ABSTRACT
Letters to the editor of Feminist Media Studies.
KEYWORDS:
20 years of Feminist Media Studies, wow.
This also reminds me that I have now had my PhD for exactly 20 years, awarded in 2001, ouch. But I am so grateful to the editors of Feminist Media Studies for announcing the centrality of our field with such confidence and brilliance in that year. It means I have been lucky enough to live with the journal all through my academic career. I am therefore indebted to Feminist Media Studies for its pivotal role in my academic life, continually reminding me of the breadth and range of the provocative ideas interrogating the harsh and cruel developments of gender inequalities, as well as documenting the tenacity, agency and capacities of gendered lives around the world. The commitment to empirical rigour has had a profound effect on the scholarship I/we now value in our field.
But when I reflect back on 2001, I realise I had a permanent post when my PhD was awarded, something which seems such a privilege, almost unheard of in many areas now. The field itself has become more accepted and esteemed territory, as evidence by the growing influence of the journal itself, but the grounds from which we work are becoming increasingly uncertain.
The hard won stability of our field can only be undermined by casualization and exploitation in academia and so whilst we celebrate our intellectual achievements, lets remember that Feminist Media Studies is also a community from which we must also challenge the deteriorating conditions which make the work itself even possible.
Helen Wood Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Lancaster, UK.
Two decades of feminist media studies
I hesitated about writing this letter just as I paused a few years back before accepting a surprise invitation to join the Editorial Board of FMS. I’d long read and used the journal, admired the work of many on its Board, and even known some personally, notably co-founding editor, Cynthia (Cindy) Carter. But would I be, to invert Lynne Spender’s book title, an Intruder on the Rights of Women?
There was no question in the end about paying homage to a journal that has endured while being influential, unpredictable and ground-breaking. I return to its inaugural 2001 Editorial by Lisa McLaughlin and Cynthia:
our goal is to promote recognition that feminist studies of the media represent an open, dynamic and contested field of inquiry … We want Feminist Media Studies to be “ours” in the broadest possible feminist sense. Therefore, we intend for the journal to represent multiple perspectives arising from the critical positions and experiences of feminist researchers who are diverse in origin and interests in terms of nation, race, ethnicity, class, age, physical abilities and sexual identities.
A statement of intent as fresh and inviting now as it was then. Many happy returns and volumes FMS!
David Rowe FAHA, FASSA | Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research
Institute for Culture and Society
Dear FMS editors, past-present-future,
I have been reflecting on the question of what it means to edit a feminist journal. Obviously, we are focusing on feminist content—theories, methods, perspectives, participants …. But what about the process of editing itself? Is there something different about being a feminist editor of a feminist journal, or even more broadly, a feminist editor. Period.? Are our practices more inclusive? Is our editorial language more respectful and welcoming? Are we open to the possibility that knowledge creation can be presented in a multiplicity of forms, deviating from the traditional (Anglo-American) normative structure of the “ideal” article? Are we democratizing accessibility to our journals? Are we engaged in structural practices for uplifting marginalized academics around the world? I put my initial reflections on this matter in writing* hoping to stimulate a serious conversation about what it takes to engage in feminist editing. Interested?
Dafna Lemish, Distinguished Professor, School of Communication and Information
Rutgers the State University of New Jersey
* Lemish, D. (forthcoming, 2021). Feminist editing of a mainstream journal: Reckoning with process and content-related challenges. In S. Eckert & I. Bachmann (Eds.), Reflections on feminist communication and media scholarship: Theory, method, impact (pp. 164–173). New York, NY: Routledge.
We’re living in troubled times indeed.
Not only is climate change wreaking havoc with wildfires, floods, landslides, and heatwaves, but a deadly virus is running rampant across the globe in the face of science denial, reactionary rhetoric, and longstanding inequities. In addition, the politics of hate are targeting people of color, women, LGBTQ folx, and immigrants. In the U.S., where I live and work, this has moved into academia: recent bills have been passed prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory and the analysis of systemic oppressions. In this environment, journals like FMS are beacons of light. I can still remember the evening when Lisa McLaughlin and Cindy Carter gathered a group of us at ICA to propose a journal dedicated to feminist media scholarship and praxis. I am beyond proud—and so grateful—to have been part of this vital and brilliant community for 20 years, and I eagerly anticipate many more decades of intersectional feminist scholarship and criticism.
Feminist voices
speak also
to that rebellious soul within.
Feminist journal
transforms the world:
FMS rocks on …
(With apologies to Uejima Onitsura)
Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Professor, University of Iowa
The Case for Undoing Bias in the International Communication Association (shared by Vicki Mayer, and Angharad Valdivia).
We present the facts with regards to the case:
May 2017: Vicki presents a paper at the ICA’s annual conference that statistically evidences the grave disparity between male and female authors in the organization’s Encyclopedia of Communication Theory, and, worse, the near dearth of female authors that these male authors cited in their articles.
November 2017: Vicki receives a call from a staff person at ICA reminding her that the flagship journal for the organization Journal of Communication has never had a female editor in its history, since 1951. Applications for the post are due soon after.
December 2018: Vicki invites Angharad to be co-editors with her. Between us, we have over 20 years of experience as head editors of major journals, in which we have proven to diversify authorship in communication. The application is long, including a vision statement and guarantees of institutional funding for the journal.
