Sue Armitage online interview, conducted by Elizabeth Silvas (transcript)

Armitage recalls writing for Frontiers when it was hosted at the University of Colorado Boulder and about the implications of the journal's becoming a online-only publication. Transcript (24 pages) of interview by Elizabeth Silvas with Sue Armitage, recorded March 8, 2021.

Sue Armitage, Recorded zoom interview, March 18, 2021, 11:00 am MST Interviewer: Elizabeth Silva TRANSCRIPT Keywords Bridging the academy and community Editorial collective process Accessible language Internet age Multiculturalism Summary: Dr. Sue Armitage was introduced to Frontiers in the mid 1970s when it was housed at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Although she was not yet part of the editorial collective, she published her first article with Frontiers; this article was based on her oral histories with Black women in the West. When Frontiers moved to Washington State University, she was excited to revive the Journal’s original mission of bridging the academy and community. She also aspired to work as an editor within an egalitarian editorial collective model. During the Journal’s tenure at WSU, it began a working relationship with the University of Nebraska Press. However, with the movement to internet publication, Armitage has been disappointed by a readership that no longer enjoys an issue in its entirety but rather selects specific articles based on digital word searches. During her tenure as editor, Armitage often solicited authors from the Western History and the American Studies conferences. She insisted that papers be submitted in “standard English” for accessibility purpose. When tensions arose at WSU around issues of race, she encouraged students to write about them for the journal. She is proud of the Journal’s publication record on issues and essays devoted to Latina, Indigenous and Asian American women. At the end of her tenure with the Journal, the editorial collective put together a compilation of writings in a reader called Women Writing Women. 1 Dr. Armitage Interviewer: Okay, so um, did you have any questions before we get started? Armitage: No, well, yeah, tell me you have a grant to do this or how. Interviewer: So the grant happened before I became involved. But what happened is, they did get some money through the University of Utah to collect the history of Frontiers. And so I was hired as a graduate assistant to do the interview parts. And so yeah, we're really excited. And we've had a lot of luck, so far, had a great response, everybody that was spoken to, has been very happy and excited to be part of this process. So thank you for your time and your willingness to participate. Armitage: Are you going to share the results with the Frontiers collection that's at the Bancroft Library? Interviewer: I'm pretty sure that's what they're planning to do right now. All of the interviews have been digitized and they're in the process of being transcribed. I anticipate that that's what they're going to do with the results. There's actually—they wanted to move forward on collecting histories, and there's not an exact destination of anything right now. It's just trying to collect histories while we have the funding and the opportunity to do so. And then I believe it's going to be a larger conversation on how the interviews and how the data and how the different artifacts that are found are presented to the larger public. They're still trying to figure that out right now. It was just really—the priority was collecting the interviews. 2 Armitage: Okay. The point is that the Bancroft Library already has a Frontiers collection. Correct? Interviewer: Right. Armitage: Okay. So you know about Nate. Whoever's in charge knows about that. Interviewer: Yes, our editors know about that, I believe one of our editors went to physically see the collection before the pandemic hit, and then was no longer able to gain access for the past year, but I believe there is an agenda to go back now. Armitage: Okay. That's fine, just so long as I mean, that seems like a logical addition to the existing print collections. So that's all. Obviously, editors are aware of it, it's up to you to decide what to do. Yes. My other question is, how long has Frontiers been at the University of Utah? Interviewer: I believe we're going on our third year, if I'm not mistaken. I just was pulled on in January, but I believe it moved from Ohio State in 2018. If I'm not mistaken. It might have been 2017, 2017 or 2018. Armitage: It could be I mean, I'm not. Okay. Now, for some reason, you're frozen. Is that okay? No, no, you're okay. Your perspective has changed. It's okay. Okay, yeah. Okay. All right. So do you want me to you save me that? Well, you're in charge? Go ahead, tell me what to do. 3 Interviewer: So what we have done so far, that seems to have worked the best is I've just started with the questions. And oftentimes, I don't go in order, and we just kind of go on the flow of whatever the participant would like to share. It's kind of at your discretion. And if you want to pass on any questions, of course you're at liberty to do so. So if you're okay, we'll just start with the first one. Armitage: Yeah. Interviewer: And so how and when did you become involved in Frontiers? And what was your role? Armitage: I was at the University of Colorado when Frontiers was founded in [inaudible] but and