New Books Network
Gender Studies
Jewish Studies January 28, 2022

Impure Migration

Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina

Mir Yarfitz

Hosted by Makena Mezistrano
Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina (Rutgers UP, 2019) investigates the period from the 1890s until the 1930s, when prostitution was a legal institution in Argentina and …

Gender Studies

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Interviews with scholars of gender about their new books.

Irish Studies January 27, 2022

Repealed

Ireland's Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Justice

Camilla Fitzsimons, Ruth Coppinger and Sinéad Kennedy

Hosted by Aidan Beatty
Camilla Fitzsimons is an activist and a member of the Dublin West Pro Choice group. She works at Maynooth University and is the author of Community Education and Neoliberalism. Sinéad …
Children's Literature January 27, 2022

A True Wonder

The Comic Book Hero Who Changed Everything

Kirsten W. Larson

Hosted by Mel Rosenberg
Kirsten Williams Lawson used to work with rocket scientists at NASA. Now she writes books for curious kids. Kirsten is the author of the picture book released several months back …
General History January 26, 2022

The Fires of Lust

Sex in the Middle Ages

Katherine Harvey

Hosted by Jana Byars
Today we are with Katherine Harvey, author of The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages (Reaktion Books, 2021). An illuminating exploration of the surprisingly familiar sex lives of ordinary …
East Asian Studies January 24, 2022

Queer Taiwanese Literature

A Reader

Howard Chiang

Hosted by Li-Ping Chen
As the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in Asia and host the first annual gay pride in the Sinophone Pacific, Taiwan is a historic center of lesbian, gay, bisexual …
Critical Theory January 21, 2022

Confidence Culture

Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill

Hosted by Louisa Hann
In Confidence Culture (Duke UP, 2022), Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill argue that imperatives directed at women to “love your body” and “believe in yourself” imply that psychological blocks rather …
Women's History January 21, 2022

Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought

Kristin Waters

Hosted by Jane Scimeca
Kristin Waters' book Maria W. Stewart and the Roots of Black Political Thought (U Mississippi Press, 2021) tells a crucial, almost-forgotten story of African Americans of early nineteenth-century America. In 1833 …
Political Science January 20, 2022

Toxic Masculinity

Mapping the Monstrous in Our Heroes

Esther De Dauw and Daniel J. Connell

Hosted by Lilly Goren
Scholars Esther De Dauw and Daniel J. Connell have assembled an array of chapters that explore the idea of masculinity in the realm of contemporary heroes and superheroes. Toxic Masculinity: Mapping …
General History January 20, 2022

Degrees of Difficulty

How Women's Gymnastics Rose to Prominence and Fell from Grace

Georgia Cervin

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Electrifying athletes like Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci helped make women’s artistic gymnastics one of the most popular events in the Olympic Games. But the transition of gymnastics from a …
Food January 17, 2022

Power Hungry

Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement

Suzanne Cope

Hosted by Carrie Helms Tippen
Today I talked to Suzanne Cope about her new book Power Hungry: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement (Lawrence Hill Books, 2021)In …
Art January 6, 2022

The Play in the System

The Art of Parasitical Resistance

Anna Watkins Fisher

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
What does artistic resistance look like in the twenty-first century, when disruption and dissent have been co-opted and commodified in ways that reinforce dominant systems? In The Play in the …
Music January 5, 2022

Chapel of Love

The Story of New Orleans Girl Group the Dixie Cups

Rosa Hawkins and Steve Bergsman

Hosted by Emily Ruth Allen
In 1963, sisters Barbara Ann and Rosa Hawkins and their cousin Joan Marie Johnson traveled from the segregated South to New York City under the auspices of their manager, former …
Jewish Studies December 31, 2021

Sanctified Sex

The Two-Thousand-Year Jewish Debate on Marital Intimacy

Noam Sachs Zion

Hosted by Rachel Adelman
Sanctified Sex: The Two-Thousand-Year Jewish Debate on Marital Intimacy (Jewish Publication Society, 2021) draws on two thousand years of rabbinic debates addressing competing aspirations for loving intimacy, passionate sexual union …
Islamic Studies December 24, 2021

Intersectionality in the Muslim South Asian-American Middle Class

Lifestyle Consumption Beyond Halal and Hijab

Farha Bano Ternikar

Hosted by Shehnaz Haqqani
In Intersectionality in the Muslim South Asian-American Middle Class: Lifestyle Consumption beyond Halal and Hijab (Lexington Books, 2021), wherein Ternikar theorizes the everyday consumption of South Asian Muslim American women …
Anthropology December 21, 2021

Famished

Eating Disorders and Failed Care in America

Rebecca J. Lester

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
When Rebecca Lester was eleven years old--and again when she was eighteen--she almost died from anorexia nervosa. Now both a tenured professor in anthropology and a licensed social worker, she …
Gender Studies December 21, 2021

The Maternal Imprint

The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects

Sarah S. Richardson

Hosted by Sohini Chatterjee
The idea that a woman may leave a biological trace on her gestating offspring has long been a commonplace folk intuition and a matter of scientific intrigue, but the form …
Critical Theory December 17, 2021

De-Centering Queer Theory

Communist Sexuality in the Flow During and After the Cold War

Bogdan Popa

Hosted by Louisa Hann
Bogdan Popa’s De-Centering Queer Theory: Communist Sexuality in the Flow During and After the Cold War (Manchester University Press, 2021) seeks to reorient queer theory to a different conception of …
Postscript December 17, 2021

Postscript

Abortion Extremism and Criminalization: Whatever Happened to Exceptions for Rape and Incest?

Michele Goodwin and Mary Ziegler

Hosted by Susan Liebell
This Postscript engages two of the country’s most celebrated legal scholars to discuss the criminalization of abortion and miscarriage, the elimination of exceptions for rape and incest, the political and …
Critical Theory December 15, 2021

The Trouble with Passion

How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality

Erin Cech

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
Should we love work? In The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality (U California Press, 2021), Erin Cech, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the …
East Asian Studies December 15, 2021

Mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin

Popular Culture, Masculinity, and Social Perceptions

Chun-Yi Peng

Hosted by Li-Ping Chen
Mediatized Taiwanese Mandarin: Popular Culture, Masculinity, and Social Perceptions (Springer, 2021) explores how language ideologies have emerged for gangtaiqiang through a combination of indexical and ideological processes in televised media …