In this special issue we invite submissions to explore aspects of what can be called "The Dyke 90s". The Dyke 90s can be considered a golden age of lesbian culture before urban centers became unaffordable, or when a generation of young dykes could live on the same block as their girlfriend and their ex.

This was a period during which zines and magazines, free open mics, punk dyke activist bands, and early engagement with the World Wide Web revolutionized queer writing, art, and activism. A new generation of lesbians were reacting against the essentialism and anti-sex attitudes of second wave feminism in the 1970s and were informed by the onset of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. These contexts led lesbians to create new forms of desire and affect, different sexual norms and practices, emergent activist efforts like the Dyke March, the Lesbian Avengers, and Dyke Action Machine, and coalitional projects with groups like Queer Nation. And, while regional identifications like lesbian chic, lipstick lesbian, and “boi” emerged during this time, it would take several years for lesbian representation to achieve mainstream significance. Dyke/queer figures of the 90s clearly shape the hyper lesbian representations of today’s sapphic-pop and the emergent “lesbian renaissance” of the last decade.

In this special issue, we seek interdisciplinary submissions that provide historical case studies, sociological accounts, literary analyses, and artistic, historical, filmic, and media studies of dyke/lesbian/queer+ /culture in the 1990s. We invite contributions that analyze numerous and eclectic configurations of lesbian culture in the 1990s situated across various geographic, class, race, and gendered contexts.

Print ISSN: 1089-4160 Online ISSN: 1540-3548

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