Abolition Feminisms

Developed by Lachrista Greco, M.A., MLIS and Amelia Teske, GWSL student employee
Office of The Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian
University of Wisconsin System
2022

This bibliography is number 103d in the series “Sustaining Hope: Feminisms, Freedom, and the Future – A set of bibliographies supporting the 2023 Conference of the UW-System Women’s and Gender Studies Consortium” published by the University of Wisconsin System Office of the Gender and Women’s Studies Librarian. Many thanks to India-Bleu Niehoff for her assistance with this guide.

Introduction

Abolition feminism opens a space for transformative interventions in the current criminal justice system. In keeping with the conference theme of “hope,” community projects rooted in abolitionist feminism show us how to imagine a new world where communities are strengthened, and carcerality (in all ways) is abolished. It asks us to dismantle structures and institutions of oppression, and focus on community and collective care. At the forefront of this work are Black and Indigenous activists, feminists, and scholars. In this bibliography, we highlight the promise and unknowability of this movement for collective liberation, and community-based efforts to resist what Mimi Kim describes as “the carceral creep.” As scholars of radical hope, such as Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie, demonstrate, hope is a central thread exposing both the precarity and strategic impulses driving abolition feminism, mapping out a social movement that relies on histories of cross-movement solidarities, but also uncertainty about the final endpoint. This bibliography includes resources that explore this deeply intersectional history and the overlap with women of color feminisms, and other movements focused on transformative justice and the elimination of gender-based violence.