Frontiers Augmented highlights selected authors from our issues to create a means for deeper engagement with the content published in the Frontiers Journal. The most recent issue 46.1, edited by Frontiers Co-Editors Debjani Chakravarty and Wanda S. Pillow, highlights authors Trung M. Nguyen and Dr. Patti Duncan, of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University.
In the spirit of celebration of Frontiers’ 50th year, we revisit a previous publication by one of us in Frontiers ten years ago in order to calibrate the impact of not only the article, but also feminist journals and feminist scholarship more broadly. “‘Hot Commodities, Cheap Labor’ Revisited: Old Frontiers with New Friends, Epistemology of Two Asian Feminists Writing” takes after the seminal feminist framework of “revisiting,” applied by scholars such as Chandra Mohanty, in revisiting an earlier publication, “Under Western Eyes,” to explore and expand its impact. In our collaborative article, we revisit Patti Duncan’s critical questions and ideas from ten years ago, and we propose the methodology of ‘Two Asian Feminists Writing’ (TAFW), to suggest that feminist scholarship and knowledge production are inextricably linked to positionalities of the researcher, scholar, and writer, both culturally and sociopolitically. Built upon the work of several feminist researchers across time, our article weaves through time chronologically to engage the past, present/presence, and future/futurity, albeit non-linearly. Grounded in the interdisciplinary context of feminist studies, we draw on scholarship across disciplines, including History, Philosophy, Education, Ethnic Studies, and Asian American Studies. Our goal is to demonstrate the theoretical and praxis potentials of cross-disciplinary journals like Frontiers, established as one of the flagship feminist journals in the United States.
Through our proposal of TAFW, we exhibit the capability of “crossing:” not only between disciplines and time, but also across generations of Asian/American feminist researchers. We are indebted to M. Jacqui Alexander’s “Pedagogies of Crossing,” highlighting the various routes in which “crossing” can be generative, especially in transnational feminisms and transgenerational memory. In maneuvering through the interview format—and at times breaking it to create collaborative analyses—we make the case for newer forms of feminist methodologies built upon, but simultaneously breaking free from traditional research methods. Our writing embodies an invitation to nurture creativity in feminist research, theories, and methodologies. Structured upon the foundation of coalitional positionalities and identity practices, the article can be interpreted through a variety of cultural and geographical contexts that require transnational feminist cultural analyses. We, as coauthors and feminists, hope that this tradition of “revisiting” can be maintained in the future, so that critical reflections of knowledge and knowledge-making in the past, particularly from the intersectional margins, will live on while being reevaluated for present and future applications. Critical spaces, both in and outside of the ivory tower, like feminist journals and their embedded scholarship, spearhead such movements in creating practices of “crossing” beyond disciplines, social axes, generations, and institutions.
Lastly, we could not have completed this project without the feminist praxis of collaboration, especially when it is nonhierarchical. Across differences, our shared goal in highlighting women of color feminisms, transnational feminist frameworks, and Third World feminisms while addressing current social struggles is the glue to TAFW. We hope that this work can propel future collaborations across disciplines, generations, identities, and nations, because knowledge production knows no boundaries, especially in the diverse and complex world that we share.
Trung M. Nguyen (they) is a PhD candidate in women, gender, and sexuality studies with minors in ethnic studies and queer studies at Oregon State University. They earned their MAs in Performance Studies and TESOL at New York University and The New School, respectively. Entrenched in interdisciplinarity, their research and art practices focus on feminist queer and trans studies in Southeast Asia. They are the author of articles, poems, and essays published in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of LGBT Youth, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Performance Research. Their artwork has been exhibited at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Arts. Patti Duncan (she/they) is a professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies and queer studies at Oregon State University. She is the author of Tell This Silence: Asian American Women’s Writing and the Politics of Speech, and co-editor of Mothering in East Asian Communities: Politics and Practices; Women’s Lives Around the World: a Global Encyclopedia; and Women Worldwide: Transnational Feminist Perspectives (2nd ed.). Since 2016 she has served as editor of Feminist Formations.