I heard you know, Betsy Jameson is a longtime friend of mine. So I heard from her in particular and from others because I knew the other editors too, what they were doing and what their point was and how much they were enjoying it and so forth and so on. But at that point, I was involved enough in other stuff so that I didn't even I don't think I even thought about joining, asking if I could join the collective. But anyway, so I had this awareness of Frontiers going back to its founding, and then in in the 1990s, in 1995, I was contacted by Jane Slaughter from UNM about whether WSU would like to have the Journal and I was very interested. My only worry was whether I could get enough squeezing of funding from my administration. Fortunately for us, I didn't have any. In fact, they were really quite generous. So I was, I was very pleased to be approached and to have the Journal and I certainly enjoyed working on it. 4 Interviewer: And at the other time the Journal was coming from the University of New Mexico? Armitage: Yes. So we must been the third place to have it. Interviewer: Yeah you were, I believe so. And then after that, I believe it went to Arizona. And then Ohio, and now it's in Utah. So it sounds like you had heard of Frontiers before. Was it a journal that you would read? Had you ever published in it prior to becoming the editor? Armitage: Yes, I did. I think actually, the first article I ever wrote, was in Frontiers. So it was based on oral histories with Black women in the West. And it was really, I think, quite a path breaking article. And that was in the first Frontiers oral history issue, which was back in the ‘70s at some point. Anyway, so yeah, I knew about the Journal. I was in touch with it over the years. My field, I guess I should say is western women's history. So Frontiers and its western orientation was the obvious place to look for publication and information and stuff. Interviewer: So you were in Colorado, although you were friends, and had colleagues who are part of the Journal, you didn't partake a whole lot until you're approached when you were in Washington? Armitage: Yes. 5 Interviewer: Were you part of any of the initial decision-making processes in kind of establishing Frontiers mission when it was initiated? Armitage: No. Interviewer: So when you moved to Washington, what were some of the goals and values that you wanted to spearhead with the Journal? Armitage: Um, basically, I wanted to imitate what it had been like at Colorado, which was the commitment to bridging the academy-community gap, which I don't think Frontiers has ever successfully done although it's tried. And the western orientation and my third thing was accessible language. We might want to get back to that later when we talk more about the changes that were happening to academic fields and how it affected Frontiers because it certainly did. My initial goal was to imitate what I understood Frontiers to be like in Colorado. I guess the most relevant thing to say, is, you know, it was a it was and still, I guess claims to have an editorial collective where there are a number of people at Colorado as I understood it, the members of the editorial collective read everything. It wasn't things weren't farmed out to specialists, or whatever it was, it was genuinely a collective process. And that was something I thought was important to try to imitate. Interviewer: I'm probably gonna skip around a little bit just based on your responses, but what was the division of labor like, when you were the editor of the Journal? 6 Armitage: Um, well, first of all, the idea of the editorial collective didn't work. The faculty members who made up the editorial board at various times and it changed a little bit were too pressed academically to have time to read everything. So that was the first thing that didn't work the way I thought it was going to. I guess like every other editorial board everywhere, we adopted the idea of – (inaudible). Let me let me back up a little bit it. There was an editorial collective, but I also, and this was where the funding from WSU really helped. I had a very strong managing editor, I forget what her title was, her assistant, and I'm not quite sure what her actual title was. The three of us made a lot of decisions on our own. The editorial board wasn't totally nonfunctioning. I ran stuff by them, but basically, I've already made whatever my decision was. So that was one main thing that I had expected would work and didn't. The second was that there really was no academic community link or bridge. I don't think Frontiers ever had a very strong subscription basis outside of academic life. It certainly didn't during the period when we had it at WSU. So those are the two things that I can think of in particular. Yeah, those are the two things. Interviewer: So when the Journal was housed at WSU, you mentioned that they were very generous. Did that generosity maintain for the entire time that you were editor of the Journal? Armitage: Yes it did. We were housed in the Women's Studies Department and the funding from the university kept up, which was great. It made a huge difference. Like, for example, I know that the people at Arizona had a much harder time squeezing funding out of their administration. This was the late ‘90s. It was a relatively tough time for universities. At least at WSU there wasn't a whole lot of surplus funding around. 