Signs@40: Feminist Scholarship through Four Decades
Edited by Andrew Mazzaschi

Forty years of Signs via topic modeling, editorial curation, and commentaries

Topics in Signs A topic model of the Signs archive

Cropped Streamgraph

Using topic modeling, a computer-assisted means of dividing a large corpus of texts into topics, this browser explores the Signs archive by dividing it into seventy topics and tracing how those topics change over time. In the browser, "topics" can represent anything from a particular geographical location discussed in the journal to a specific disciplinary or theoretical discourse. Each article is divided into several topics, and the browser provides multiple ways of viewing each topic and includes an extensive bibliography.

Cocitation Network Graph

The Cocitation Network Graph maps the citation patterns in Signs. This interactive graph plots the connections among works of scholarship cited in Signs, providing a way of visualizing different schools of thought and conversations occuring both in the journal and the wider field. From the vantage point of the reference lists of articles published in Signs, we see the key texts that have shaped feminist thought over the past forty years.

Cover Art A gallery

Signs has had many cover designs over the years and featured many artists, almost all of them women. The gallery contains an example of each of the graphical designs, as well as a copy of each art work featured on the cover of Signs since the practice began in 1997. Artists in the gallery include Kara Walker, Yoko Ono, Elizabeth Catlett, Francesca Woodman, Zina Sedira, Paula Rego, and many more.

Tables of Contents Themes

Curated Tables of Contents provide windows into themes of enduring interest in feminist scholarship. Divided into ten broad themes (or virtual issues), these Tables of Contents present articles selected by journal editorial staff and research assistants. By no means exhaustive, the articles listed exemplify particular approaches prominent in feminist scholarship over time and demonstrate Signs' role in shaping conversations within feminist scholarship as well as intervening into academic discourse more broadly.

Commentaries Feminist scholars reflect

Feminist scholars—including former, current, and future Signs editors, current editorial board members, and other experts in the field—pursue lines of inquiry and analysis prompted by this anniversary project, particularly the topic model. These scholars provide unique insights about editorial choices, changes in the content of the journal over time, and what light these changes shed on the wider context of the field of women's, gender, and feminist studies.