New Books Network Podcast

African Studies November 28, 2022

Many Black Women of this Fortress

Graça, Mónica and Adwoa, Three Enslaved Women of Portugal's African Empire

Kwasi Konadu

Hosted by Ari Barbalat

Kwasi Konadu's book Many Black Women of this Fortress: Graça, Mónica and Adwoa, Three Enslaved Women of Portugal's African Empire (Hurst, 2022) presents rare evidence about the lives of three African women …

Literary Studies November 28, 2022

Queer Velocities

Time, Sex, and Biopower on the Early Modern Stage

Jennifer Eun-Jung Row

Hosted by John Yargo

In a pathbreaking new book, today’s guest, Jennifer Eun-Jung Row, asks how delay and haste in early modern French theater subverts the temporality of heteronormative politics and sexuality. Professor Row …

Islamic Studies November 25, 2022

Once in a Lifetime

Amina Wadud

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani

In this interview, we speak with Dr. amina wadud about her latest book Once in a Lifetime (Kantara Press, 2022), a book that started out as a blog for her …

African American Studies November 25, 2022

Love, Activism, and the Respectable Life of Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Tara T. Green

Hosted by Adam McNeil

Born in New Orleans in 1875 to a mother who was formerly enslaved and a father of questionable identity, Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a pioneering activist, writer, suffragist, and educator. Until …

Gender Studies November 24, 2022

Cistem Failure

Essays on Blackness and Cisgender

Marquis Bey

Hosted by Sohini Chatterjee

In Cistem Failure: Essays on Blackness and Cisgender (Duke UP, 2022), Marquis Bey meditates on the antagonistic relationship between blackness and cisgender. Bey asks, What does it mean to have …

Gender Studies November 24, 2022

Gendering the GOP

Intraparty Politics and Republican Women's Representation in Congress

Catherine N. Wineinger

Hosted by Deidre Tyler

In Gendering the GOP: Intraparty Politics and Republican Women's Representation in Congress (Oxford UP, 2022), Catherine N. Wineinger argues that to truly understand the evolution of women's congressional representation, it …

Disability Studies November 24, 2022

Queer Silence

On Disability and Rhetorical Absence

J. Logan Smilges

Hosted by Sohini Chatterjee

In queer culture, silence has been equated with voicelessness, complicity, and even death. Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence (U Minnesota Press, 2022) insists, however, that silence can be …

Sociology November 23, 2022

The End of Love

A Sociology of Negative Relations

Eva Illouz

Hosted by Rituparna Patgiri

Western culture has endlessly represented the ways in which love miraculously erupts in people's lives, the mythical moment in which one knows someone is destined for us; the feverish waiting …

Literature November 22, 2022

Hysterical

A Memoir

Elissa Bassist

Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb

Today I talked to Elissa Bassist about her memoir Hysterical: A Memoir (Hachette, 2022) For two years author Elissa Bassist saw over twenty medical specialists for pain that none of them …

African Studies November 21, 2022

Social Justice at Apartheid's Dawn

African Women Intellectuals and the Quest to Save the Nation

Dawne Y. Curry

Hosted by Amanda Joyce Hall

Dawne Y. Curry’s Social Justice at Apartheid’s Dawn: African Women Intellectuals and the Quest to Save the Nation (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022), which examines the role of African women in the conversation …

Critical Theory November 18, 2022

Abolish the Family

A Manifesto for Care and Liberation

Sophie Lewis

Hosted by Oana Uiorean

What if family were not the only place you might hope to feel safe, loved, cared for and accepted? What if we could do better than the family? We need …

Psychoanalysis November 17, 2022

Hatred of Sex

Oliver Davis and Tim Dean

Hosted by Matthew Pieknik

Hatred of Sex (U Nebraska Press, 2022) links Jacques Rancière’s political philosophy of the constitutive disorder of democracy with Jean Laplanche’s identification of a fundamental perturbation at the heart of …

Indian Religions November 17, 2022

The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics

Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species

Ruth Vanita

Hosted by Raj Balkaran

Ruth Vanita's book The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics (Oxford UP, 2021) shows that many characters in the Sanskrit epics - men and women of all varnas and mixed-varna …

African American Studies November 17, 2022

Emancipation's Daughters

Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body

Riché Richardson

Hosted by Mickell Carter

In Emancipation's Daughters: Re-Imagining Black Femininity and the National Body (Duke UP, 2020), Riché Richardson examines iconic black women leaders who have contested racial stereotypes and constructed new national narratives …

Art November 16, 2022

Women In Art Magazine

A Conversation with Laureline Latour

Laureline Latour

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin

Laureline Latour founded Women In Art Magazine in July 2022 from a desire to bring together artists from different countries. She studied German and Russian ab initio at Oxford University. Women …

Gender Studies November 16, 2022

The Economics of Gender in China

Women, Work and the Glass Ceiling

Sisi Sung

Hosted by Kelsi Caywood

Alongside rapid socio-economic development, China has achieved remarkable gains in gender equality on metrics like health, education, and labor force participation. Yet, the glass ceiling phenomenon and the underrepresentation of women in …

LGBTQ+ Studies November 14, 2022

Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific

Howard Chiang

Hosted by Thomas Baudinette

As a broad category of identity, “transgender” has given life to a vibrant field of academic research since the 1990s. Yet the Western origins of the field have tended to …

Women's History November 9, 2022

Brave Hearted

The Women of the American West

Katie Hickman

Hosted by Deidre Tyler

Hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys, some of them …

Medicine November 9, 2022

All That Was Not Her

Todd Meyers

Hosted by Claire Clark

While studying caregiving and chronic illness in families living in situations of economic and social insecurity in Baltimore, anthropologist Todd Meyers met a woman named Beverly. In All That Was …

Sociology November 9, 2022

Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States

Contemporary Norms and Barriers

Richard Petts

Hosted by Deidre Tyler

Richard Petts' Father Involvement and Gender Equality in the United States: Contemporary Norms and Barriers (Routledge, 2022) focuses on issues of family, work, and gender, with a focus on gender inequality …