7 Interviewer: When the Journal’s transition from UNM to WSU, what was that transition process like for you all? Armitage: I don't remember a whole lot of it to tell you the truth. The transition itself had the usual bumps by which I mean - what were we supposed to do for our very first issue? Where were the articles going to come from? How much did they pass on to us? Did we want to print the articles that they had sort of in their in their storage bin if you want to put it that way? There were all of those issues that had to be worked out. So that's about all that I can remember, but there was there was a managing person at UNM. I don't remember who it was. It wasn't Jane Slaughter, who I guess was editor of the Journal at that point, who worked very closely with my managing editor in the transition and there was a particular, what shall I say, an unusual aspect of this in I guess it must have been January of 1996. Just as the Journal was starting up at WSU, I disappeared for six months because I had a (inaudible) to Russia. So I left everything in the hands of Pat Hart, my managing editor, and Karen Weathermen who was sort of the co-managing editor and they worked out all the details of the transition. Interviewer: So, when the transition happened, everything at this point was paper, right? Nothing was digitized. Armitage: Nothing was digitized. Interviewer: And how long did you all house the Journal for? 8 Armitage: I think we passed it on in 2003. Interviewer: Okay. So that’s six years it sounds like. Armitage: Yeah, yeah. Interviewer: And by the time that you passed it on, do you feel like you all had made any significant changes to the Journal? Armitage: Well, changes had happened. I kept trying to make the old format work. And I should say something I'm trying to remember the origins of this. During the time that Frontiers was at WSU, I remained committed to the idea of a journal that did not just academic articles, but had art, and poetry and fiction as well. And sorry, my voice is so bad. Interviewer: If you need to grab water, feel free, we could pause it for a second. Armitage: Just a sec. Coffee, keep me going. Anyway, I don't actually remember whether that was that multi-genre format existed in Colorado or not, but in any case, I really liked it, I thought it was great. I spent a lot of time, every time when we're getting when we were getting ready for a new issue, figuring out where they should be in a journal, and how a piece of poetry or a piece of art reverberated with other things. I like that a whole lot. And that was, I think, probably the first victim of the internet age, which is that by the time we passed the Journal on, it was obvious 9 that the people who were reading the Journal or parts of it, were going online and looking for specific articles, and they didn't give a damn what else was in the issue. They wanted something very specific. So that was a major change and I couldn't do anything about it. It was the nature of the case. So that was one really huge change that occurred during the years that we had it. The very first issue that I could find, I was looking through old copies, just yesterday, started off with a joint article by a number of people that we build as being an unusual format, because it was an electronic conversation. In other words that was the first break from print. Interviewer: An electronic conversation. So like it was audio recorded? Armitage: No. They were emailing each other is what they were doing. That's what I was calling it, shows you how. So anyways, that was one change. And then there's something else that I should mention. And within the limits that were available, I think we did a pretty good job of this. WSU at that point, like a lot of universities, was an overwhelmingly white institution. And there were not very many faculty of color, and there were even fewer women faculty of color, in the humanities, so I managed to get what I think was practically all of them on the editorial board at one point or the other. It was really important to me to use the language of the time multicultural as possible. And that remained a commitment all of our time. I'm not sure that we did a very good job issue by issue but we did a lot of special issues, which were focused on different ethnic groups. We did two major Chicana issues, an Asian American issue, an Indigenous women issue. I think that was it. But I was trying very hard to give the impression or make the commitment on paper to as much ethnic, racial diversity as we as we could find. As time went on the word sort of got out that Frontiers was publishing articles by and about women 10 of color so we got some submissions that way. Interviewer: With that, I was curious, do you also feel like there was a similar commitment to queer voices, or was the focus on racial diversity at the moment? Armitage: In some fields it was pretty pioneering still, I mean, so far as I know, Frontiers is one of the first journals to run an entire issue on Asian American women. It was basically at the discovery stage, or so it felt like to me. Whether that felt the same way to members of various ethnic groups, I really don't know. The only time I can remember is we ran into trouble, in particular, with the issue on Indigenous women. To make the special issues work we relied on our guest editors to solicit materials. We didn't do a whole lot