Sustaining a Feminist Periodical: Economic Print Ephemera in Heresies

ABSTRACT This article is a case study of the economic ephemera of Heresies, a feminist periodical produced by feminist art workers based in New York from 1977 to 1993. Inspired by recent scholarship in periodical and print culture studies that emphasise the value of print ephemera and under-examined ‘back matter’, we consider Heresies’ advertisements and subscription forms as symbolically rich artifacts that allow us to address and understand the implications of the magazine’s perennial struggle to stay financially afloat. This was a struggle complicated by an editorial collective’s suspicion – and indeed, sometimes-outright rejection – of traditional capitalist marketing practices. The pressure of funding a magazine without compromising anti-capitalist and anti-commodity political commitments was felt hard by Heresies, which was, like so many feminist periodicals produced in the 1970s and 1980s, largely volunteer-run, underfunded, and beholden to grants, gifts, generosity, and discounts. Archival records of Heresies’ budgetary woes are sparse; advertisements and subscription forms reveal the magazine’s orientation to its audiences and its political commitments. This article explores what advertisements and subscription forms, and more generally the economic ephemera of the magazines’ front and back matter, reveal about the culture of this specific periodical and the networks that supported it and that it sustained.