Deadline for Proposal Submission:
May 31, 2026
This special issue of Frontiers investigates how feminism, even as a discourse of resistance, participates in hegemonic projects. We invite papers that examine the connections between feminism, conservatism, and conservative ideologies during the long twentieth century within the context of the Americas (including North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, as well as indigenous lands and communities). We welcome crosstemporal and transgeographic approaches, since we aim to put together a comparative, humanistic interdisciplinary analysis that explores how culture articulates and mobilizes notions of femininity, conservative politics, and complex ideological affiliations in transnational, local, border, and/or oceanic frameworks.
Conservative ideologies are often associated with “traditional” values, pro-establishment political stances, and resistance to change. Feminism, by contrast, is often analyzed as a discourse of resistance, a means to push political agendas and bring about political change. However, histories of feminisms across the Americas–and the world–demonstrate that there is a constant interplay between conservatisms and feminisms as both ideologies and movements. In the context of the United States, for instance, we might think of figures such as Margaret Sanger, who advocated for the right to abortion by means of eugenic rhetoric, Phyllis Shlafly’s famous paradoxical participation in the public sphere while openly fighting against the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or even someone like Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral who has been read both as a queer figure and a more conservative voice. By foregrounding a hemispheric perspective, the special issue underscores how ideas, movements, and conservatisms circulate across the Americas rather than emerging in isolation. This approach highlights the shared yet uneven histories of colonialism, racial capitalism, migration, and cultural exchange that shape feminist and conservative formations across the hemisphere. Emphasizing these interlinked contexts allows contributors to trace how feminist discourses participate in or resist hegemonic projects in ways that are locally specific but also connected through broader hemispheric dynamics.
Aiming to nuance our genealogies of conservative feminist thought, this issue might explore how conservative ideologies formulate ideas of “woman,” how the humanities has constructed “femininity” and “feminine commodities” as categories of analysis, or how popular and critical biases against subjects and objects deemed “excessively feminine” are expressed through conservative ideals in diverse contexts. How might new methodologies or materials challenge established notions of subjects and topics that are deemed less “worthy” of serious inquiry, such as romance magazines, sensationalism, uncontrolled affect and emotion, or content pertaining to populations considered “surplus”? Besides Sanger, Schlafly, and the usual suspects, what other feminist figures might expand our understanding of conservative feminisms in the hemisphere? Furthermore, thinking of figures such as Ida B. Wells, Leonor Villegas de Magnón, Anna Julia Cooper, Soledad Acosta de Samper, Madame Calderón de la Barca, or Gabriela Mistral, how can comparative analyses shed light on different articulations of conservative femininity and/or feminism across racialized populations? How have conservative articulations of feminisms structured notions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race in cultural, legal, and popular contexts?
We are particularly interested in papers and creative pieces (poetry, visual art, etc.) that explore the negotiations between feminism and the other multiple discourses of differently-marginalized populations that formed in the Americas post-independence(s), especially because it highlights a moment of heightened development of conflicting concentrations of power in the hemisphere. Additionally, we welcome methodological approaches that challenge, rethink, or expand the conventional boundaries of feminisms—whether through social‑science approaches such as ethnography, oral histories, community‑based or participatory research, and intersectional policy analysis, or through humanities methods such as close reading, archival recovery, visual and material culture analysis, performance studies, and decolonial critique.
We are also interested in submissions of artwork for the cover of this issue, including visual pieces that engage with the thematic intersections of feminism, conservatism, and hemispheric perspectives. We welcome works in a variety of media—such as illustration, photography, mixed media, or digital art—that creatively reflect the issue’s focus.
Themes can include:
- Transnational articulations of feminisms
- Print culture and its relationship to feminism
- Racialization and feminisms
- Queer and trans feminisms
- Religion and feminism
- Stereotypes in popular culture: femme fatale, angel of the home, etc.
- Feminism as excess: content or bodies that have been deemed “excessively feminine” and therefore not worthy of serious inquiry
- Domesticity: food, clothes, intimate space, gendered roles
- Affective/affected approaches to femininity
- Sensationalism and sentimentalism
- Feminist coalitions and solidarities
Please submit full works by May 31st, 2026 through the journal’s online Editorial Manager system. The journal no longer accepts direct email submissions. Manuscripts, including endnotes, should not exceed 12,000 words (this includes title, abstract, keywords, and sources). Please include an abstract of no more than 250 words, providing 4-10 keywords. Please consult the journal’s submission guidelines or send an email to frontiersjournal@utah.edu for more information.