By Shereen Essof and Patricia Ardón
This article explores the meaning, significance, and specific practices of feminist pedagogy of the Alquimia Feminist Leadership Schools. It shows how these schools, convened JASS Mesoamerica and nurtured from the experience of JASS globally, contribute to strengthening movements and movement leaders (largely indigenous and rural land defenders). It examines how Alquimia creates safe spaces and uses feminist popular education to challenge and transform aspects of power that marginalize, demean, and threaten women and their communities, while catalyzing imagination and action for long-term social justice and change agendas.
Originally published in the 50th edition of Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ) in The Feminist Press. WSQ:50! critically reflects on the legacy of the longest-running feminist scholarly journal, tracing the history of the journal in conversation with other knowledge and activist projects and interdisciplinary fields, revisiting key pieces of writing from the past fifty years, and considering WSQ within the broad institutionalization of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
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