Mediated and Mediating Feminisms: Periodical Culture from Suffrage to the Second Wave

Abstract

This introduction positions the feminist periodical in relation to the material histories and cultures of feminism. In it, the authors make the case for a sustained analysis of feminist periodical culture in Britain from the final years of the campaign for female suffrage to the demise of Spare Rib in 1993. They argue, moreover, that the rich scholarship on suffrage and post-suffrage magazines suggests methodologies and strategies for investigating feminist magazines throughout the twentieth century and exploring their media ecologies. Drawing on recent critiques of feminist historiography, the authors posit that, as mediating objects and sites of activism, periodicals can tell stories about feminist histories, but they can also problematize those stories, refusing to plug historical gaps and resisting the production of a singular and unified history of feminism.

Keywords:

• feminism
• feminist historiography
• grass-roots activism
• periodicals
• suffrage
• women’s liberation movement