Response to “Blame It On the Edit: Frontiers’s Special Issue on Lesbian History.”

Dear Readers,

We utilize Frontiers Augmented to publish timely content that in some cases supplements Frontiers print issues, and here we draw your attention to three letters from Kathi George, Dr. Elizabeth Jameson, and Dr. Carol Pearson that we decided to make public and visible on our website. Their letters are responding to Dr. Rachel Corbman’s article titled “Blame it On the Edit: Frontiers‘s Special Issue on Lesbian History” published in Frontiers 46.2 (2025).

When we received concerns about and the request to offer a differing perspective to Dr. Corbman’s article, we discussed how to handle this situation and be accountable for our own editorial practices. While the journal stands by the editorial decision to publish Dr. Corbman’s article as a “case study to understand the material and intellectual specificity of early gay and lesbian history as well as the larger structural forces that simultaneously propelled and circumscribed the field in the late 1970s,” we also think that when appropriate, it is useful to publish responses and, in this case, we have chosen to publish the three submitted letters in the spirit of feminist community and deep gratitude towards the foundational contributions of the letter writers to our journal and to the field of women’s and gender studies. 

Kathi George and Dr. Jameson are highlighted and included in our Frontiers at 50 Oral History Project (https://frontiers.utah.edu/frontiers-at-50-oral-history-project-introduction/) and we suggest readers check out this online issue and fully engage with the history of Frontiers.  Feminist publishing requires dedication and extended hours of unpaid labor—this remains true even after 50 years of publishing—and across the decades of Frontiers leadership, each editorial team invested time and care into reviewing submissions, working with authors, supporting visual artists and creative works, and curating issues. Working on the “Frontiers at 50” anniversary issues—recording the oral histories and reading submissions for review—demonstrated that feminist publishing is not without controversy. Frontiers, as well as other feminist journals, have faced questions or strong dissension about publications almost every decade. When we heard concerns about something we published from previous founders and editors of Frontiers, it led to reflection on our processes and hard but important and productive editorial conversations that will drive future editorial decisions. Thus, we decided to make visible where cracks in feminist publishing may occur and include these letters as part of the Frontiers at 50 projects. Our hope is that readers and future Frontiers editorial collectives will engage with these materials and continue to develop collective practices and approaches to feminist publishing in the near and far futures.   

Letter from Kathi George

TO: University of Utah Frontiers Editorial Collective members for Volume 46, No. 2 and No. 1, 2025 Wanda Pillow, Debjani Chakravarty, Sarita Gaytan, Ana Antunes, Elise Homan

FROM: Kathi George, Frontiers Founding Editor and Publisher (1974-1987)

DATE: December 18, 2025

SUBJECT: My response to Rachel Corbman’s article, “Blame it On the Edit: Frontiers’ s Special Issue on Lesbian History” published in Frontiers, Volume 46, No. 2 (2025)

I write to correct the historical record about Frontiers’s Special Issue on Lesbian History, Volume 4, No. 3 (1979). I was the editor for that issue. I contacted the University of Utah’s Frontiers Editorial Collective and respectfully requested this opportunity to respond to Corbman’s article; I believe I deserve “equal time” to answer her allegations, which, in my opinion, are wrong and portray me and the editors for that issue in a false light.

Corbman can write whatever she wishes. Freedom of speech.

 Frontiers can publish whatever it wishes. Freedom of the press.

But to say that the 1979 Frontiers Lesbian History issue was not “satisfactory” because of “interpersonal homophobia”¹ is an untrue and unfair allegation. I was strongly in favor of the issue; the issue would not have been realized without my advocacy. And serving with me on that editorial board—and reading all the manuscripts—were a lesbian and another editor whose child had just come out as gay.

To respond further to this incorrect accusation, I went back into the twenty-six issues of which I was editor and found that we had published some twenty-two articles with lesbian or lesbian-centered content over those thirteen years. In my opinion, we demonstrated a consistent and continuing dedication and commitment to the inclusion of this subject matter in Frontiers. Few other topics had more citations in our ten-year subject index.²

I disagree with Corbman’s false characterization of me and the editorial board for Volume 4, No. 3 of Frontiers as homophobic, and I stand by my memory of constantly searching out articles and creative work by and about lesbians for publication in all of the twenty-six issues of which I was Frontiers editor and publisher.