of publicity ourselves to try it. We didn't have the context to reach out to different people. But in the case of the Indigenous women, first of all, I don't think that the guest editors necessarily did a terrific job reaching out, but whatever, they ran into a lot of really basic resistance to publishing anything in a journal called Frontiers. I mean, it was just loaded at that point and probably still is a loaded western term, and, and a lot of Native women were not interested in being published there. That's the only overt resistance that I'm aware of. Interviewer: Okay, thank you for sharing that. When you all housed the Journal was there an international audience or international contributions to the Journal? Armitage: Occasionally, again, through special issues. One of the first special issues we did was on environmentalisms and feminisms, which was international, because of the contacts the guest 11 editor had with international women. But so far as I know, no, we didn't. I don't think we did much international stuff. Interviewer: So do you feel like when you all got the Journal from UNM that the purview changed at all of the audience, or the contributors from a western kind of concentration to a more diverse or international? Or do you feel like it kind of maintain the same essence? I know you mentioned that you were really looking towards Colorado and kind of the initial vision of Frontiers when you became editor? Do you feel like um, you know, the shifts between Colorado and UNM and WSU were significant at all? Armitage: Um, I think we kept up the focus on the west, partly because that's my field. And so that was a fair amount of what we published and so far as I know, even in the special issues, all the authors were living in the west, wherever their origin was. So the western focus, I mean, I was astounded when Frontiers went to Ohio, I thought, my goodness doesn't the Mississippi River account for anything anymore. But anyway. And it's important to say that this was a period of considerable turmoil and change in western history itself. It was the period in which finally western historians recognized race, recognized what the west had always really been like, and, and back then the cowboys had finally had their day. It was very contentious at the time. So there was a lot of material there that just didn't ever surface before because nobody asked the right questions. Interviewer: So when you, when you were talking about how you don't feel that Frontiers had a very strong community connection, although that was an initial mission and value, it just didn't 12 really seem to take hold in the history of Frontiers. I'm curious, when you had contributors to the Journal, was there any particular community or conference? Where the women’s studies people lived that contribute to Frontiers? Was there anything that was hosted where you were able to kind of outreach or was Frontiers established enough that you just had folks kind of submitting their work? Armitage: I went to both to the Western History Conference and to American Studies Conference every year and I solicited there, those were my basic contacts. I don't think we reached much beyond that. It depended on who submitted what. And given the frequency with which we organized special issues, it depended, in part, at least on the, on the contacts of the different guest editors. As I was mentioning earlier, like the person Noel Sturgeon who edited that environmentalism and feminisms had international contacts, but most people did not. Interviewer: So one of the questions, you know, that we've been asking is how folks think that the Journal shaped women’s, gender and sexuality studies, and I'm curious, it sounds like with your kind of your own connections, that it, it might have impacted the field of American studies, which has become a very, you know, critical field, in academia. I'm curious, you know, how you think that Frontiers interacted with, you know, either of these disciplines or even in a inter multidisciplinary way? Armitage: I think the truthful answer is I never knew how people reacted to the Journal. I don't know how to measure that kind of an impact on the readers. So I don't know what to say. I think that at least in that period, Frontiers was a place where, again, the western-oriented members say 13 of American studies, people who went to the American Studies Conferences, would look, but I always add, for example, I would go to the Berkshire Conference, that big conference on women's history. And there would be panels, where it would be Feminist Studies and Signs. Those two in particular, and often Frontiers, and it was perfectly obvious that at least nationally, Frontiers was seen as a western journal, and a lot of women just never even thought about submitting there. Probably another factor which is worth I think, mentioning and I think it was really important. This period in academic life itself in the humanities was one of real turmoil. There were French feminisms. There were issues of race and all the ones that have surfaced since then and all the old kind of symbols of the field if you want to think about it that way, were really getting questioned. For example, I mean, oral history was a great field where, you know, initially, we did interviews and never even thought about issues of (inaudible) - anyway, I guess the main point to make is that we were