Updated January 2025

Feminist German Studies Mission

Submissions to FGS should directly address the mission of the journal to publish intersectional feminist work (see the main page of this site for more detailed information).

FGS is committed to anti-racist feminism. This entails mitigating the violence and discriminatory potential of language and creating an inclusive scholarly space that challenges white supremacy. We encourage authors submitting to the journal to

• engage in feminist anti-racist citation practices,
• acknowledge and highlight the work of junior scholars, BIPOC Scholars, and scholars in more vulnerable positions (e.g., contingent faculty and independent scholars),
• and disrupt and decenter traditional “Western/white,” heteronormative, and ableist academic knowledge production.

Submission Requirements

You will submit two Word documents as attachments by email:

1. 1. The manuscript (with title and abstract) prepared for anonymous review.
   2. Article and author information including the title of your submission; your name, institutional affiliation and contact information; abstract (no more than 150w); and bio (no more than 100w).

Please do not send PDFs or links to online documents.

Please prepare your manuscript for anonymous review. This means that no revealing information should be included in the manuscript itself, including in-text references, notes, and citations.

Manuscript Formatting

General Formatting Requirements

• Your article must not exceed 10,000 words including the endnotes and Works Cited.
• Submissions should be shared as Word documents (do not submit PDFs or share links for online documents).
• Use US paper size (8.5 x 11″) with 1-inch margins all around.
• Use Times New Roman, 12-point font, double-spaced throughout (including block quotations, notes, and works cited).
• Please do not use the Word “Heading” formatting in the document. If you use these for navigation while you are drafting, please remove the formatting before submitting.
• Paragraph formatting should be set to 0 pt spacing before and after (do not include automatic spacing before or after paragraphs).
• Use standard Word document formatting for 0.5″ tab spacing (do not customize tab spacing or block quotation indentation).
• Insert page numbers in bottom right corner of the footer starting on the first page with 1 (also in Times New Roman, 12-point font).
• The final article should be organized as follows: title, author’s name*, abstract, article, bio*, notes, works cited.
  *Author’s name and bio should be added to the article document after anonymous review.
• Please do not include automatically generated Works Cited lists. If you use an external tool to create your Works Cited, paste the list into the document directly without any block foramatting from the citation tool.
• Create a continuous “section break” before the Works Cited [Insert > Break > Section Break (Continuous)]. This will enable Word to automatically place the endnotes between the body of the article and the works cited.

Notes

• Use endnotes not footnotes.
• Place note markers at the ends of sentences, consolidating multiple notes within one sentence as necessary.
• Use Word’s automatic endnote function to insert notes at “End of the section” (not at “End of the document”). This will place endnotes before the Works Cited as noted above.
• Notes should be regular numerals (1, 2, 3… not i, ii, iii…).
• Notes are for additional information, not citation information. Use parenthetical citation throughout per MLA guidelines.
• Discursive notes should only be included if necessary and should be concise.
• All works mentioned in the notes must be included in the Works Cited. Quotations included in notes should have a parenthetical citation to indicate the source.
• Give only the author’s last name for sources referenced in notes; do not include source information or titles (unless you have multiple works by the same author in the Works Cited).

Translations

Feminist German Studies is an English-language publication. All articles will be published in English. The editors will review submissions in German but authors must translate their work into English prior to peer review. Authors are responsible for all translations of/in their work.

Note: While information in this section refers specifically to translating German language for efficiency, these guidelines apply to any non-English language included in submissions.

General Rules

• Translate all German into English for use in the main text.
• If there is a published translation of a source, please use it for quotations (unless your translation differs from the published translation in important ways).
• If you are using a published English translation do not include the German original source in the Works Cited (unless you also cite or reference the German source).
• German source titles in the Works Cited do not need to be translated.

Translating German Titles in the Text

• For titles mentioned in the article text, give the German original title first and the English translation in parenthesis after the date of the publication on the first mention.
• If you are translating the title yourself, give the English translation in normal font (not italics) with only the first word capitalized. For shorter works, quotation marks are also not needed in the parenthetical translation.
  Examples: Wir Alpha-Mädchen (2008; We alpha-girls) or “Die fleißige und mitleidige Hausfrau” (1828; The kind and diligent housewife).
• For the title of a German work with a published English translation, include the published English title in italics (or in quotation marks for shorter works) with title capitalization and the date of the translation’s publication (or release in English in the case of a film).
  Examples: Das kunstsidene Mädchen (1932; The Artificial Silk Girl, 1933) or “Die Reisegefährten” (1901; “The Traveling Companions,” 1986)
• If you are mentioning German sources with multiple published English translations and the specific translation is not relevant you can a) follow the title formatting for published translations and give the date of the first English translation, or b) follow the title formatting for unpublished translations without a date.
• Use the German title throughout the article (even if a published English translation exists). Only provide the English translation on the first mention.

German Quotations

• For published translations, parenthetical citations go in the text with the quotation.
• If you are using a published translation, do not include the original German in a note.
• If you are translating quotations yourself, include the original German text in the endnote.
• In the note with the first translation, please indicate that the translations are your own (such as “All English translations are mine unless otherwise indicated”).
• For your own translations, parenthetical citations and page numbers should be included in the notes with the original German, not in the body of the article with the translated text.

