Guest editors: Sandrine Bergès and Alan Coffee

While the enslaved had always fought their condition, and a few isolated philosophers wrote against slavery, the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century saw the birth of a new way of resisting it: the social movement of abolitionism.
Abolitionism started as a grass root movement, led and encouraged by individuals who spread the word via pamphlets, speeches, plays, stories, and poems denouncing the horrors of the slave trade and slavery to the general public. These texts gave birth to petitions, which were presented to governments in support of the goals of the movement. These productions represent a significant moment in political thought, galvanising people to rise against an injustice that they felt did not immediately concern them and to persist until they thought that injustice was erased.
While scholarly attention has often focused on male abolitionists, such as William Wilberforece or William Lloyd Garrison, in this issue we highlight the contributions of women to the abolitionist movement, for instance by Olympe de Gouges, Germaine de Stael, Hannah More, Elizabeth Heyrick, Mary Prince, Frances Wright, Sojourner Truth, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Maria Stewart, Harriet Jacobs, Angelina Grimké and Lydia Maria Child. We encourage contributions on these or other women authors on any aspects of their work towards the abolition of slavery.

Submissions should be between 6500 and 10000 words (including note and bibliography) and conform with the journal’s style guidelinesand be submitted here no later than 30 March 2027.

Articles for publication in the Journal of the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists can be submitted online through Editorial Manager. To submit an article, click here.
For more details on online submission, please visit our EM Support page.

Download Author Instructions (PDF).

For questions, do not hesitate to contact the editors-in-chief, Ruth Edith Hagengruber ruth.hagengruber@upb.de and Karen A.H. Green karen.green@unimelb.edu.au.