Canada’s oldest feminist magazine is now available online to researchers, thanks to the Vancouver Status of Women Society (VSW), and UBC Library’s Humanities & Social Sciences department and Digital Initiatives unit.
Kinesis: News about women that is not in the dailies was established in 1974 by the VSW. It served as a vehicle for social change and women’s liberation for 27 years. Kinesis was published ten times a year until 2001, making it the longest running feminist periodical in Canada. In 2001, the newspaper had to shutdown, largely due to budget cuts and staff turnover.
Cover of Kinesis, December/January 1997 issue.
Cover of Kinesis, 1977.
In its heyday, Kinesis was a forum for the expression of diverse feminist voices and perspectives from local, national and international women’s movements. Kinesis worked actively to combat oppression including sexism, racism, homophobia and other forms of marginalization. The newspaper was edited by a succession of women editors who brought their own vision, skills, and feminist perspectives.
“Kinesis is an excellent resource for those who teach, work and organize on feminism, social movement, Indigeneity, social policy, history, critical race, sociology, journalism, queerness, and intersectionality,” says Benita Bunjun, a UBC professor who teaches in the UBC Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ).
268 issues – totaling almost 9,000 pages – were recently digitized by UBC Library. The publication has been used extensively in recent years, particularly in coursework for GRSJ. With Kinesis openly available online through the Library, the publication is now accessible to scholars and researchers around the world.
“We hope that the academic and activists communities will draw on this digitized archive,” says Bunjun.
The collection is now available online in UBC Library’s digital collections.
An official launch celebrating the digitization of the publication is forthcoming.
For questions about the project, contact Bronwen Sprout, Digital Initiatives Coordinator, at bronwen.spout@ubc.ca.
Wonderful!! I used hard copies of Kinesis for my research on it and other feminist publications. See Barbara M. Freeman, Beyond Bylines (2011), chapter 6 and my chapter in the anthology Alternative Journalism in Canada (2012). So glad it will be so easily available to other researchers. There is a lot there to be studied. Please let me know the official launch date.