Interstitial Intermediaries: A Letter from Kira Kull & Jasmyne D. Gilbert, Senior Editors of The Mythological Studies Journal

The Mythological Studies Journal is an entirely student run publication that emerged out of a desire to share some of the scholarship that comes directly from students’ coursework in the Mythological Studies Program at PGI. The journal has evolved through the years and currently follows the rhythm of an annual publication cycle spearheaded by rotating Co-Senior Editors, typically one second- and one third-year student in the Myth program. Submissions are accepted from students in coursework and dissertation and peer reviewed by a team of volunteers currently active within the program, as well. The 2025 cycle will open for submissions later this spring. The 2024 Mythological Studies Journal (Volume XII) is now available to read online and in print! For more information, visit the Mythological Studies Program: https://loom.ly/JACScME

A Letter from Kira Kull & Jasmyne D. Gilbert, Senior Editors of The Mythological Studies Journal

We chose the theme Interstitial Intermediaries out of our mutual inclination towards liminality. It explores the complexities of a threshold crossing, not only for the figures, archetypes, and ideas presented in these pieces, but for the Pacifica Myth community, the authors themselves, and our readers, too. With Pluto, the planet associated with the underworld, change, death, and transformation making its final shift into a new sign, Aquarius, after nearly fifteen years in Capricorn, the many twists and turns of 2024 have left shockwaves impacting each of us, collectively and personally. Within our Myth department, this year welcomes a tremendous shift in schedule, welcoming the first cohort who will experience a summer break in lieu of summer session. Personally, many in our community have experienced losses this year and learned to hold each other more tightly in grief.

Yet Pluto is also a planet of resurrection, passion, and renewal, and we’ve seen marriages and new arrivals alongside the graduations and freshly paved avenues, too. Volume XII welcomes MSJ’s first Black Senior Editor, Jasmyne Gilbert, along with the first intersex Senior Editor, Kira Kull, returning for their second year in the position. Our collaboration speaks to the camaraderie which exists within interstitial spaces in spite of systemic oppression and marginalization. The ecological definition of “interstitial” relates to the study of minute animals living in the spaces between individual sand grains in the soil or aquatic sediments. The term takes on socio-cultural context through the lineage of decolonial feminist, queer, and Chicana studies via the work of Gloria Anzaldúa in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and Emma Pérez’s book The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Anzaldúa utilized what she called “la nueva mestiza, the mixed-race woman” to deconstruct and dissolve the separations of identity generally believed to exist in categories of gender, sexuality, and race, naming “la nueva mestiza” as “the privileged subject of an interstitial space that was formerly a nation, and is now without borders, without boundaries” (Pérez 25). Unlike “marginal” which forever relegates its occupants to the edges and the outskirts, “interstitial” centers its population right in the middle, in between, and amidst, if often unnoticed or ignored. Because the minutia of aquatic interstitial space seems so finite to our enormous eyes, we might assume in our humanness that to occupy that space would feel oppressive. Similarly, a gaze attuned to dearth and scarcity tends to deem such environments as deserts inhospitable. Yet to those critters who call these places home, they afford an expansive realm of vibrant possibility that thrives off their surroundings and is not limited by them, because if one can fit between two grains of sand, one can fit anywhere.

The introduction to Volume 1, Issue 3 of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly illustrates the qualities of a related transgender imaginary that “can function as an interstitial, oppositional space—a fecund, choric “enspacement” that actively holds, and thereby enables, different possibilities for movements both individual and collective, any of which might manifest manifold decolonizing potentials, any of which might precipitate innovative and necessary actions” (Stryker and Currah 305). The authors—or, intermediaries—of this volume present an array of such innovations for the individual and the collective, revealing a time-tested throughline in mythology that the personal is often remarkably political. Many of these works interweave personal narratives alongside academic research, revealing how the one so often informs the other, integrating personal and collective learning and transformation.

The selected images offer another boundary place at the meeting of construction that is human and vegetal, illustrating the range of symmetrical perfection and natural decay that occurs when native elements meet mortal design. We invite readers to step through an array of portals, some cleanly and brilliantly constructed, others in elegant decomposition, and still more which arrive inexplicably, suspended between the tangible and the numinous. Glimpse through the window of each article an alternate perception of a popular myth or mystic, and explore pluralistic approaches to understanding the human condition. We encourage questions like: What narratives emerge when the archetypal Other is centered? How does our perception shift when looking from the outside in, or from the inside out? and; Can we hold both perspectives simultaneously?

Joseph Campbell emphasized our inherent interconnectedness by saying that, “Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream” (18). If the resonant symbols and archetypes that appear in both dreams and myths are grains of societal sand, then we mythologists do our best work from the interstices, which offer a fluidity of perception and a freedom of form. Campbell’s quote continues: “both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind” (18). Perhaps we can meet those quirks that arise specific to our society’s peculiar troubles (climate change, political polarization, resurgence of discriminatory violence, the resulting rise in depression and anxiety, etc.) with the remedies of myth. With Pluto’s move into Aquarius, the mirrored impact of the dreamer and the collective—the personal and the political—becomes more intertwined than ever. The water-bearing air sign exemplifies such interstitial themes of rule breaking, decentralization, and multiplicity with amplified trends toward forward-thinking, rebellion, and innovative humanitarian ideologies. “Interstitial Intermediaries” honors myth’s ability to transform our world through the remarkable freedom, vitality, and adaptability of our indisputably interconnected, yet radically unique human experiences.

Thank you to our faculty advisor Emily Lord-Kambitsch, to all the authors for supporting the journal and trusting us with your work, to our enormously generous team of readers and editors, and special thanks to our layout and design legend, and incoming Senior Editor, Daniel R. Enbysk. May this work be of benefit and inspiration to those who encounter it.

In gratitude,
Kira Kull & Jasmyne D. Gilbert

***Works Cited
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With a Thousand Faces. 1949. Princeton University Press, 2004.
Pérez, Emma. The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History. Indiana University Press, 1999.
Stryker, Susan, Paisley Currah. “General Editors’ Introduction.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 3, August 1, 2014, pp. 303–307, Duke University Press, doi.org/10.1215/23289252-2685597.

The 2024 Mythological Studies Journal (Volume XII) is now available to read online and in print! For more information, visit the Mythological Studies Program: https://loom.ly/JACScME