Ask a Feminist

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Ask a Feminist, a podcast from Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (http://signsjournal.org), features interviews with leading feminist thinkers on feminist issues raised by some aspect of current political life or social justice issue. This allows Signs to create an ongoing conversation between and among feminist scholars, media activists, and community leaders, enhancing the journal’s role as a transitive space, percolating in and between the space of intellectual production and activist engagement. Ask a Feminist is part of the Signs Feminist Public Intellectuals Project (http://signsjournal.org/feminist-public-intellectuals-project/).

Episodes

  1. 3d ago

    Regret, a Conversation with Ann Cvetkovich

    Today’s episode is a conversation about the feminist politics of regret. Discourses of regret have strangely come to play a key role in right-wing attacks on feminism, particularly when it comes to the Right’s anti-abortion and anti-trans campaigns. The notion that one will come to regret one’s abortion, or that one will come to regret gender transition, have been repeated ad nauseum. Contra this conservative framing, the conversation (which will appear in a full special issue of Signs devoted to the topic of regret) is at pains to address regret as a complex and potentially instructive emotion that’s worth attending to in a nuanced way. The guest editors of the special issue, Laura Green and Chris Bobel, asked leading feminist affect scholar Ann Cvetkovich to help us think through these thorny questions. Chris Bobel is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UMass Boston. Her current project explores feminist activism inspired by grief and trauma. Laura Green is Professor of English at Northeastern University. In spring 2027, she will be the M. H. Abrams Visiting Professor of English at Cornell University. And Ann Cvetkovich is Professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her books include An Archive of Feelings and Depression; A Public Feeling. Her next book, Learning from the High Priestess: Affect, Femme Care, and Somatic Practice, is forthcoming from Duke University Press.

  2. Sep 8

    Palestinian Feminism, a Conversation with Sarah Ihmoud and Zinaida Miller

    This episode's conversation focuses on Palestinian feminism, both as a movement and a lens with which to analyze the extreme violence of Israel’s war on Gaza, as well as the quotidian violence of life under occupation. Whether addressing ever-expanding carceral apparatuses, West Bank settlements, human rights law, or the daily lives of Palestinians, our guest Sarah Ihmoud insists on Palestinian feminism as a life-affirming and future-oriented force that refuses defeat. Our interviewer is Zinaida Miller, a Professor of Law and International Affairs at Northeastern, whose research focuses on inequality, structural violence, and critical approaches to international law. She is a founding faculty codirector of the Center for Global Law & Justice. Sarah Ihmoud, our guest, is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research interests lie at the intersections of transnational feminisms; women of color theory; Indigenous and decolonial feminisms; critical race studies; carcerality; and Middle East and Arab American Studies. Her current book project is a feminist ethnography centering Palestinian women’s resistance to colonial and patriarchal violence in occupied East Jerusalem.

  3. May 12

    Feminist Scholarly Writing under Authoritarianism, a Conversation with Debjani Chakravarty, Patti Duncan, and Jennifer C. Nash

    This episode of Ask a Feminist looks at how the Trump administration’s attacks on women’s and gender studies, and universities more broadly, are affecting the production of feminist scholarship. The editors of four interdisciplinary feminist journals (Frontiers, Feminist Formations, Feminist Studies, and Signs) talk about the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that the Trump administration’s crusade against gender ideology is affecting how feminist knowledge is produced. They talk about how these new attacks on women’s studies, in combination with the longer-term crises facing the university, might reshape journals’ relationship with the field. Our guests are Debjani Chakravarty, Patti Duncan, and Jennifer C. Nash. Chakravarty is the coeditor (with Sarita Gaytán and Wanda Pillow) of Frontiers and associate professor of gender studies at the University of Utah. Duncan is the editor of Feminist Formations and professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Oregon. And Nash is the editorial director of Feminist Studies and is Jean Fox O'Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. Suzanna Walters of Signs facilitates the conversation.

