Founding Feminisms: Reflecting on the Roots of the Field

Developed by Karla J. Strand, DPhil, MLIS
Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian
December 2025

This bibliography is number 108a in the series “Bibliographies in Gender and Women’s Studies,” published by the University of Wisconsin System Office of the Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian. It was developed as part of “Rooted in Justice: Fifty Years of Feminist Scholarship and Community Engagement,” a set of bibliographies supporting the 2026 UW System Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium Spring Conference.

Introduction

At this time, many gender and women’s studies programs, centers, and departments are celebrating milestone anniversaries and exploring their rich histories across Wisconsin and the world. This thread explores, honors, and critiques historical narratives and analyses of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies programs, as well as adjacent fields and community-based work. These resources document the founding of programs, the work of early leaders and faculty, and the activist and intellectual traditions that shaped their development. Some grapple with racial tensions, gender policing, ableism, and other exclusionary elements the field has sought to overcome, including U.S.-centric impulses rooted in settler colonialism, imperialism, and the marginalization of transnational and Global South feminist perspectives. In addition, these resources excavate our shared intellectual genealogies as women’s, gender, sexuality, and LGBTQ+ studies scholars, ultimately exploring intersections across the historical transformations of feminist inquiry and social justice work.

For more on struggles within the field, including racism, see bibliography 108b.

For early publications on:

• Mainstreaming women’s studies into the traditional curriculum, see bibliography 22.
• Women’s studies as a discipline (1972-1977), see bibliography 3.
• Black women’s studies, see bibliography 17.