German Language in the Article Text

• Only include words or phrases from original German quotations in the main text if you need the German original for your analysis or to make a point.
• Set all German terms in italics, except for proper nouns (e.g., Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) and terms that can be found and are not italicized in an English dictionary.
• If a German term needs to be italicized but is used many times in an article, you can italicize at the first mention and set the term in roman type thereafter.

Text Mechanics

• Use the MLA Handbook, 9th ed., as your style guide.
• Use the serial (Oxford) comma.
• The press prefers the open punctuation style; please delete commas following short introductory phrases.
• Names should be written out in full (first and last, middle if commonly used) on the first use and then only the last name should be used in the rest of the article.
• Use ‘s following a proper name ending in s to indicate possession (e.g., Simmons’s).
• Spell out United States where it occurs as a noun but abbreviate as US without periods where it occurs as an adjective (e.g., US population).
• When using ellipses to indicate that you omitted part of the original text in a quotation, put the ellipses in brackets, as so: […].
  *Note that FGS differs from the 9th edition of the MLA in this point.
• Spell out numbers according to MLA 2.126-2.139.
• Use that instead of which for restrictive clauses.
• Put dates in the day-month-year order in the main text and in the works cited: 9 November 1989. In the works cited abbreviate month names longer than 4 letters: 9 Nov. 1989
• In its commitment to anti-racism, FGS uses Black (capitalized), Brown (capitalized), and white (lowercase) when referring to race.

Citations and Works Cited

Quotations and In-Text Citations

• Quotations four lines or fewer in length should be set in double quotation marks (with any internally quoted text in single quotation marks).
• Quotations longer than four lines should be indented by 0.5″; please use the Word indent function (do not drag the text in the ruler bar or individually tab lines of the quotation).
• Use parenthetical citations in the text unless you are using your own translation (see notes above).
• Parenthetical citations should include the author’s last name and page number (or range) without a comma.
  Example: (Ahmed 117–18).
• If the Works Cited includes multiple sources by the same author, the parenthetical in-text citation should include the author’s name, a comma, and an abbreviated title (in italics or quotation marks per the source) and then the page number (or range). Do not include a comma between the title and the page number (s).
  Example: (Ahmed, Differences 117–18).
• The abbreviation “et al.” is used only in parenthetical citations when a work has four or more authors. List all names in the works cited entry.
• The final punctuation for a quotation should be included after the parenthetical citation except for block quotations.
• Place parenthetical citations in the text where it creates the least possible interruption (preferably at end of sentence).
• Avoid using citations from secondary sources whenever possible (such as “Butler quoted in Hill”); go to the original.

Works Cited

NOTE: The Works Cited must include all sources cited or referred to in the article text and in the notes and only those sources (do not include extraneous sources or works consulted but not cited). Please carefully crosscheck your works cited with your article.

• Follow source formatting guidelines from the MLA Handbook 9th edition.
• The Works Cited should be double spaced (with no additional automatic paragraph spacing before or after paragraphs) and formatted with a hanging indent (by 0.5″).
  NOTE: Please use Word hanging indent formatting. Do not manually return and tab lines in the Works Cited.
• Shorten the publisher’s name following the guidelines found in MLA 5.65.
  Examples: Stanford UP; U of Nebraska P; UP of Mississippi.
• Abbreviate inclusive numbers according to MLA 2.139; ex. 115–32 (not 115-132).
• URLs should be included for sources accessed online. Do not include access dates with URLs. Begin URLs with www. or https:// if there is no www. (do not include both).
• Citation information goes in order of the following:

1. 1. 1. Author.
      2. Title of source.
      3. Title of container,
      4. Other contributors (translators or editors),
      5. Version (edition),
      6. Number (vol. and/or no.),
      7. Publisher,
      8. Publication date,
      9. Locating details (pages, URL).

Examples

Ahmed, Sara. The Promise of Happiness. Duke UP, 2010.

Andreotti, Vanessa de Oliveira, Sharon Stein, Cash Ahenakew, and Dallas Hunt. “Mapping Interpretations of Decolonization in the Context of Higher Education.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 4, no. 1, 2015, pp. 21–­40.

Braidotti, Rosi. “Four Theses on Posthuman Feminism.” Anthropocene Feminism, edited by Richard Grusin, U of Minnesota P, 2017, pp. 21–48.

Cassella, Megan. “The Pandemic Drove Women Out of the Workforce: Will They Come Back?” Politico, 22 July 2021, www.politico.com/news/2021/07/22/coronavirus-pandemic-women-workforce-500329.

Images & Figures

General Requirements

Authors who would like to to include images or figures are solely responsible for securing publication rights or permissions and any related fees or expenses.

To include images authors must provide:

1. 1. Image files with a minimum resolution of 300ppi.
   2. Documentation of publication permission or Creative Commons license.
   3. Image / figure caption information.
   4. Alternative text (alt text) of no more than 125 characters including spaces for each image (see details below).

Alternative Text Requirements

Adapted from the University of Nebraska Press Alternative Text guidelines.

University of Nebraska Press (UNP) requires that alternative text (alt text) be provided for each image / figure.

Alt text is limited to 125 characters per image including spaces. Alt text may not contain HTML/XML control characters (<, >, &, “, ‘).

Alt text should present the content and function of the image and should be concise.

To be useful, alt text should

• Accurately describe the content of the image.
• Be succinct. All description is partial but should not omit key information.
• Not refer to the fact that it is describing an image (e.g., do not use “image of …”). The screen reader will communicate to users that you are referring to an image.

UNP recommends the University of Michigan alt text guide for further details and examples.