourth had on a shalwar kameez and wore her orna in a reverse-u style around her neck. All of us had taken
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallThe Orna's Secular Aesthetics and the Cultural Politics of Selfhood in Contemporary Bangladesh2026-04-04text/htmlen-USThe Orna's Secular Aesthetics and the Cultural Politics of Selfhood in Contemporary Bangladesh2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®1073412026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04Temporal Discrimination and the Entry-to-Exit Imperative in Canadian Anti-Human Trafficking
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987003
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drawing on indigenous, queer, and other marginalized temporalities, this article challenges the presumption that exit is the only possible goal for women in the sex industry.2 Canadian prostitution and anti-human trafficking law, policy, and discourse are imbued with what we call the "entry-to-exit imperative." This term refers to the assumption that women should want to exit the sex industry entirely, rather than just wanting to exit a violent or abusive situation. The objective of a straight path from entry-to-exit reflects a linear temporality composed of settler colonial, heteronormative "clock time" understandings of progress and "civilization." We apply the concept of temporal discrimination to explain how
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallTemporal Discrimination and the Entry-to-Exit Imperative in Canadian Anti-Human Trafficking2026-04-04text/htmlen-USTemporal Discrimination and the Entry-to-Exit Imperative in Canadian Anti-Human Trafficking2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®1415552026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04The Last of Us Series, the Way We Read Now, and the Narrativization of Feminist Theory
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987004
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This article analyzes the phenomenally successful PlayStation video game The Last of Us (TLoU) and The Last of Us Part II (TLoU2) through an inter-sectional feminist and queer lens.1 As I show, analyzing the game through these lenses reveals both the fault lines and continuities that characterize the relationship between contemporary feminist and queer theory, with their divergent visions of family and kinship serving as a key site where theoretical commitments of each become legible. The series follows its three main protagonists—Ellie and Joel in TLoU and Ellie and Abby in TLoU2—as they struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where pre-existing social formations (such as the heteronormative family) no
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallThe Last of Us Series, the Way We Read Now, and the Narrativization of Feminist Theory2026-04-04text/htmlen-USThe Last of Us Series, the Way We Read Now, and the Narrativization of Feminist Theory2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®1360922026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04As Slippery as Blood: Shifting Definitions of Rape and Its Aftermath in Ana Mendieta's Rape Scene (1973)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987005
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content advisory: The following pages include direct reference to sexualized violence and homicide, including artistic and journalistic references. Help is available online worldwide 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from rainn, at https://www.rainn.org, and in the United States at 1-800-656-HOPE.on an april evening in 1973, Ana Mendieta invited her classmates and professor at the University of Iowa to view her new art project at her off-campus apartment. The small group let themselves in when they found the door ajar and entered the darkened kitchen. Shattered dishes, still covered in food, littered the floor (Fig. 1). An ominous unraveled wire hanger sat in a bloody clot on the linoleum (Fig. 2). Ana, their
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallAs Slippery as Blood: Shifting Definitions of Rape and Its Aftermath in Ana Mendieta's Rape Scene (1973)2026-04-04text/htmlen-USAs Slippery as Blood: Shifting Definitions of Rape and Its Aftermath in Ana Mendieta's Rape Scene (1973)2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®1679552026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04Disorienting Archives: Feminist Histories of Indian Ocean Capitalism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987006
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Moments of disorientation are vital.1working in historical archives is a doubly embodied act. Historians engage with bodies from the past as they are preserved in archives, which I understand in this essay broadly as "traces of the past collected either intentionally or haphazardly as 'evidence.'"2 But archives also push scholarly bodies into certain relations with these traces of the past. Here we may think with Sara Ahmed about these relations as "orientations" in the archives. As Ahmed explains in her classic text Queer Phenomenology, "bodies are gendered, sexualized, and raced by how they extend into space …"3 Understood in this way, experiences in and with historical archives involve multiple orientations
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallDisorienting Archives: Feminist Histories of Indian Ocean Capitalism2026-04-04text/htmlen-USDisorienting Archives: Feminist Histories of Indian Ocean Capitalism2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®773522026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04Teaching in a Ghost Program: Enacting Care in the Face of Fascism
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987007
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for the first few years of my teaching career, my feminist pedagogy focused on my responsibilities to address the dominant ideas that circulate in and around the classroom1 and to take seriously the difficult and often—for me—uncomfortable position of political leadership that teachers occupy in the classroom.2 I still feel these responsibilities, but during the last few years, I have found myself in teaching environments that compel me to tend directly and entirely to how regressive political agendas and fascist tactics are affecting the students I teach. I teach courses for women, gender, and sexualities studies departments at a handful of colleges and universities in the United States, and each of these
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallTeaching in a Ghost Program: Enacting Care in the Face of Fascism2026-04-04text/htmlen-USTeaching in a Ghost Program: Enacting Care in the Face of Fascism2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®177742026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04Accessibility Beyond Accommodation: Feminist Commitments to Classroom Equity
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987008
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the americans with disabilities act and individuals with disabilities education act ensure that students with documented disabilities receive educational accommodations such as additional time on tests, particular seating arrangements, and extensions on assignments. Unfortunately, many professors' consideration of accessibility in higher education classrooms stops there. In this reflection, I call for instructors to center accessibility in pedagogical approaches for all students, as doing so enhances the classroom experience for all involved, instructors and students alike. I then draw on bell hooks's concept of "engaged pedagogy" to outline strategies for decentering compulsory able-bodiedness in classrooms
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallAccessibility Beyond Accommodation: Feminist Commitments to Classroom Equity2026-04-04text/htmlen-USAccessibility Beyond Accommodation: Feminist Commitments to Classroom Equity2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®310452026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04In Memoriam: Augusta Lynn Bolles (1949–2026)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987009
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a. lynn bolles, Professor Emerita at the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland and a prominent scholar of gender, labor, globalization, and the Caribbean, passed away on February 8, 2026. She was 76.Widely recognized as an important pioneer in women's studies as well as in black feminist anthropology, Bolles engaged in scholarship that tracked the complexities of Caribbean women's labor in trade unions, in the domestic sphere, and in the tourism economy. She published multiple celebrated books, including We Paid Our Dues: Women Trade Leaders of the Caribbean (1996) and Sister Jamaica: A Study of Women, Work, and Households in Kingston (1996).Bolles earned
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallIn Memoriam: Augusta Lynn Bolles (1949–2026)2026-04-04text/htmlen-USIn Memoriam: Augusta Lynn Bolles (1949–2026)2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®27262026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04Notes on Contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987011
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lanyan chen is a professor in the Department of Social Welfare and Social Development at Nipissing University, in Ontario, Canada. She has published research on both Canada and China. Her recent publications include journal articles on "Canadian Strategy against Gender-based Violence and Gaps" (Societies, 2024) and "Long-Term Care as a Social Responsibility without Financialization," (City Development: Issue and Best Practices, 2025), and a book chapter titled "Revisiting Self-Determination and Equality in the Chinese Socialist Feminist Pursuit" in Challenges for Chinese Women in the Early 21st Century (World Scientific, 2025).donna debassige holds a bachelor's degree from Laurentian University and serves at the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/846/image/coversmallNotes on Contributors2026-04-04text/htmlen-USNotes on Contributors2026-04-042026TWOProject MUSE®88442026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-04-04