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| Happy Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, All Saints Day, Barriletes Gigantes, Leaf Peeping Season, and whatever else you might be celebrating as we close out October. Here at Meridians we've been celebrating the publication of our fall issue, "We Who Believe in Freedom" (vol. 25, no. 2), which is prescient and timely on multiple levels in this global political moment. I urge you to read it from cover to cover, and hope you will share it as we will at next month's National Women's Studies Association meeting in Atlanta. I also invite you to share our global Call for Submissions to the Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award which opened this month, as well as our call for Associate Editors, both of which are open until December 31st. I also invite you to please join us in celebrating our Community members' stellar accomplishments even as we mourn the loss of our dear colleague and former Editorial Advisory Board member, Professor Ara Wilson, who passed away unexpectedly recently. Here at Meridians' home base we are hosting auditions for actors for our first ever performance of an Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award honorable winner for playwriting this fall and are also participating in this year's Cromwell Day as part of our amplification of Meridians profile at Smith College. | |
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NWSA panel featuring Meridians
- Cromwell Day Workshop with the Editor
- Now accepting applications for Associate Editors
- EACWA open for submissions
- Sign Up to be a Peer Reviewer
- Call for Student Actors
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- Fall 2026 Issue (vol. 25, no. 2) now available
- Family Weekend and Come Home to Smith Open House
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- Honoring Dr. Ara Wilson
- Dr. Nancy Kang wins LASA award
- Congrats to Dr. Janell Hobson on her new book!
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Maryam Ala Amjadi Curates New Photopoetry Show
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NWSA panel featuring Meridians - Friday November 6 at 1:00 PM
Meridians is proud to host a panel at the upcoming National Women's Studies Association's annual conference. Our panel, "The Meridians Project: A Roundtable on Scholarship, Mentorship, and Women of Color Feminist Methods of Knowledge Production," will be on Friday, November 6. This panel will feature Editor Emerita Paula J. Giddings and will be moderated by a longtime friend of Meridians, Professor Carrie Baker. Thank you Professor Baker!
We are also proud to support the attendance of three Meridians student interns made possible by their Quigley funding and Lazurus Center Professional Development Fund.
We hope to see you there!
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Cromwell Day Workshop with the Editor
and Moderator Queen Lanier
Tuesday Nov. 10 at 1:30
Professor Ginetta E. B. Candelario will lead a Cromwell Day workshop exploring the history of this important Smith tradition. The workshop, moderated by Queen Lanier, will feature a screening of "The Life and Legacy of Otelia Cromwell" and conclude with a guided student discussion.
On Cromwell Day, Smith College celebrates the legacy of its first Black graduate, Otelia Cromwell '1900, and her niece, Adelaide Cromwell '40, its first Black professor. In lieu of classes, the Smith community spends time learning about and reflecting on diversity, racism, and inclusion. Cromwell Day is an annual tradition that began in 1989.
If you're on Smith campus on Tuesday, November 10, come join us at 1:30 pm in Neilson Library Room 102!
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Now accepting applications for Associate Editors
Meridians is currently accepting applications for Associate Editors from October 15 - December 31, 2026. We are looking for five Associate Editors with specialties in: 1) Transnational & Global Feminisms; 2) Race, Ethnicity, Racialization, Diaspora & Migration; 3) Arts, Cultural Production, and Pedagogy; 4) Politics and Social Movements; and 5) Creative Writing. Associate Editors will work approximately 3 hours per week and be appointed for 3 year terms.
Associate Editors will support the peer review process, help shape editorial direction, and advance global transnational intersectional feminist knowledge production that centers race, gender, sexuality, class, and geopolitics. If you or a colleague would be a good fit for one of these positions, please apply or share the application with them!
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Call for Student Actors
Auditions on Thursday
Nov. 5 from 11:00-1:00
Interested in being involved with a Meridians project? This fall, Meridians is hosting a public play reading for a short play published in Meridians issue 25.1, Honorable Mention Winner of the 2025 Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing
Award. We seek 3 Black actors — two to read as characters and one for stage directions — to bring it to life; auditions will be held on November 5 from 11:00 - 1:00pm at 22 Green St. The public reading will be early December with limited rehearsals throughout November. Please fill out this quick form if you are interested: Play Reading Interest Form!
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EACWA open for submissions until December 31
The Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award is now open and accepting submissions until December 31, 2026!
The award is open to all genres of creative writing, including poetry, fiction, play scripts, and creative non-fiction. Works that engage with feminism, race, and transnationalism will be prioritized.
