Founded in Britain in 1989, Gender & History quickly became the leading journal in its field. It is unique in its commitment to examine gender relations, sexuality, and the semiotics of gender in a wide geographical and chronological scope. The journal actively solicits work from scholars across the globe and aims to publish field-defining work by scholars of gender, in history as well as other fields. The Institute for Research on Women and Gender has been the institutional home for the North American office of the international journal Gender & History since September 1998. With renewed institutional support and a newly expanded intellectual vision, the journal will continue to be based at the University of Michigan . Moreover, with generous support from IRWG and the International Institute, a new intellectual program of activities, "Global Turns and Gender Returns," has been launched.
During its first five years at the University of Michigan , Gender & History underwent important changes in an effort to generate productive and exciting dialogues across sub-fields, historiographies, and theoretical orientations. Along with its new cover design and newly reduced personal subscription prices, new rubrics have been launched to enliven the pages of the journal, including features on visual culture and the teaching of gender history and fora on new themes and theoretical debates. The journal encourages experiments in narrative form and theoretical inquiry that will complement the more traditional format of the well-crafted historical essay.
Gender & History is published by Blackwell Press of Oxford three times a year. The third issue of each year is a Special Issue, which brings scholars together around common questions in order to shape new debates and research. The special issues have included: "Gendered Colonialisms in African History" (1996), "Gender, Citizenships and Subjectivities" (2001), "Material Strategies: Dress and Gender in Historical Perspective" (2002), "Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender, Sexuality, and African Diasporas" (2003), and "Violence, Vulnerability, and Embodiment" (2004). Forthcoming special issues will be Visual Genders and Feminisms in China. .
Gender & History has always been edited on both sides of the Atlantic, with editorial work being shared between members of two editorial collectives. Michele Mitchell, Associate Professor of History, and Helmut Puff, Associate Professor of German and History, are the current North American editors. The North American editorial collective consists of over thirty leading scholars in gender history, thirteen of whom are UM faculty. In recent years, Gender & History has made a concerted effort to add editorial collective members who work on and are based in areas of the world that have been underrepresented in the journal's pages, notably Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
Each academic year, a Rackham doctoral candidate serves as the Editorial Assistant of the journal's Michigan office, doing the intellectual work of reviewing manuscripts as well as managing submissions and some editing. IRWG provides an office for the journal, and the part-time editorial assistant has been funded by Rackham Graduate School . The Office of the Vice-President for Research, the College of LS&A, and the Department of History also contribute generously to keeping the journal at Michigan .
In addition to publishing the journal, Gender & History organizes university events on publishing and broader topics in gender research designed to mentor new faculty and graduate students. Since Fall 2002, the journal has supported a graduate student reading group in which students who work on gender in historical contexts exchange and discuss their work or that of other scholars. Many members of this Gender & History Study Group attended a graduate student conference on gender history at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana ; and at this same conference, the journal launched a new initiative, a Graduate Student Essay Prize in Gender History.
The Institute is pleased to house Gender & History at the University of Michigan . The affiliation of this prestigious journal with the University highlights Michigan's outstanding resources in the area of gender studies generally, and gender history more specifically. The journal's "broader feminist commitment to restructure power along more egalitarian lines, providing a basis for change through a deeper understanding of the past" (Editorial, April 1994) is a mission that fits well with the Institute's broader goals.
For more information about either Gender & History or the "Global Turns and Gender Returns" Program, please contact Eric Huneke at ehuneke@umich.edu.