HOT TYPE 'Women's Review of Books' Will Fold Its Covers
By SCOTT McLEMEE
NO FURTHER REVIEW: Readers turning to the November issue of The Women's Review of Books will find a dozen essays on recent volumes by Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, and Cynthia Ozick (to list only the most prominent names), as well as work by seven poets. The classified ads list nine tenure-track jobs, mostly in women's-studies and gender-studies programs -- not counting an additional dozen positions advertised elsewhere in the issue. It is, in brief, a fairly typical issue of the Review, now in its 22nd year.
It also marks the beginning of the end of the journal. The cover bears an open letter from Amy Hoffman, the editor in chief, announcing "that The Women's Review of Books will be suspending publication after we put out our December 2004 issue."
Don't bother searching for the PS saying "... unless you act now!" The time for fund-raising appeals is long over. The Review, which has its office in the Wellesley Centers for Women, has been operating at a deficit since the mid-1990s and now owes its host more than $200,000. (Wellesley College does not provide a subvention to the Review, and most of the annual budget for the Centers for Women comes from foundation and corporate grants.)
The story sounds familiar. It involves shrinking library budgets, increasing costs for printing and postage, and changes in reading habits. The cumulative effect has been to undermine the stability of a journal that was publishing review essays by and about Kathy Acker, Raya Dunayevskaya, Marilyn Hacker, and Adrienne Rich when some of today's "third wave" feminist scholars were in kindergarten.
The Review appears monthly, except in August. The staff is "tiny," as the editor puts it: "four people, only two of us full time. The journal broke even until about 1996," says Ms. Hoffman. From a peak of 12,000 subscribers in 1992, it plunged to its current level of 5,500. Does that mean the field of women's studies is itself in decline? Susan McGee Bailey, executive director of the Centers for Women, says no. The falling circulation figures are "all about changes in reading and information-gathering options and habits," she says, "not the state of women's studies."
"Push really came to shove," says Ms. Hoffman, "as we were looking at our end-of-the-year numbers. It was pretty clear that we would continue to operate at a deficit."
During the Review's last fiscal year, which ended in June, the Wellesley Centers for Women took a number of steps to try to help put the publication back on its feet, according to Ms. Bailey. Besides paying half of the editor's salary, covering travel expenses, and providing an accountant, the Centers "had underwritten a fund-raising effort," she says, "and provided the in-kind services of our development director."
"Our hope," she says, "was that with this help, the Review could break even" for the 2004 fiscal year. "Unfortunately this didn't work and the debt increased, even with the extra support."
The prospect of reviving the journal is now a matter for brainstorming, if not exactly for optimism. Scholars in women's-studies departments "are concerned," says Ms. Hoffman, "and I've been talking to them, but at this moment I don't have any commitments."
Why not simply turn the Review into an online publication? "We're certainly considering it," says Ms. Hoffman. But the savings on printing and postage costs are not enough to offset the costs of Web design and the problem of getting subscribers and advertisers to switch to the new format.
"A lot of people I talk to are really upset at the news," says Ms. Bailey. "They tell me, 'I love The Women's Review. I used to subscribe to it.'"
She laughs, not quite happy at the contradiction. "Of course," she says, "that's exactly the problem."