The guest editor for the Lesbian History issue, Judith Schwarz, donated her papers and notes surrounding this issue to the Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA), a private archive in New York. Corbman was on the coordinating committee for these archives for thirteen years. In her article, Corbman describes the work on this issue as “fraught.” She quotes at length from Schwarz’s letters and notes. Corbman states that the archival record for this issue does not preserve “the [editorial] collective’s objections” to certain submissions.³ But the LHA is not the only holder of the archival records of Frontiers. Our official archives are housed at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Proper vetting of this article by the University of Utah Frontiers editors might have included the proviso that the author also research those records, and thus present a fuller picture of the editorial proceedings surrounding Volume 4, No. 3. It is disappointing that the current University of Utah editors seem to be unaware of the journal’s archival history. Without including the Bancroft archives, the article is one-sided and thus, biased, because it is based solely on Schwarz’s papers at the LHA.

Corbman might also have interviewed me. As it stands, the article fails to present a balanced narrative to the readers.

Furthermore, Corbman evaluates past events through the lens of today’s evolved political viewpoints, a practice that is frowned upon by professional historians, and one that does not serve the readers well.

Here are some of the missing historical facts that give context to the events of 1979 at Frontiers. We were young—just barely four years old. We were fragile—we had no money and no permanent funding. We had no paid staff. We struggled to get and keep each subscriber. We were constantly striving to be seen as legitimate, dependable, on time. Women’s studies and lesbian studies were new and solid manuscripts on these emerging subjects were difficult to obtain—there were fewer of them than there are now, for many reasons, and they were less diverse.

And we were always running late.

The Lesbian History issue was running especially behind schedule. By late fall 1979, we had missed two appointments with our printer, which was no small problem in those days, but Schwarz seemed to be unconcerned with our scheduling difficulties. Back then, when you missed an appointment with an offset printer, you also lost the price the printer had bid on the job. When you got back in line, the printing costs were almost always higher for the same job.

During my thirteen years as the unpaid editor of Frontiers, I was also the unpaid publisher, and as publisher, I had concerns other than just the editorial ones. The lateness of the Lesbian History issue was starting to impact the schedule for all of Volume 5. Furthermore, I had a duty to our subscribers to publish three issues a year in a timely manner to fulfill their subscriptions. At a certain point in time, I simply had to stop any extended editing and revising of possible submissions for this special issue and go to press with what we had.

In the end, Corbman herself admits that she did not find a “long-forgotten gem”⁴ of a manuscript among those that had been rejected for this issue of Frontiers–despite her provocative title claiming that “the edit” was to blame for the “unsuccessful” Lesbian History issue.

The current editors, at the University of Utah, of Volume 46, No. 2 of Frontiers assert that Corbman’s article represents the journal being “accountable” for the actions and decisions of forty-five years ago. While I find this statement–again in my opinion–unfair, I am very grateful to the current editors for giving me and my colleagues—Elizabeth Jameson and Carol Pearson, both founding editors–this opportunity to respond with our perspectives and thus leave behind a fuller and corrected historical record.

Another slice of “inside” Frontiers history is worth noting. In our original 1975 mission statement, Frontiers welcomed responses to controversial articles or opinions. We stated, “Frontiers is designed to be a forum for opinion and productive dialogue among women about shared problems viewed from different perspectives.” We would furnish “equal time” to authors by publishing two pieces side by side, in the same issue, with the pledge, “Let the readers decide.” An example was a provocative 1981 review of Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” a then-controversial art piece. Alongside this review, we published a reply from an artisan who had worked on “The Dinner Party.”⁵

The current Frontiers editors at the University of Utah might have invited such a response from me to run in the same issue as Corbman’s article. In June 2025, they had just published online a lengthy oral history interview with me in the immediate preceding issue, Volume 46, No. 1, as part of the journal’s fiftieth anniversary celebration. The juxtaposition of these two publications was baffling: they knew how to find me, but I was never contacted or given an opportunity to respond in the same issue as Corbman.

In early October 2025, I stumbled upon Corbman’s article completely by accident. The publication came as a devastating shock. I had been given no warning, no advance notice, no chance to reply in the same issue (Volume 46, No. 2).

