History of the journal

The magazine began publishing in 2005 and is named after Melibea, the central character of La Celestina, a famous dialogued novel from 1499 attributed to Fernando de Rojas, which defends the freedom of being a woman who loves and enjoys life according to her own choices. Dr. Joseph Thomas Snow (Michigan State University, USA), one of its honorary editors, refers to them. In the "presentation" of Volume I (2005), he states: "She is the first woman in medieval Spanish literature to fully understand who she is as a woman, who breaks the molds of the prototypical "well-kept" daughter and rebels against the suffocating patriarchal norms established both in her fictional world and in the real world in which she "lived."
Although medieval women were initially the focus of her interest, current cultural, social, and ideological changes have broadened the focus of attention, and today the Journal has become a space for visibility, reflection, and debate on real and fictional women who, in different spheres, with their voices and silences, acted and challenged hegemonic spaces of domination, power, and agency. From these founding concerns, Melibea has expanded her inter- and multidisciplinary studies of the feminine universe to studies of Gender, feminisms, masculinities, and dissidence.
In each case, the studies presented promote and develop critical approaches to these themes and problems, which, anchored in different societies and time frames, are linked to traditions, their projections, tensions, and resistance.
The research focuses primarily on aspects and biases of women's social, political, literary, cultural, religious, mythical, legal, and economic life—among others—that challenge knowledge and reading pacts with works and diverse documentary sources—written, oral, testimonial, iconographic, and from a wide variety of media—which invite university administrators, teachers, and researchers, above all, to revisit cultural and academic matrices and reconstruct them in order to teach them with gender equity. Initially, Melibea was a print journal, but changing user needs and interests led to its conversion to digital format, including issues 9 through 13. Since 2017, Melibea has published two issues per year—in July and December—in electronic format, and has been available in the OJS system since 2023.
The International Scientific Committee is made up of prestigious researchers whose knowledge underpins the topics addressed. Melibea also promotes the publication of studies by researchers-in-training whose sensitivity and knowledge enable them to produce challenging and original works.
Since its inception, Melibea has worked closely with the Interdisciplinary Center for Women's Studies (CIEM), the first research center on the feminine universe at the National University of Cuyo (Mendoza, Argentina). Initially, it primarily published research by its members, along with research accepted and presented at the now-classic Interdisciplinary Conference on Women's Studies and the International Conference on Medieval Women. Furthermore, Revista Melibea has recently expanded its production and readership horizons as it also works with the International Multidisciplinary Network on Gender Studies (RIMEG) of the same university in co-foundation with the University of Seville, the State University of Bahia, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the University of Cantabria, the University of Rome, the University of Córdoba (Argentina), and the National University of Río Cuarto.