Historic feminist journal finds new home in HArCS

It was born in 1982, two years before ASU’s West campus was established. Today, the groundbreaking feminist journal Trivia: Voices of Feminism is under the editorial leadership of professors in the campus’s core college.

Monica J. Casper and Julie Amparano, faculty members in New College’s Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, are the new editors of Trivia. Casper and Amparano will receive assistance from an editorial board of HArCS faculty.

Faculty members Monica J. Casper (left) and Julie Amparano felt compelled to rescue Trivia from potential extinction and were willing to put in the work required to serve as editors. Several New College colleagues agreed to serve as editorial board members.

In its early days as a print journal, Trivia published the writings of major figures in the feminist movement, including Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Gloria Anzaldúa, Paula Gunn Allen, and Luce Irigaray. More recently Trivia transitioned to an online format. The threat of its demise prompted action from New College.

“When I heard that Trivia was perilously close to folding for lack of a new editorial team, I knew we had to do something,” Casper says. “Trivia has been part of the women’s movement for decades. It documents social history and political thought as well as provocative writing. We couldn’t let it die, and my HArCS colleagues were eager to help.”

Support for the endeavor extends to the top of the division. “Given the exciting work in which our faculty are engaged with regard to feminist thought and the interdisciplinary ‘crossroads’ of knowledge, New College seems like an ideal home to Trivia,” says Marlene Tromp, who recently joined New College as HArCs director. “We welcome this opportunity to host a site of intellectual dialogue.”

Trivia’s new editors also are receiving assistance from New College’s Center for Critical Inquiry and Cultural Studies, as well as the staff of Fletcher Library on the West campus. Library Director Dennis Isbell explains that being indexed is a critical step for a journal, and he and colleague Juliann Couture from Hayden Library at Tempe are now working to identify a service that will agree to index Trivia.

“Until a journal is indexed, its contents are hidden to potential readers,” Isbell says. “No matter how valuable or useful an article in that journal may be, it’s very difficult to find. When an indexing service picks up a journal title and indexes the contents, those contents become available to everyone who has access to the index.”

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