totally unaware of the kinds of interpersonal and ratio and other kinds of factors that were at were play in oral histories. And so the field itself was in turmoil, I would say all the humanities were really affected by all of these changes, and still are. But one of the things the front that I personally was committed to that was really out of step with what was happening is I kept insisting that Frontiers articles had to be written in sort of standard English, if you want to put it that way, instead of theoretical academic language. I never learned how to read theory very well and so I thought if there was ever going to be any kind of popular audience for Frontiers the articles themselves had to be readable and accessible. So increasingly, as you could imagine, as time went on, we did more and more editing to translate whatever theory people thought they were working with, back into standard English. So that was an important commitment of mine, but it was one that didn't, obviously didn't, certainly didn't survive when 14 the Journal moved on. I rapidly found that I didn't even understand what some of the Arizona articles were, which was my fault. I mean, I'm not I mean, that's the way the field was going, but I had not taken the time or the effort to learn how to read in that mode. So that was a really important change. Because the Arizona ones were not at all, they didn't care. I mean, you know, they were accustomed to regular academic discourse, and I was the one that was out of step. Interviewer: I think that's a really interesting point to make, though, because when we're thinking of the original mission of Frontiers, and to be somewhat of a bridge between an academic journal and Ms. Magazine, there definitely is that question of access and accessibility to the readership. It's not an unimportant thing to think about it, it definitely is kind of central when we talk about accessibility. I'm curious, how do you think that your own editorial collective shaped the Journal, and its missions or values? Armitage: It depended on what the issue was. And, again, this the special issues, the number of which were edited by members of the editorial collective, like Noel did one. I'm forgetting somebody's name. Got her last name, Dolores Neiman edited one of the Chicana issues. I just handed over those special issues to those editors, and allowed them to shape them as they thought was proper. We had almost no basic intervention in what they did, except for editing the articles that were potentially going into that special issue. For example, meet our demands for accessible language, and things like that. So I think or at least I hope that mostly through the special issues I think, but maybe in other ways, we contributed to the way academic fields were changing and becoming so much more aware of race and the complexities of gender than had been true before. 15 Interviewer: And so you mentioned how the fields of western history was kind of shifting, and humanities in general were shifting and still continues to shift. I'm curious, because we're living through a pandemic, were there any other historical moments that you think impacted, you know, society in general, or the way that the Journal was collected and distributed? Or even the articles that were included? Armitage: I don't think so. No, I think, I'm not aware. I was thinking about 9/11. But that was too late to impact what we were actually doing. Let me think. No. Interviewer: You mentioned how in Arizona, you felt like the language accessibility shifted? If you follow the Journal how have you seen it shift, since it was at WSU? Armitage: I haven't followed it. I retired in 2008. At that point, there were a number of things that I just simply stopped following and Frontiers was one of them. So I really can't say. Interviewer: And so you retired two years after the Journal left WSU. Armitage: No longer than that. The Journal left in 2003? I retired in 2008. Five years. Interviewer: Five years? So I guess I'm wondering, your purview, was it on women's history versus like, the general fields of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, which are very, very broad now. How do you think that the Journal has maybe shaped either of these fields? And 16 where do you believe that the projections of the Journal should go? Armitage: Oh, I can't answer the last question at all because, you know, I'm out of touch. I mean, I deliberately made myself out of touch. So I really can't, I can't deal with that one at all. I do feel as though, Frontiers in the years that we had it were part of the larger shift to the emphasis on the complexities of race, the commitment to intersectionality of one kind or another. And other otherwise, we would have been a very stodgy white journal, and I don't think we were. There's some things that Frontiers did that I think, are a kind of article, one kind in particular, that I really think is important that I think, well, there are a couple of things that I think got lost by the wayside. One was this notion of a journal that was not just academic articles, but had art and, and poetry and fiction, as well. So this was a mixture of stuff seemed to be important. I'm not aware that any of current journals do that. So that's one thing that got lost. And then there was a particular kind of essay that all three of us, by which I mean, myself and Karen and Pat, really