In interdisciplinary feminist scholarship, intersectionality has been a primary framework for thinking about multiple identities and the interconnectedness of various systems of oppression in women’s lives. This article suggests that to understand this multiplicity more effectively, feminist social work scholars need to develop and use a continuum of different theorizations of intersectionality, with various epistemological bases, that can be strategically applied, depending on the goals of a particular project or practice context. To articulate the experience of diverse groups of women throughout the world, these paradigms must go beyond the usual triumvirate of U.S.-based race, class, and gender to include migration, colonization, sexuality, ability, and other processes of oppression and identity. Drawing on postcolonial, queer, and transnational feminist perspectives, the article offers queer diasporic scholarship as an example of an interdisciplinary approach for conceptualizing the multiplicity of queer South Asian women’s experiences.

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In 2013, the Violence Against Women Act became one of the first federal laws to explicitly prohibit discrimination against transgender people, yet little is known about its impact in practice. This qualitative study draws on in-depth interviews with transgender people working in domestic and sexual violence advocacy organizations. Building on critical and intersectional perspectives, the findings suggest that the persistence of inequities for trans survivors are tied to the reliance on criminal legal responses, contingent access to gender-specific services, compliance-focused approaches to inclusion, operating theories of gender-based violence, and the diversion of responsibility to LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) programs. This study highlights the participants’ recommendations for change.

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This essay is a reflexive account of my experience of teaching a social justice course during the pandemic. Specifically, I reflect on how centering a pedagogy of care within the course provided a framework for me to be responsive to student needs while also disrupting dominant culture and neoliberal forces in academia. In particular, I highlight sharing power and co-creating meaning, community care, and use of creativity and mindfulness as disruptions to dominant paradigms that I employed in my class that were impactful in the context of the pandemic. I also reflect on how this pedagogical praxis of care has been an instructive and anchoring experience for me as an educator and will impact my teaching going forward.

Expediency, efficiency, and rapid production within compressed time frames represent markers for research and scholarship within the neoliberal academe. Scholars who wish to resist these practices of knowledge production have articulated the need for Slow scholarship—a slower pace to make room for thinking, creativity, and useful knowledge. While these calls are important for drawing attention to the costs and problems of the neoliberal academy, many scholars have moved beyond “slow” as being uniquely referencing pace and duration, by calling for the different conceptualizations of time, space, and knowing. Guided by post-structural feminisms, we engaged in a research project that moved at the pace of trust in the integrity of our ideas and relationships. Our case study aimed to better understand the ways macro forces such as neoliberalism, criminalization and professionalization shape domestic violence work. This article discusses our praxis of Slow scholarship by showcasing four specific key markers of Slow scholarship in our research; time reimagined, a relational ontology, moving inside and towards complexity, and embodiment. We discuss how Slow scholarship complicates how we understand constructs of productivity and knowledge production, as well as map the ways Slow scholarship offers a praxis of resistance for generating power from the epistemic margins within social work and the neoliberal academy.

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