Newsletter networks in the feminist history and archives movement

Abstract

This article examines how networks have been critical to the construction of feminist histories. The author examines the publication Matrices: A Lesbian/Feminist Research Newsletter (1977–1996), to argue that a feminist network mode can be traced through the examination of small-scale print newsletters that draw on the language and function of networks. Publications such as Matrices emerge into wide production and circulation in the 1970s alongside feminist community archives, and newsletters and archives work together as interconnected social movement technologies. Newsletters enabled activist-researchers writing feminist histories to share difficult-to-access information, resources, and primary sources via photocopying and other modes of print reproduction. Looking from the present, the author examines how network thinking has been a feature of feminist activism and knowledge production since before the Internet, suggesting that publications such as Matrices are part of a longer history of networked communications media in feminist contexts.

Printing the network: AIDS activism and online access in the 1980s

“…Individual listings in the digest often concluded with phone numbers and mailing addresses readers could use to learn more. Like the feminist and gay liberation publications it followed, the Critical Path newsletter provided readers with ongoing ways to connect with a community beyond its pages (Meeker 2006;McKinney 2015;Beins 2017).…”