Volume 40, Number 1

The ten essays in this volume echo this feminist call, covering women’s sexual health and reproduction, addressing performances and commodification of women’s gender roles, and detailing feminist pedagogies. The personal is political is a reminder that systemic inequalities impact women across mind, body, and spirit and that woman as a category remains key to nation-state control. As this issue goes to press, a Hulu television series has sparked renewed interest in Margaret Atwood’s 1984 The Handmaid’s Tale with commentators noting that the dystopian show feels too real, too possible. While powerful, this commentary ignores that dystopian violences have occurred, have been authorized, through colonial genocide, slavery, and continued globalized control of women’s education, health, sexuality, and reproduction. Feminist studies remain necessary to remember, to point out privileged gaps in what is remembered, as well as providing insights for going forward. Meanwhile, the personal is political is also about daily well-being and resistance; not just survival, but what Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor terms survivance—an active sense of presence, active survival. We hope these pages support active feminist presences for many futures.