Hypatia (journal)

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy is a peer-reviewed academic journal published quarterly by Wiley-Blackwell. As of March 2018, the journal is led by an interim editor, Ann Garry, and two interim co-editors, Serene Khader and Alison Stone. Book reviews are published by Hypatia Reviews Online (HRO). The journal is owned by a non-profit corporation, Hypatia, Inc.

The idea for the journal arose out of meetings of the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) in the 1970s. Philosopher and legal scholar Azizah Y. al-Hibri became the founding editor in 1982, when it was published as a "piggy back" issue of the Women's Studies International Forum. Named after Hypatia of Alexandria, a philosopher who was murdered by a mob in 415 CE, it became an independent journal in 1986.

Hypatia became involved in a damaging dispute in April 2017 when its associate editors published an unauthorized apology for the journal's publication of an article on transracialism, after the author and article were criticized on social media. The episode pointed to a significant breakdown of communications within Hypatias editorial team. The journal responded by setting up a task force to restructure its governance.  Hypatia was the subject of further controversy in 2018, when it accepted a hoax article that had been deliberately designed to satirise feminist philosophy.  The hoax, which formed part of the Grievance studies scandal, was revealed before the article could be published.

History

Hypatia has its roots in regional meetings of the Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP), established in 1972. One of SWIP's earliest ideas was that it would set up a philosophy journal. The thought of "a journal of our own" was very powerful, according to Kathryn Morgan  (Toronto), speaking in 2009 on the history of Hypatia. At the time, according to Linda Martín Alcoff (CUNY), president of the Hypatia Inc. board of directors since February 2018, philosophers who wanted to write about gender-related issues were being silenced in a discipline "riven by unabashed bias and vested interest, inflicting its own form of unapologetic mob violence".

SWIP decided in 1977 to set up an editorial board to plan the journal; the first board was put together by Ann Garry (Cal State LA) and Jacqueline Thomason (UMass Amherst). At a meeting in Denver in the spring of 1979, the board agreed that Azizah Y. al-Hibri (UR) should be the founding editor. Al-Hibri began work on the journal in 1982, after she had completed her PhD in philosophy and just as she was starting her first year of law school. The philosophy and women's studies departments at the University of Pennsylvania offered support in the form of an office and research assistance. Women's Studies International Forum agreed to publish the new journal as an annual "piggy back" issue of its own, which it did for three years, and distributed 10,000 brochures to its mailing list advertising it.

The group led by Al-Hibri decided that submissions would be fully reviewed and that substantive comments would be offered, Alcoff wrote, rather than the usual brief rejection, to help authors improve their work and to contribute to the field's development. Donna Serniak (Penn) was responsible for the first issue. It was first published independently of Women's Studies International Forum in 1986.

The journal is named after Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathematician and philosopher who was murdered by a mob in 415 CE. Al-Hibri said that the SWIP editorial board chose the name to reflect that women have "deep roots in philosophy". According to Linda López McAlister (USF), the idea for the name came from Sue Larson (Barnard) during a meeting of Eastern SWIP in 1973. Sandra Harding (UCLA), who was at the meeting, objected, thinking it awful to name a feminist-philosophy journal after a woman who had been "stoned to death for telling the truth". The first suggestion was Hypatia: A Journal of Philosophy and Feminism, rather than A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, because at the time it was unclear what feminist philosophy might be.

Governance
Hypatia is owned by a non-profit corporation, Hypatia, Inc., registered in April 2008 in the State of Washington. The purpose of the non-profit is "to foster feminist scholarship in philosophy and related fields, including through the publication of the academic journal Hypatia". As of 18 February 2018, the board of directors consists of Linda Martín Alcoff (CUNY), Talia Mae Bettcher (Cal State LA), Helen Longino (Stanford), Jacqueline Scott (Loyola), and Nancy Tuana (Penn State). Ann Garry (Cal State LA) serves ex officio as the editorial-team representative. There is also an advisory board, an editorial board, and a governance task force.