Further details:
- Only one contest submission per author accepted;
- Translated works and manuscripts in languages other than English are encouraged;
- Only previously unpublished work will be considered;
- Simultaneous submissions to other journals will not be considered.
Here is what the Creative Writing Advisory Board had to say about the 2026 EACWA winning poem: "'Stratigraphy of the Throat’ makes utterly beautiful abstractions out of the painful twists into a new language when one’s home is in ruins. The metaphor of the body carrying sediments of sound and taste in the larynx and leaps to life on the tongue. Withholding just enough detail to let this poem map migration across many sites and generations, the author offers us the magical control of imagery that makes us feel the geologies of speech anew, ‘a pebble and silt on the back of my tongue.'"
| | | | Sign Up to be a Peer Reviewer | Would you like to participate in the Meridians project? Are you an expert in global feminisms, women's studies, or gender studies? Consider applying to be a peer reviewer for the journal. We will only ask you to review one article per year while sharing new and exciting research. | | |
Fresh off the Press! We are thrilled to share our latest issue, Volume 25.2 (Fall 2026), packed with brilliant, ground-breaking scholarship and transformative voices. Dive into this power-packed collection featuring:
- "Queer Muslim Environmental Futurism(s): An Analysis of Saba Taj's 'there are gardens at the margins'" by Maya Ghanem
- “I Don’t Have to Be So Caged Up”: An Exploration of the Relationships Between Dance, Restorative Mirroring, and Black Women’s Embodied Freedom" by Stephanie D. Sears
- "Navigating Racism, Sexism, and Classism in Health Activism: The National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs Department of Health and Hygiene,1895–1929" by Madina Agénor
- "Community Engaged Research and the Legacy of bell hooks" by Shelby Pumphrey, CK Snyder, Hilaria Cruz, Kathryn E. Marklein, Luz Huntington-Moskos, and Catron Booker
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Family Weekend and Come Home to Smith Open House
We were happy to welcome friends, families, and alumnae to our Open House and Tea on Friday, October 23. Held in honor of Family Weekend and Come Home to Smith, we welcomed 25 people to our office on Green Street. We enjoyed tea and rich conversation about the mission of Meridians with our guests. Thank you to everyone who stopped by!
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Honoring Dr. Ara Wilson
It is with a heavy heart that we remember the life and work of Meridians editorial board member, Dr. Ara Wilson.
Dr. Wilson taught gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Duke University for 20 years. While at Duke, she also held an appointment in the Department of Cultural Anthropology. She was on the Meridians editorial advisory board for three years. Dr. Wilson will be deeply missed by everyone who had the privilege of working alongside her.
A memorial service will be held on Friday December 4, 2026 at 1304 Campus Drive, Durham, NC.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations in memory of Dr. Wilson to the Global Fund for Women or Planned Parenthood.
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Nancy Kang wins LASA award
Congratulations to Meridians contributor, former Creative Writing Advisory Board member, and winner of the EACWA 2020 poetry prize, Dr. Nancy Kang for receving an Honorable Mention from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) for her article, "Madre de Sangre/Mother of Blood: Vampirizing La Virgen," published in American Literature.
The jury commended the work as "... [meriting] high distinction for introducing a powerful concept, 'motheroticism,' which reorganizes debates on desire, care, and religiosity in Chicana/lesbian literature. Its comparative reading offers solid textual evidence and opens up a critical vocabulary that can be applied to other corpora where the sacred and the erotic intertwine along racialized lines.”
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Congrats to Dr. Janell Hobson on her new book!
Congratulations to Meridians author and guest editor of Meridians Vol. 12, no. 2 2014 and Meridians Vol. 8, No. 1 2007, Dr. Janell Hobson on her new book! Dr. Hobson is the co-editor of the new anthology, Black Feminist Theories: Transnational Approaches, published by Bloomsbury Academic. Featuring the article "Feminist Africa and African Feminism: from the 1990s to the Present" by Desiree Lewis focusing on our sister journal Feminist Africa, this volume brings together canonical essays, poems, and new scholarship that illuminates the transnational conversation between contemporary scholars and historical thinkers.
Purchase the book here!
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Maryam Ala Amjadi Curates New Photopoetry Show
Meridians contributor, former Creative Writing Board Member, and 2024 Winner of the EACWA for Prose, Maryam Ala Amjadi, has curated a new photopoetry show, Ingress. This exhibition marries contemporary street photography from Iran and classical Persian poetry translated by Maryam Ala Amjadi.
Ingress will be on view in the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art from October 23, 2026 - May 22, 2027.
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