General Introduction
Linda Kealey, Katherine Side and Annalee Lepp, editors

Continuing our tradition of "themed" special issues for our spring number, the editors welcome you to this dual themed special issue for 2008 featuring two clusters: "Digital Fem inism s" and "W omen, Health and Education." The first of these, "Digital Fem inism s," is guest-edited by Sheila Petty of the University of Regina and Barbara Crow of York University. These scholars are interested in the new technologies and how feminist scholarship/practice has taken up the challenges presented by the new m edia. Petty and Crow acknowledge that "our project forced us to ponder our intellectual and political relationship to digital technologies and feminism." Thus the interview and six essays in this cluster explore the different ways that these technologies mediate women's bodies. Readers will find a number of "conversations" that engage with com plex issues, such as the possibilities of collaboration for fem inist work in digital technologies, the interrogation of the concept of the "digital divide," disability and gender activism through film and video and the potential and lim its of blogging on the Internet. These pieces open up interesting research questions and prompt us to ask how these technologies can be linked to social change.
Our second cluster, on "W om en, Health and Education," guest-edited by Diana Gustafson of Mem orial University of Newfoundland, features five articles that explore political indicators related to health and education status. Invoking the work of Dorothy Sm ith, Gustafson views these essays as helping us to understand the political relevance of wom en's and girls' health and education and the disjuncture that occurs between lived bodily experience and the local and translocal texts that organize our ways of knowing; the latter include, for example, textbooks used in our local schools or various, translocal policy docum ents and discourses produced by government, the media, professional organizations and others. In

effect, these regulate, lim it or contain potential action. Thus, according to Gustafson, it is im portant that scholars m ake the process of knowledge production transparent.
These two clusters reveal som e very exciting feminist work that is re-assessing "ways of knowing." Both clusters invite readers to think about social change whether through new media or by careful attention to how knowledge is produced and for whom. Readers will also find book reviews that touch on the them es analyzed in the "Digital Fem inism s" and "W omen, Health and Education." W e invite you to dig in and read. Thanks also to Nell Tenhaaf for the cover photograph that showcases students working on an interactive digital project.
The editors would like to announce that Atlantis is introducing a new book review policy. Due to funding and space considerations as well as in the interests of much wider dissemination, book reviews will now be published either in print or online. At the tim e of publication of each print issue, the book review editor in consultation with the m anaging editor of the journal will decide where subm itted book reviews will appear and determine the appropriate number of reviews to be published online. Book reviews linked thematically to the print issue articles and topics will be given print publication preference. Reviews published online will be released sim ultaneously with those appearing in print and hence, online reviews will be linked to a specific Atlantis issue. A 'tag line' will be included in the print edition, directing readers to the website for additional reviews. This is an exciting opportunity to use existing technologies to broaden awareness of the important work being done by feminist scholars both inside and outside of Canada.
Finally, readers can be assured that all material published by Atlantis, either online or on paper, is required to m eet the sam e rigorous standards of quality.

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 32.2, 2008

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