Editors-in-chief usually serve five-year terms. As of March 2018, the journal is led by an interim editor, Ann Garry, and two interim co-editors, Serene Khader (Brooklyn College/CUNY) and Alison Stone (Lancaster). The interim editors of Hypatia Reviews Online are Simon Ruchti and Joan Woolfrey (both WCUPA). Previous editors-in-chief were:

2017 dispute

Transracialism article 

Hypatia became involved in a dispute in April 2017 that led to the online shaming of one of its authors, Rebecca Tuvel, an untenured assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis. The episode pointed to a breakdown of communications within Hypatias editorial team, and to a rift within feminism and academic philosophy.

The journal had published Tuvel's article, "In Defense of Transracialism", in its spring 2017 edition after the standard double-anonymous peer review. Comparing the case of Caitlyn Jenner to that of Rachel Dolezal, Tuvel argued that "[s]ince we should accept transgender individuals' decisions to change sexes, we should also accept transracial individuals' decisions to change races." On 28 April the article was criticized on Facebook and Twitter, and Tuvel became the target of personal attacks. The following day an open letter, listing a member of Hypatias editorial board as its point of contact, urged that the article be retracted; by 2 May this had gathered 830 signatures. The journal distanced itself further from the article on 1 May when an Hypatia associate editor apologized on the journal's Facebook page for the article's publication, on behalf of "a majority of the Hypatia's Board of Associated Editors". The editor-in-chief, Sally Scholz (Villanova), stood by the article, and the board of directors, led by Miriam Solomon (Temple), confirmed that it would not be retracted.

Task force
In July 2017 Scholz resigned as editor-in-chief, along with Shelley Wilcox, editor of Hypatia Reviews Online. The board of directors announced that a task force would restructure the journal's governance, and that anyone in an editorial or non-board position with Hypatia would be "required to sign a statement of adherence to guidelines issued by COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics". According to a statement from the associate editors, whose role was to choose the next editor, the board of directors asked them, on 17 July, to resign or the journal's governance documents would be suspended, which would remove the associate editors' influence. Eight of the associate editors resigned. In their resignation statement, they wrote that the current controversy was "grounded in long-standing differences and tensions within the field." They argued that feminist philosophy had an ethical commitment to transform philosophy into "a discipline that honors the perspectives and welcomes the scholarly contributions of historically marginalized groups, including people of color, trans* people, disabled people, and queer people."

The board appointed interim editors, and in November 2017 Sally Haslanger (MIT), Serene Khader, and Yannik Thiem (Villanova) were named as the governance task-force co-chairs. The five-person board of directors, including Solomon, was replaced in February 2018. Linda Martín Alcoff and Kim Hall, two of the associate editors who resigned in July, became president of the board of directors and chair of the search committee for the new editorial team, respectively.

Abstracting and indexing
Hypatia is abstracted and indexed in the following bibliographic databases:

According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2017 impact factor of 0.712.

See also 
List of women's studies journals

Notes

References

Further reading 
 
 
 Al-Hibri, Azizah Y. and Simons, Margaret A. (1990). Hypatia Reborn: Essays in Feminist Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
 Bermúdez, José Luis (5 May 2017). "Defining ‘Harm’ in the Tuvel Affair", Inside Higher Ed.
 Glancy, Josh (7 May 2017). "Philosopher lashed for backing ‘transracial’ pioneer", The Times.
 Shrage, Laurie (22 May 2017). "Feminist Philosophy and Its Controversies", Daily Nous.
 
"Social Justice, Feminist Affects & Philosophical Futures: A Symposium Responding to the Hypatia Controversy", University of Alberta, 7 March 2018.
"Special symposium: Rebecca Tuvel and her interlocutors", Philosophy Today. 62(1), Winter 2018.

Category:English-language journals
Category:Feminism and society
Category:Feminist journals
Category:Feminist philosophy
Category:Gender studies journals
Category:Wiley-Blackwell academic journals
Category:Publications established in 1986
Category:Philosophy journals
Category:Quarterly journals
Category:Women's media
Category:Women's studies journals