into French (L'Harmattan, 2001), African Women's Health (Africa World Press, 2000), The Aftermath: Women in Postconflict Transformation (Zed Books, 2002), and African Women: A Political Economy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). She has served on the boards of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, the Committee for Health in Southern Africa, and the Review of African Political Economy, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Public Health Policy.
Astrid Ulloa, PhD in Anthropology, Full Professor of Geography at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Her main research interests include indigenous movements, indigenous autonomy, indigenous feminisms, gender, climate change, territoriality, extractivisms, and feminist political ecology. She is the author of The Ecological Native: Indigenous Peoples' Movements and Eco‐Governmentality in Colombia (2005–2013). Her recent book chapters include: “Indigenous Knowledge Regarding Climate in Colombia: Articulations and Complementarities Among Different Knowledges” (2020), “Reconfiguring Climate Change Adaptation Policy: Indigenous Peoples’ Strategies and Policies for Managing Environmental Transformations in Colombia” (2018), “Feminisms, Genders and Indigenous Women in Latin America” (2018), “La confrontation d'un citoyen zero carbone déterritorialisé au sein d'une nature carbonée locale‐mondiale” (2018). Her recent articles include. “The Rights Of The Wayúu People And Water In The Context Of Mining In La Guajira, Colombia: Demands Of Relational Water Justice” (2020), “Gender and Feminist Geography in Colombia” (2019), “Perspectives of Environmental Justice from Indigenous Peoples of Latin America: A Relational Indigenous Environmental Justice” (2017), “Geopolitics of Carbonized Nature and the Zero Carbon Citizen” (2017). Her current research is about gender and mining, and territorial feminisms in Latin America.
Crystal Whetstone, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Sam Houston State University. Her dissertation examined the role political motherhood plays in Global South women’s peace movements and women’s postconflict political representation. Her work has been published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics (IFJP), Third World Quarterly, and The Conversation.
Rina Verma Williams (PhD Harvard; BA and BS University of California at Irvine) is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati, where she is also Affiliate Faculty in Asian Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Her research and teaching interests include comparative Indian and South Asian politics; religion, law and nationalism; and gender and identity politics. She is the author of Postcolonial Politics and Personal Laws: Colonial Legal Legacies and the Indian State (Oxford University Press, 2006). Her current research focuses on women's participation in religious nationalist political parties in Indian democracy.
Bronwyn Winter is Professor of Transnational Studies at the University of Sydney. Her publications include September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives (coedited with Susan Hawthorne, Spinifex Press, 2002); Hijab and the Republic: Uncovering the French Headscarf Debate (Syracuse University Press, 2008); and Women, Insecurity and Violence in a Post‐9/11 World (Syracuse University Press, 2017). Her most recent publications include the coedited Global Perspectives on Same‐Sex Marriage (with Maxime Forest and Réjane Sénac, Palgrave, 2018), and Reform, Revolution and Crisis in Europe (with Cat Moir, Routledge, 2019), and she is a contributing advisory editor of the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies (2016).
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to all the authors, reviewers, and editors who have made this ambitious interdisciplinary volume possible. The authors bring a wide range of expertise from different academic training and activist backgrounds to their chapters with a commitment to sharing their visions and knowledge of the diverse topics and themes that shape the Companion to Feminist Studies. Many of my colleagues in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Connecticut and other academic sites around the world have generously supported the project in the important role of anonymous reviewer, often providing a quick turnaround to facilitate the demanding production deadlines. I am grateful for their extremely insightful reviews and their understanding of the international and interdisciplinary goals of the Companion. Special thanks to Shweta M. Adur, Françoise Dussart, Michele Eggers Barison, Vrshali Patil, and Barbara Sutton for sharing their expertise on various chapters. J. Michael Ryan also graciously offered his editorial and academic knowledge whenever asked and without hesitation. I would also like to thank the Wiley Blackwell editorial and production team Navami Rajunath, Umme Al‐Wazedi, Charlie Hamlyn, and Justin Vaughan – for their commitment and dedication to this project. Thanks also go to copy‐editor Katherine Carr. My appreciation to M.J. Taylor who assisted at the very early and crucial stage of identification and outreach to authors and organization of manuscripts. Managing Editor Cristina Khan was an extremely valuable collaborator who has assisted in reviewing and editing all the chapters as well as co‐authoring a chapter in this volume to advance the coverage of important topics in the Companion. Cristina signed on as Managing Editor at the early stages, not expecting, I suspect, all that this would entail. She was able to see it through to completion even as she started a new position in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stoney Brook University in New York. I could not have done this massive editorial project without her.
1 Feminist Studies as a Site of Critical Knowledge Production and Praxis
Nancy A. Naples
Introduction
Feminist Studies is an expression of the theoretical and interdisciplinary underpinnings of women's and gender studies. It is a diverse and ever‐changing field that is contoured by the intersecting goals of understanding and theorizing the ways that social life is organized by complex “relations of ruling” that shape social institutions and “everyday life” (Smith 1989), and how individuals and communities organize for social justice and social change. These are manifest within social, political, cultural, and economic institutions, social media, and everyday interactions. The presence and expression of Feminist Studies varies within disciplines and interdisciplines and across regions, as demonstrated by the authors of the 24 chapters in this Companion.
While feminist studies has a long history, it became institutionalized in academia beginning in the 1970s, through courses offered in different disciplines like English, History, Sociology, or Anthropology. These efforts contributed to cross‐disciplinary advocacy for the establishment of Women's Studies programs where faculty designed interdisciplinary courses in response to the deepening intellectual project. In the US, Feminist Studies has found an institutional foothold in some universities as a stand‐alone program or department. The Feminist Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz was founded in 2013. They describe their mission as “challenging existing disciplinary boundaries and fostering a reconsideration of the relationships between knowledge, power, and expertise” (https://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/graduate). It is now a department that trains students for academic careers as well as for public policy and human rights advocacy and research. In describing its graduate education in Feminist Studies, it notes that:
The roots of Feminist Studies lie in the study of women's experiences and a critique of their neglect in knowledge production. But the name “Feminist Studies” reflects the fact that the subject matter includes more than women: research and teaching focus on the ways that relations of gender, intersecting with race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, age, religion, ability, and other categories of difference, are embedded in social, political, and cultural formations. Feminist Studies encompasses teaching and research interests in men and masculinities and