  4. Mar 4

    Pronatalism, a Conversation with Nandita Bajaj and Michele Goodwin

    This episode features a critical dissection of a political movement and philosophy that is unfortunately enjoying a global resurgence: pronatalism. Having successfully killed Roe, the Trump administration pursues policies incentivising certain groups to have more children. Many key administration figures—most prominently JD Vance and Elon Musk—are avid promoters of pronatalist worldviews, in which women’s efforts to exert control over their own reproductive capacities are portrayed as threats to “Western civilization” itself. This conversation offer a compelling deconstruction of the antifeminist underpinnings of pronatalism and explicates its historical links to nativism, eugenics, and other forms of racism.  Our interviewer for this episode is Signs Associate Editor Shoshanna Ehrlich, an expert on the legal regulation of reproduction and sexuality in the US and professor emerita of women's, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is joined by Nandita Bajaj and Michele Goodwin. Bajaj is the Executive Director of Population Balance, a US nonprofit that works to inspire narrative, behavioral, and systemic change that shrinks our human impact and elevates the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet. Her research and advocacy work focuses on addressing the combined impacts of pronatalism and human expansionism on reproductive, ecological, and intergenerational justice. Michele is the Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Constitutional Law and Global Health Policy and Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. She is a sought after thought leader and public voice on matters of constitutional law, healthcare, bioethics, and civil liberties; she is also the Executive Producer of Ms. Studios and host of the popular podcast: On The Issues With Michele Goodwin.

  5. 06/25/2025

    Online Abuse and US Politics, a Conversation with Moya Bailey and Nina Jankowicz

    This episode focuses on the harassment and abuse that women—particularly women in politics—face online. Signs associate editor Sarah Sobieraj, an expert on US political culture and digital media, speaks with Professors Moya Bailey and Nina Jankowicz. The conversation delves into the strategies used by misogynists online, the racialized abuse faced by women of color, and the role that digital harassment and misinformation played in the 2024 election. And crucially, they emphasize that this abuse, at the systemic level, is a massive barrier to women’s equal political participation and functions to push women in general out of political discourse and even public life.  Moya Bailey is a professor of communication studies at Northwestern and is an expert on Black women’s digital resistance. She also coined the term “misogynoir.” Nina Jankowicz is the cofounder and CEO of the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit focused on countering disinformation. She has advised governments, international organizations, and tech companies on the effects of disinformation, particularly on people from historically marginalized groups. And Sarah Sobieraj is a professor of sociology at Tufts University. Her latest book is Credible Threat: Attacks Against Women Online and the Future of Democracy.

  6. 04/28/2025

    Trump’s Anti-Trans, Anti-Gender Executive Orders, A Conversation with Libby Adler and K.J. Rawson

    For our first episode of the second Trump Administration, Carla Kaplan (chair of the Signs editorial board) speaks to Libby Adler and K.J. Rawson about the administration's anti-trans, anti-gender executive orders. While we’ve known for quite some time that the anti-trans attacks would be coming, their speed and breadth have still been breathtaking. Adler and Rawson tease out the implications of these executive orders and demonstrate what they reveal about the Trump regime’s understandings of sex and gender. Adler is Professor of Law and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and is the author of the book Gay Priori: A Queer Critical Legal Studies Approach to Law Reform from Duke University Press. And Rawson is Professor of English and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and the founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an award-winning collection of trans-related historical materials.

  7. 04/24/2024

    Public Feminism, a Conversation with Marcie Bianco and Andi Zeisler

    Ask a Feminist is back after a long hiatus with an episode about the current state of public feminism! Signs editor Suzanna Walters is joined by Marcie Bianco and Andi Zeisler. Andi is the cofounder of Bitch Media and the author of the book We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrl to CoverGirl, and Marcie is the author of Breaking Free: The Lie of Equality and the Feminist Fight for Freedom. Their experiences writing and editing for feminist publics and building feminist platforms give them unique insights into the difficulties faced by those trying to reach or create feminist publics today. What happens when feminism becomes part of a “personal brand”? What are the pitfalls of anointing a few individuals as the public representatives of a movement as broad and diverse as feminism? Why do there seem to be so many feminist public intellectuals and so few feminist spaces?

