First published in 1972, Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ) will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2022. Originally printed as Women’s Studies Newsletter, the inaugural issue declared itself a “clearinghouse on Women’s Studies,” and soon became a key part of the Feminist Press’s mission to advance women’s scholarship in higher education. Over the past five decades, the journal has become a mainstay in the production of interdisciplinary feminist scholarship, continuing to challenge and adapt to the ever-evolving field. 

In WSQ 50!, academics critically reflect on the legacy of the longest-running feminist scholarly journal, tracing the history of the journal in conversation with other knowledge and activist projects and interdisciplinary fields, revisiting key pieces of writing from the past fifty years, and considering WSQ within the broad institutionalization of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In doing so, WSQ 50! charts a way forward for the next fifty years of interdisciplinary feminist knowledge projects.