like and it was personal essays that turned into larger theoretical issues, which is not an easy kind to write. It was beyond sort of standard kind of memoir-y or autobiographical kind of stuff, but really considerations of various issues this one, let me see if I can tell you about it by title. There was an article called, “Of Milk and Miracles: Nursing the Life Drive and Subjectivity,” which was just fabulous. It starts with a woman who's obviously a nursing mother and goes from there. Anyway, that kind of personal essay, which were pretty rare, was something that I don't think survives any longer and in the journals that I'm aware of. Interviewer: So that kind of, “the personal is political,” also added into theory. It's a really interesting point to make. I'll have to look at our recent issues to see if I see that anymore 17 because I also think that that is the place where many who don't identify as feminists get pulled into feminism, with the personal narrative and essays? Armitage: Yeah, yeah. Interviewer: Um, was there any like fatigue or tensions that happened during your time as editor? Armitage: Well, yeah, there were internal ones. Again, given when this was the 1990s, late 1990s, there were issues at WSU around race, and the tensions between what white academic women were accustomed to, and the very real and sometimes very loudly expressed feelings of the minuscule number of faculty women of color, about the way they were treated and perceived. That was an issue that affected me personally. I ran into trouble with several Chicano students who were convinced that I was, anyway, doesn't matter why. I personally got into trouble. So I was very aware of the issue and eager to publish whatever people were willing to say about, about that confrontation and what it meant, and there was one woman. She was Chicana. She was a student, and she wrote very openly and effectively about the way in which her fellows, her “sister students” had treated her in the kind of classroom interactions that by now everybody knows about, I think. We almost printed that article and then she withdrew it pretty much at the last minute because her male advisor told her she would hurt herself if she published it. So that was the kind of thing that I was open to and eager to publish. I was looking for that kind of volatile issue. 18 Interviewer: So you were open to tensions and conversations around controversy. You were open to making those central and part of what the Journal was publishing. Armitage: Yeah, but on the other hand, given what I was saying earlier about my own difficulties, I didn't write about that. I didn't publish that in the Journal so there were definite limits on, although I have to say in self-defense that they were sort of, I wasn't even aware of them. But so I was trying, but not hard enough. But anyway, I was trying to reflect the tensions that were going on certainly in the humanities, and perhaps throughout the university, although I have to say, most of my science colleagues seemed to be pretty oblivious that anyway. Personally, I had a wonderful time editing Frontiers. There was no tension that I was aware of between myself, and Pat, and Karen, the original trio of us. Pat did a hell of a lot of work. Much more work than I did. I was somewhat oblivious of it. But yeah, I enjoyed it, it was terrific. I mean, you know, great, feminist atmosphere. But it was three white women and so there were limits. But I enjoyed myself. Interviewer: And so I'm curious, I don't I don't know if I, if I remember to ask you this in my email conversation with you. But we're asking folks, if there's any artifact, which could include meeting notes, maybe something that didn't get published, but you think is really important to note in the history of Frontiers. Anything that you would like us to include in our compilation of history? It could be really any form of artifact that you come across that you would like to share. Please feel free to email it to me. And also, you mentioned a couple of folks that were working with you at the time. If there's anyone that you would like me to reach out to who you would like their voice captured in these oral histories, I would be happy to reach out to them. So if there's 19 any names that you would want me to consider. Armitage: The first thing that springs immediately to mind is all the art that we published. I don't have any of that. But I'm wondering whether the person who did the who found the art throughout the whole time. Jo Hockenhull is here in Oregon, and I will ask her if she has anything and if she has, I'll send it to you. I think it would be very valuable to reach out to the managing editor whose name is Pat Hart. Her email is [e-mail]. Interviewer: And what is her position? Is she a faculty? Armitage: She's retired faculty. She was chair of the Communication Department. Interviewer: Awesome. Thank you, I will definitely get in touch with her. You're the first person that we have interviewed from WSU. So I would love to have another interview from somebody from there. Armitage: Yeah, I think she's the person you really want because she did a hell of a lot of work. Some of the articles that we published or wanted to publish, or at least by Pat standards, not very well written. She did some extremely heavy editing. I think good editing too, you know, to bring out the argument that the writer was