''Social Text'' is an

academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...

published by

Duke University Press Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 D ...

. Since its inception by an independent editorial collective in 1979, ''Social Text'' has addressed a wide range of social and cultural phenomena, covering questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment. Each issue covers subjects in the debates around

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

Marxism Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectical ...

, neoliberalism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, queer theory, and

popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...

. The journal has since been run by different collectives over the years, mostly based at New York City universities. It has maintained an avowedly progressive political orientation and scholarship over these years, if also a less Marxist one. Since 1992, it is published by Duke University Press. The journal gained notoriety in 1996 for the Sokal affair, when it published a nonsensical article that physicist

Alan Sokal Alan David Sokal (; born January 24, 1955) is an American professor of mathematics at University College London and professor emeritus of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. He is a critic of postmo ...

had deliberately written as a hoax. The editors of the journal were awarded the 1996

Ig Nobel Prize The Ig Nobel Prize ( ) is a satiric prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name o ...

for literature by "eagerly publishing research that they could not understand, that the author said was meaningless, and which claimed that reality does not exist". The journal did not practice academic

peer review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

, and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.

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* Cultural journals Critical theory Duke University Press academic journals Publications established in 1979 Quarterly journals English-language journals {{critical-theory-stub

See also

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