After forty-five years, I still believe the Lesbian History issue of Frontiers makes a solid, if early and imperfect, contribution to the emerging fields of women’s studies and lesbian studies. I disagree with Schwarz and Corbman’s belief that the issue was not satisfactory. I still think the issue holds up well for the time in which it was published. Thus I believe Corbman’s article cannot be allowed to stand as the last word on me or on the Frontiers Lesbian History issue.

My recollection is clear and not dramatic: by the end of 1979, we—the Editorial Collective members—had reluctantly concluded that Schwarz had promised more than she was able to deliver. We had run out of publishable manuscripts and we had run out of time.

Feminism and women’s studies have real enemies. I am not one of them. I worked at Frontiers for thirteen years for free as both editor and publisher because I loved it and because it was an honor to make a contribution to the women’s movement. I worked six days a week, ten to fourteen hours a day. I had no salary; no faculty teaching job; no tenure track position; no benefits or paid vacation; no sick leave or health insurance; no retirement fund; no parking permit. I also paid out of my own pocket to go to conferences and women’s studies events in order to solicit manuscripts and subscriptions. I never had an expense account; I was never reimbursed.

So, instead of false allegations, let the following be the last word on me and Frontiers. In 2002, The Frontiers Women’s Oral History Reader was dedicated to me with these words: “To Kathi George, The woman who kept Frontiers alive.”⁶

NOTES

1. Rachel Corbman, “Blame it On the Edit: Frontiers’s Special Issue on Lesbian History,” Frontiers, 46, 2 (2025): 27.
2. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 8, 3 (Fall 1986): 131.
3. Corbman, “Blame it On the Edit”: 35.
4. Corbman, “Blame it On the Edit”: 38.
5. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 6, 3 (Fall 1981): 127-30.
6. Women’s Oral History: The Frontiers Reader, ed. Susan H. Armitage (University of Nebraska Press, 2002): v.

Letter from Dr. Betsy Jameson

December 18, 2025

To: The Members of the University of Utah Frontiers Editorial Collective

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to express my concerns about Rachel Corbman’s article, “Blame It on the Edit,” in Volume 46, No. 2. I confess that the article made me a bit nostalgic, as a member of the founding Frontiers Collective. I was no longer a Collective member during the production of the Lesbian History issue, nor was I ever officially connected to the University of Colorado, as Corbman implies. But I remember vividly the excitement of founding the journal, the fun and difficulties of collective work, and an era when many straight white feminists committed to inclusion of women of all races, classes, genders and sexualities, and then sometimes awkwardly pursued those goals and confronted our own privilege. I also knew virtually every scholar Corbman referenced.

Against those not-always-easy memories, the biases and blame in the article are disturbing. Instead of delving deeply into the complex contexts in which the issue was proposed and produced, Corbman seems intent, as her title suggests, on finding someone to blame. And the person on whom she focuses that blame is Kathi George, who championed the issue, and without whom Frontiers would simply not exist.

My major concerns about the article include incomplete biased sources, conjecture when evidence exists, and the negative focus on George, which is a consequence of incomplete and biased sources. The entire article is based largely on Judith Schwarz’s collection at the Herstory archive, which provides evidence for Schwarz’s intentions and hopes for the journal and her emotional responses when some pieces were rejected or when she had a frustrating conversation with George. There are other sources that could have provided the perspectives of the Editorial Collective that processed the issue, and their discussions about various submissions. Frontiers, as you know, has an archive at the Bancroft Library. And Kathi George herself and other members of the 1979 Editorial Collective are still alive and have telephones and email. Did Rachel Corbman get any editorial mentoring directing her to these potential sources? There seems to be an underlying assumption that the 1979-1981 Collective consisted of privileged straight white academics. I frankly don’t know the sexualities of all members of that Collective, but I know that some were employed as staff, some were graduate students, and all of them worked as volunteers to produce the journal on top of their work and personal commitments. I suspect they could have understood something about producing work in difficult circumstances. Kathi George for years managed the journal out of sheer commitment. She never had a position where it counted as a line on a vita or got her merit pay. She did it out of feminist commitment. In that spirit she advocated doing a Lesbian History issue, which remains important in the history of feminist publishing, and shepherded it to completion through some contentious negotiations.