making beyond the call of what I would think would be usual managing editor responsibilities. So yeah, you'd be very interested to, I think she will make an important contribution. I'll let her know that you'll be in touch with her. 20 Interviewer: Okay, thank you so much. And then is there anything that you wanted to add any question that you wanted to go deeper with or anything that you just want on record? Armitage: Just a sec, let me look at my notes which are on the floor. I'll be right back. Interviewer: No worries. Take your time. Armitage: Let’s see. I want to mention one thing, we get a bunch of special compilations. They were called Frontiers readers. Here's an example. This is one that I particularly like. Pat and Karen really worked on this one. It's called “Women Writing Women.” Um, it was a collection of some of the best of the articles that we published on that very topic. We did a bunch of these and I don't know whether anybody ever bought any or whether they were successful. But that was one thing in addition to all the regular everyday kind of stuff, we were compiling these special issues. So that was an important thing to do. Interviewer: And can you clarify for me really quickly, the difference between a reader and a special issue? Were they the same thing? Armitage: No, no, because especially as you went out to everybody who subscribed to the Journal and was put online and so forth, and so on. These were compilations of articles that had been in various issues of the Journal. I think it must have been Nebraska. I don't know who was publishing then. We went through several publishers. Nebraska thought they would sell. So for example, if you went to a conference, you might see a regular issue of Frontiers, and then you 21 might see one of these readers. I don't know whether anybody ever bought any. This one in particular, the "Women Writing Women” was just I just thought a terrific issue. And I wish it had seen large circulation. That was the other thing I have to say, it may not matter anymore. Financially Frontiers was always in terms of subscriptions always on edge. That’s not an issue anymore because everything is online, but we were worried about who wasn't reading the Journal. There wasn't much we could do about it. So but that was that was an issue for us. Interviewer: Do you mind talking a little bit really quickly? I know we're over time. But if you have a moment to go over what you or clarify a little bit for me, how you all went through different publishers. Was that just for the readers? Or was that for the Journal in general? Armitage: It was for the Journal in general, we started out, I think, we were at University of Colorado Press when we when we first had the Journal, and then for a while we went to our in house publisher, which was the WSU press. Then we ended up at Nebraska. And to tell you the truth, I cannot remember why. I know it was a very hard time for university publishers. Practically everybody had their own press and very few of them do anymore. So it must have been financial, but I don't know what the details were. You'd have to ask Pat. That's the kind of thing she would know and I just don't. Interviewer: So but it was um at WSU that we got officially connected with Nebraska Press and we've been with them since so. It was a good decision. Armitage: Yeah. Yeah. We liked working with Nebraska. I don't remember the details of this. 22 There was a very elaborate system by which some kind of groups, I can’t even remember how it worked. Somehow, these larger groups, whatever they were, had a bunch of subscriptions that I can't remember the details of the interface between these subscription services and the university libraries. Um, but that collapsed while we were doing the Journal. So that was a problem. But again, ask Pat, because I really don't know. Overall, I want to say is I looked over these past, the years that we had and the past issues, I was really very pleased. I found a lot of stuff I really liked. And I remember publishing, and I remembered being pleased that we were publishing it. So it was a very good five or six years for me. I really enjoyed it and I'm delighted that Frontiers still survives because I wasn't at all sure that they would. Is there an international audience now? Interviewer: I believe so. I haven't really gotten into the technical aspects of the Journal, but Frontiers is doing very well. We have great support. We have what's called the School for Cultural and Social Transformation, which houses ethnic studies, gender studies and disability studies at the University of Utah. We just have some really great support and some really dedicated faculty who are heading the Journal. So I feel like it's in a really fantastic place. And it's been phenomenal just hearing the stories and the history of the Journal from the different editors. I've been very privileged to be part of this project. Armitage: We're glad you were. Yeah. Well, this has been fun. I really enjoyed it. Interviewer: Thank you so much. If there's anything you want to add or anything that you feel like later, you just want to email me and say, you know, Liz, I forgot to talk to you about this, please feel free. And I will definitely be in contact with Pat. 23 Armitage: Yeah, please do. Okay, good enough. Interviewer: Thank you so much for your time. Great to meet you. Armitage: Bye. End of audio. 24