46.1A Frontiers at 50 Oral History Project Online Issue

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies turns fifty this year and to commemorate this important milestone, the Frontiers editorial collective at the University of Utah produced a 50^th anniversary oral history project. The project’s goal was to gather and archive oral history interviews with past Journal editors, editorial assistants, board members, and those affiliated with the Journal during its long history. This special online issue offers an overview of the “Frontiers at 50 Oral History Project” that we hope will pique readers’ interest and lead them to the full interviews in the archive for deeper study. The issue opens with a brief introduction to the Journal’s history and the content of the oral histories and then features nine narrators with biographical descriptions and a sampling of selected quotes.

Introduction

In this introduction, Kimberly M. Jew, Elise Homan, and Elizabeth C. Silva trace the production of the Frontiers at 50 Oral History Project and discuss the Journal’s identity and history, concluding with a summary of the key themes that emerged from the interviews. This 50^th anniversary oral history project offers a rich and unique archival resource – it stands as a record of the history of the Journal told entirely through the recollections and perspectives of its former editorial members. In this way, the project seeks to build upon Patrice McDermott’s study, Politics and Scholarship: Feminist Academic Journals and the Production of Knowledge, which features a chapter on Frontiers based on interviews with founding members, as well as the Journal’s prior decade’s celebration, an article titled “Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies Turns Forty! Reflections from Former Editors.” As the fortieth anniversary article notes, oral histories carry a special resonance with the guiding feminist values of centering women’s stories, voices, and diverse experiences.