Editorial Introduction

Editorial Introduction Patti Duncan Spring arrives, and in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies we continue to navigate the academy and the processes and politics of feminist knowledge-making practices, even during an apocalypse, in the midst of war, a global pandemic, climate crisis, racialized state violence, attacks on reproductive justice, and increasing anti-trans legislation. Earlier this year, more than 165,000 house-holds were without power in the Portland area where I live, and several people died in an ice storm. Like many others, I lost power for a few days and dealt with a burst pipe, no electricity, no water, and no heat. But still the emails arrive, the grading continues, the deadlines loom. Over the last four years, over a million people in the US and more than seven million people worldwide have died from COVID. And in Gaza, since early October, more than 30,000 people have been killed, including more than 10,000 children. I'm reminded of something Priya Kandaswamy said in an Ideas on Fire podcast early in the COVID-19 pandemic: "I never imagined that when the apocalypse came, my biggest concern would be about how to do my job." She was referring to our academic institutions pushing forward even during a global health crisis, with "business as usual" models, where we were all expected to keep teaching and learning, maintaining "productivity" even if remote, even if sick, or lacking childcare or eldercare, or grieving losses. How might feminist knowledge production offer interventions? What can feminist theory and practice teach us about disrupting the normative structures of "business as usual" and of state violence and terror? This latest issue of Feminist Formations begins with the beautiful image on our cover featuring a painting by Palestinian visual artist Malak Mattar. Mattar became an artist during her childhood in Gaza, and her paintings have been shown in nearly 80 countries. She is also the author and illustrator of a children's book, Sitti's Bird: A Gaza Story, the first children's book from Gaza about war. Currently, her solo exhibition, Last Breath (2024), is on display at Cromwell Place in London, including the painting "No Words," which weaves together stories of the ongoing genocide in Gaza since October 2023. Mattar's work focuses on liberation, decolonization, and Palestinian identity and politics. We are honored to include her painting "Last Night in Gaza" (oil on canvas, 2021) on our cover, which depicts a woman lying in repose with her eyes closed. She is covered in sunbirds, the national bird of Palestine and symbol of Palestinian End Page vii heritage. It's unclear in the painting whether she is sleeping peacefully or has departed this world. A sun rises or sets behind her, and the image invokes the haziness of exhaustion, solitude, and grief. Feminist critiques of coloniality, settler colonialism, and state violence are centered throughout this issue of Feminist Formations. The first article, "Ableist Ungendering: Anti-Blackness, Coloniality, and Disability in Women's Sports," by Sarah L. Orsak, was an Honorable Mention in our 2023 Feminist Formations / National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) paper award, selected for its insightful and nuanced analysis, bringing feminist disability studies into conversation with key themes within Black feminist theory and queer, trans, and intersex studies. Thank you to the award selection committee, comprised of Karma R. Chávez and Priya Kandaswamy. In this work, Orsak extends Hortense Spillers' theoretical formation of ungendering to examine how understandings of womanhood in women's sports are constructed through norms about race, gender, and disability. Ableist ungendering, Orsak writes, "as a colonial technology, delimits an expansive field of recognition. When ability is rooted in the body as a material sexed difference, ableist discourses play a central role in justifying sex segregated sport as a necessary and race-neutral way of organizing competition." And sex segregation in sports "undergirds ongoing efforts to regulate bodily difference across a range of locations—from bathrooms to schools to clinics—because it makes sexual difference appear rooted in the body." Sex testing and regulation of women athletes, Orsak argues, enacts not only racist and colonial forms of oppression, but also ableism. Following Talila A. Lewis' working...