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Preface.

Article Excerpt
FEMINIST STUDIES IS PROUD TO PRESENT its first double issue in over three decades of publication with this volume devoted to contemporary Chicana studies. The essays in this issue mark significant new developments in Chicana studies and in feminist studies more generally. Gathered from emerging experts as well as prominent senior scholars, the essays and creative work included here describe a diverse array of Chicana experiences as musicians, artists, philosophers, lawyers, immigrants, and scholars as well as friends, lovers, mothers, and aunts. Together they set forth three fundamental themes: first, the interconnections of spirituality and sexuality, body, and language in Chicana writing and experience; second, an interactive conception of borders as more than geographical lines dividing nation states or disciplines, but rather as dynamic processes deployed for specific purposes--fluctuating, permeable, and rife with possibilities and consequences; and, third, the interrogation and exploration of multiple-subject positions and subjectivities that are critical to much of the work of Chicana cultural activists and theorists in the twenty-first century. Throughout this volume, as feminist scholars have long advised but less often practiced, simple binaries are contested and superseded. Furthermore, this issue is both inter- and transdisciplinary, presenting visual art and original creative writing in addition to scholarly essays.

The volume begins with Leisa D. Meyer's interview with Chicana historian Vicki L. Ruiz, "'Ongoing Missionary Labor': Building, Maintaining, and Expanding Chicana Studies/History." Along with Meyer's annotations, the interview traces the development not only of Ruiz's career, but also of the field of Chicana studies/history itself. From graduate school through her early professional career to today, Ruiz reflects on the personal and professional obstacles she encountered, the supports (especially her companeras) she cherished, and the continuing challenges and new possibilities she sees as critical to the field of Chicana studies/ history. Offering comments both on the state of the field of Chicana studies/history and what it has meant to live it, Ruiz speaks of intraethnic trials and solidarity, her admiration for colleagues who were on the "frontlines" of movement work, her work with Patricia Zavella to invent new methodologies for excavating the lives of Chicanas, and the energy she derived from sharing this early journey with other Chicana studies scholars and students. In articulating the state of the field, Ruiz sees the current move away from simple binaries to an interrogation and unpacking of conventional dialectics as critical to Chicana studies/history and Chicana feminist theory and activism. Ruiz also speaks passionately of the need for historians to expand their source base by looking to literature, folklore, cultural studies, and ethnography as means not just to "integrate," but rather to make central the voices and perspectives of the individuals we study from the "standpoint of the people themselves." Ruiz further welcomes the move in current Chicana studies scholarship to a more transnational approach, noting that "transnationalism doesn't require travel across vast oceans"; the "Americas" are transnational spaces. In the end she speaks with optimism and hope of the vibrancy and interdisciplinarity of work by emerging scholars and the increasing numbers of Chicanas entering the profession, while also urging the continuation of the "ongoing missionary labor" of engaging and educating to make "where we work a more compassionate, decent place for everyone."

Inspiring the authors of the early section of this volume is pioneering Chicana theorist and poet Gloria Anzaldua, whose untimely death in 2004 cut short her evolving philosophy and holistic lesbian feminism. We are privileged to be able to publish several articles explicating her writings that draw from unpublished interviews and manuscripts as well as on her published work.

AnaLouise Keating, Anzaldua's long-time friend, collaborator, and editor, begins this section with her essay, "'I'm a citizen of the universe': Gloria Anzaldua's Spiritual Activism as Catalyst for Social Change." According to Keating, this activism "offers a visionary yet experientially based epistemology and ethics ... that posits a relational worldview and uses this holistic worldview to transform one's self...

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