  8. 04/19/2022

    Reproduction in the Age of Epigenetics, a Conversation with Rene Almeling, Sarah Richardson, and Natali Valdez

    Three esteemed feminist science-studies scholars—Sarah Richardson, Rene Almeling, and Natali Valdez—discuss reproduction in the age of epigenetics. They offer a critical appraisal of recent developments in the much-hyped field of epigenetics, particularly as those developments have focused on reproduction. Their discussion provides a crucial corrective as the biological sciences push for more epigenetic and high-tech approaches to reproductive health. Their feminist lens allows them to ask new questions and push back against scientific approaches that continue to place responsibility for managing reproductive risk onto individual women. They ask why these new epigenetic approaches—which even feminists had hoped might lead to more capacious or holistic understandings of reproduction—ultimately fail to live up to their own hype.

  9. 02/08/2022

    Jennifer Fluri Discusses the Gender Politics of the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan with Sandra McEvoy

    On this episode, Sandra McEvoy speaks to Jennifer Fluri about what the United States’s withdrawal from Afghanistan means for Afghan women and for the feminist movement in Afghanistan. Jennifer’s expertise as a geographer and her transnational feminist perspective are sorely needed in this perilous moment. As the withdrawal was under way, we heard familiar concerns--voiced by pundits and politicians--about the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban. But the broader context of the long US occupation, its effects on gender relations, and the history of women’s organizing in Afghanistan makes for a much more complicated picture, as you’ll hear. Jennifer--a professor of geography at University of Colorado Boulder who has worked in and on Afghanistan for almost twenty years--illuminates this complex history in this conversation with Sandra, who is clinical associate professor of political science at Boston University and a member of the Signs editorial board.

  10. 04/22/2021

    Susan Stryker discusses Trans Studies, Trans Feminism, and a More Trans Future with V Varun Chaudhry

    A conversation about the field of trans studies between V Varun Chaudhy and Susan Stryker. V is an assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Brandeis and a member of the Signs board of associate editors. Susan is a founding editor of the journal TSQ and a major figure in the development of trans studies as a field. In the interview, they discuss the social and political context for the emergence trans studies, including its roots in feminist theory, and what its institutionalization (including the found of TSQ) has meant for the field. They also share insights about how trans feminism can combat new forms of transphobia, and, beyond that, how trans feminism can provide necessary tools for enacting new forms of sociality.

  11. 02/22/2021

    Patricia Williams Discusses Rage and Humor as an Act of Disobedience with Carla Kaplan and Durba Mitra

    Patricia J. Williams, the renowned feminist theorist and legal scholar joins Carla Kaplan and Durba Mitra, two of the coeditors of the upcoming special issue of Signs on “Rage,” to talk about the multiple crises we face at the current moment, from Donald Trump’s cruel legacy of misogyny and racism to the failures of market-based approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic. They also discuss new forms of surveillance that have emerged during the pandemic and the disproportionate levels of emotional labor that particular groups, particularly black women, have been expected to take on throughout Trump’s presidency.

  • 11 Episodes

5
out of 5
16 Ratings

About

Ask a Feminist, a podcast from Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (http://signsjournal.org), features interviews with leading feminist thinkers on feminist issues raised by some aspect of current political life or social justice issue. This allows Signs to create an ongoing conversation between and among feminist scholars, media activists, and community leaders, enhancing the journal’s role as a transitive space, percolating in and between the space of intellectual production and activist engagement. Ask a Feminist is part of the Signs Feminist Public Intellectuals Project (http://signsjournal.org/feminist-public-intellectuals-project/).

Information

  • Creator
    Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    11
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2024 Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
  • Show Website
    Ask a Feminist

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