March 2018: ICA informs us we are one of top two finalists for the editor position, but “the Committee realized it would be useful to have more information from applicants. We apologize, in advance, for not requesting this information earlier in the process.” There are five additional essays. Two are reproduced here verbatim:
An important goal of JOC is to publish the best scholarship to advance the discipline. The team in the editor position, by virtue of their scholarship and history, may send a signal to the membership about which type of scholarship the editor is most familiar. How can you reassure scholars in other areas of the discipline that you are open to a variety of perspectives, and how can that be communicated in our discipline? How would you invite/make sure that you do, in fact, receive a variety of submissions and publications?
If you had the ideal “associate editors and editorial board” who would they be? (Note: We do not expect you to have asked individuals, but we do want to know what that ideal team would that look like and how your associate editors would augment areas outside your expertise?)
April 2018: We receive word that our application was not successful.
May 2018: We find out at the ICA annual meeting that the chosen editor is yet another white male. He has published widely on US presidential politics and social influence. He has never edited a journal.
May 2018: This decision and the process that led to it causes outcry among editorial board members who are members of the Feminist Studies Division. They draft a letter to the leadership asking for more transparency in the process for selection and attendance to issues of equality and equity in recruiting new editors for all ICA publications.
August 2018: We and all editorial board members involved in the letter are not invited to continue and are erased from the journal’s masthead.
Our personal sentiments on the case differed at times. Though we are professional colleagues and friends, we take pride in the fact that our different standpoints in the discipline make us a fearsome team. We thus provide our reflections on this case and the work to be done in undoing the biases in academic structures for publishing.
Vicki’s Thoughts:
The contentious tenure case of Nikole Hannah-Jones at the University of North Carolina this year rekindled some of my own smoldering memories of the JOC case. She was invited to apply. Along the way, the rules changed. The university questioned the very scholarship she was recruited to do. She waited in limbo for a decision and ultimately was not successful. Despite public outcry, she moved on. The system that led to this outcome remained intact.
I remember feeling unsure, then angry, then sad. Anghy wanted me to be more assertive in fighting the decision, but I did not have the willpower or the energy. I felt humiliated in front of my peers. Some had genuine sympathy for me, but others expressed schadenfreude, digging into the scandal. There were the rumors as to how this happened. I kept a notebook of clues. Indeed, I concluded that a last-minute switch of a critical scholar for a positivist on the selection committee put the fix on us. Who else would question whether our critical scholarship was “the best to advance the discipline” in their searing inquiries? Why do we have to send “signals” and “reassure” others that we will solicit “a variety of perspectives”? To find out that the committee swing vote was another woman thus felt less personal than tribal.
The devaluation of feminist, queer, anti-racist, and decolonial scholarship is systemic. It structures entire disciplines of research by considering identity as just a variable to be measured, rather than changed. It lurks in the committee juries of well-meaning scholars looking for individual “excellence” over collective organization. It is reflected in colleagues’ scholarly citations and the evaluations of our potential for employment and promotions. It leaves the subjects of these processes uncertain, self-doubting, and suspicious of the very systems that let us succeed, but not too much or too loudly.
Like others who find themselves at these broken crossroads, I moved on.
Angharad’s Thoughts:
The March 2018 email signalled to me that the committee would not approve our candidacy. Additional requests for reassurances of our intellectual objectivity indicated both that we would not be chosen and that any reply would serve to bolster opposition to our candidacy.
ICA 2018 proved to be an exercise in contradictions. Following the research project mentioned by Vicki above, another publication documented #CommunicationSoWhite and was published in April 2018, just in time for buzz during the May ICA conference. Elsewhere (Valdivia 2021) I’ve written about this latest round of the “myth of discovery,” wherein dominant culture scholars acknowledge our presence and scholarship but only in a minimal flashpoint of visibility followed by a return to business as usual. At ICA 2018 we confirmed that committee composition was not available to ICA members. Only members of committees knew who was in a committee. Many of us have since called for more democratic processes to populate committees. At ICA presidents populate committees. At the very least, the powerful and agenda setting Publications Committee should be open to election and inclusivity.
I did not feel humiliation but rather familiarity with gender and race fissures in our field. I’d been to this rodeo before. Rumors circulated regarding my previous editorship were unfounded and easily documented as such. Patronizing reactions from powerful white female ICA members included literally being patted on the head. Another former president told me she didn’t get paid for being president—am still not sure what this was supposed to mean. Condescension did not make up for exclusion. It certainly did not address structural faults.
My published and organizational work continues to work for inclusivity and structural changes. Being recognized as a Fellow of ICA represents acknowledgement of my scholarship and work toward social justice in the academy. I am not sure ICA has taken any meaningful steps toward a more inclusive journal editor selection process. Similarly, I remain skeptical about task forces set up to deal with intersectional issues. JOC remains a testament to the gendered and racialized field that resists expanding its dominant paradigm. In fact, I literally had a conversation with a former JOC editor who outright told me he desk rejected feminist and gender articles because “they have their own journal.” FMS provides an absolutely necessary platform for global and intersectional feminist scholarship. Nonetheless, this cannot be used by JOC as a reason for exclusion. After all there is a Political Communication journal—if the same rationale were used for every article submitted to JOC that was about Political Communication, then what would they publish? ;)
Vicki Mayer, Professor of Communication, Tulane University Angharad N. Valdivia Chair, Latina Latino Studies Department and Research Professor of the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sophie Bishop
Sophie Bishop is a Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on promotional cultures on social media platforms, through the lens of feminist political economy. Her current projects examine the use of paid targeted advertising by women and non-binary creative practitioners. Her work has been published in journals such as Social Media + Society, New Media & Society and Feminist Media Studies. She is the Specialist Advisor to the UK Parliamentary Inquiry into Influencer Culture.