I am sure there were difficult moments on all sides. But if we are to learn the lessons of that history, I think we need to appreciate the women with the courage to engage with relationships that were not always easy. They deserve respect and compassion, not blame. And they deserve an inclusive approach to their history that examines it from the perspectives of all the actors.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Jameson

Founding Member of the First Frontiers Editorial Collective

Professor Emerita of History, University of Calgary

Letter from Dr. Carol Pearson

To: The Editorial Collective at the University of Utah

From: Carol S. Pearson, www.carolspearson.com, cspearson@herowithin.com

December 19, 2025

I’m writing to express my concern related to the article “Blame it On the Edit: Frontiers’ Special Issue on Lesbian History,” by Rachel Corbman. The article seems to seek ways to blame the editors for this special issue being disappointing. Yet, it notes that everyone involved in its production was enthusiastic about being the first journal to publish a lesbian issue, they all worked hard, and they succeeded in creating the issue, which appeared in the Fall of 1979 – 46 years ago! Even so, Corbman claimed that they all were a bit disappointed that they had not realized their ideal outcomes. As an author, professor, and administrator, I know it is rare when there is no gap between the dream and the reality of almost anything—even marriages.

Blame generally requires that there be some problem. To my knowledge, there was no hue and cry among lesbian feminists at the time claiming that the issue was no good. Judith Schwarz, who was the outside person who proposed the issue to Frontiers Senior Manager Kathi George, is quoted in conversations or personal letters raising hypothetical problems but did not discount the issue itself. Who among us, after accomplishing something, does not spend some time thinking about how it could have been better?

I’m perplexed at why Corbman keeps trying to find ways to blame someone. Without facts, she uses innuendo, drawing on private conversations and letters, the use of some of which could well be violations of copyright law. Their tone seems more like gossip than fruitful dialogues. Instead of presenting a single fact about who and what was to blame, Corbman turns to the kind of “what if” elements that come up frequently in conversations, in this case that perhaps the problem being that the editors were uncomfortable because of a lack of personal experience with lesbians, which seems unlikely for a feminist editorial team, or that the editors were too rushed because of pressure to get the issue out before others, when it seems as though everyone involved at the time agreed that the timing was important.

In the search to discover a problem and then someone to blame, Corbman seems to have decided to make Kathi George the latest witch to be put in the stocks. Yes, George was the Senior Editor of the special issue, but if you follow just facts and not innuendo from personal conversations and letters, we are left with the knowledge that George proposed the issue with Schwarz, worked hard to get it done and out on time, and celebrated when it was. At the time she wrote her article, it would have been very easy for Corbman to check with George on her perspective on what could have been done better and what could be learned from it. 

I could not fail to write this letter because I’m outraged about the damage this article could do to

George’s reputation. So much of what she does is making a difference that does not get the applause. I know who she is from working with her. She was a major force in the creation of the CU Women Studies Program. By force, I mean like a force of nature who gets things done! First, she never seems to have an ulterior motive or seek personal gain. She does what she believes in. Second, she does her homework to learn how things get done and pushes others to think as carefully and creatively as she does. And third, she stays the course and does not give up or give in. 

I worked with George in founding the CU Women Studies Program, where she knew more than any of us about how to get a program approved, helped us act on this knowledge, and kept us on track. I also worked with her on the founding of Frontiers. In my observation, there would have been no Frontiers without her, and I suspect no first special issue on lesbian history. 

As Frontiers has been celebrating its 50^th anniversary, it should have been counting this special issue as an early high point in feminist scholarship and journalism. Today in the U.S., feminism and lesbianism are under attack. It is time to circle the wagons, not attack those who brought us here. As an academic and feminist, I would not have published this article, but I understand the need for editorial teams to demonstrate openness to learn from their key constituents. I am hoping the current editorial team will publish my letter as one voice to help set the record straight about Kathi George, a true feminist and Frontiers hero, and, in the process, also erase the blemish this article casts on Frontiers and its history.

Carol S. Pearson, Ph.D.

Founding Member, Frontiers Editorial Collective 

Founding Director of the CU Women’s Studies Program

The first tenured Director of the Women’s Studies Program at UMD, currently semi-retired from a position as the President of Pacifica Graduate Institute, before which she was Professor and director of the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership in the School of Public Policy at UMD.