New Books in Gender
by New Books Network
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies
Episodes
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Christina E. Firpo, "Beauty and the Nation: Women, Culture, and the National Image in Interwar Vietnam" (Columbia UP, 2025)
During the interwar years, Vietnamese society witnessed a rapid change in the way women looked. Rejecting the model of a sequestered maiden with blackened teeth and long hair, they embraced a vivid palette of colors—and a colorful lifestyle to match. Before the war, Vietnam would have seemed like...
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Leda M Perez, "Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)
How can we achieve lasting social and political equality for women? Dr. Leda Pérez tackles this thorny question in Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) by interrogating egalitarianism in Latin America, where nearly...
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Isabela Seong Leong Quintana, "Urban Borderlands: Multiracial Histories and Gendered Borders in Los Angeles" (UNC Press, 2026)
Los Angeles in the late nineteenth century was bustling with the rise of industrialization, but the growing labor force that propelled it, mostly consisting of Mexican and Chinese men, was met with exclusion policies and deportation campaigns. Nevertheless, Chinese and Mexican women, children…
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Erin Maglaquel "Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body" (Astra House, 2026)
Erin Maglaque's new book Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body (Astra House, 2026), is a work of early modern history and an account of what it is like to study the past as an embodied person. Having been trained as to disregard the physical self when writing history, Maglaque's worldview...
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Sara McDougall, "Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault—and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At…
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Ketil Slagstad, "Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Standardizing Sex: A History of Trans Medicine (U Chicago Press, 2025) traces the emergence of trans medicine in Scandinavia in the twentieth century, exploring the construction and negotiation of medical expertise among medical professionals, patients, and activists in the media and government...
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Autumn Lorimer Linford, "Extra! Extra! A History of America's Girl Newsies" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
American pop culture loves newsies. The children who bawled out headlines and sold newspapers on city streets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been depicted countless times in movies, Broadway shows, books, music, and more, but somehow it’s only ever the stories of…
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Leah Kim, "Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026)
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Leah Kim about her powerful book, Mom, Unfiltered: Maternal Mental Health and Finding Freedom Through Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2026). A deeply personal examination of the dire state of our maternal and postpartum care for mothers.For expecting…
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Eran A. Zelnik, "American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750–1850" (JHU Press, 2025)
A joke is never just a joke—not even in the eighteenth century. In American Laughter, American Fury: Humor and the Making of a White Man's Democracy, 1750–1850 (JHU Press, 2025) Eran A. Zelnik offers a cultural history of early America that shows how humor among white men served to define and...
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Diego Galego, "Queering Public Policy: A Disruptive Yet Inclusive Framework for Policymaking" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
For years, LGBTQ+ policies worldwide have been crafted based on heteronormative views, needs, and practices. However, this has gradually changed over the last two decades as LGBTQ+ individuals have become key players in the development of gender-based policies. Diego Galego's Queering Public...
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Catherine Reyes-Housholder, "How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)
Between 1990 and 2020, women candidates won only 6% of the world’s presidential races. How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) explains the factors, strategies, and perceptions that help (or hinder) women to democratically access their country’s…
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Shelly Lundberg "How Economics Discovered Women: Bringing Gender Economics into the Twenty-First Century" (U California Press, 2026)
In the 1970s, as women started to enter the labor force in unprecedented numbers, economists began to examine their roles as economic actors. The result was the rise of gender economics, now a major subfield with powerful data and new methods comparing the economic lives of men and women. Yet...
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Niharika Pandit, "Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Our recent conversation about Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir (Oxford UP, 2026), with author Niharika Pandit, covers the journey of how critical methodology meets the weight of lived experience. This book examines the everyday politics of...
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Jane Draycott, "Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome" (Yale UP, 2025)
Fulvia was born into wealth, privilege, and prestige around the year 80 BCE, yet there was nothing inherently special about her—she was not a saint, an empress, or a queen. But during the years leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic, Fulvia was moving in the most powerful social circles…
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Sandip Roy, "Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal" (Seagull Books, 2026)
Chapal Rani was one of India’s most famous performers of jatra, Bengal’s popular theater. Traditionally, all the roles, including female roles, were played by men—and Chapal Rani was perhaps the most prominent performer of women on the stage. He’s also the subject of a new book from Sandip Roy,...
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Linda Williams and eds. Christine Gledhill et al., "Melodrama As Provocateur" (Duke UP, 2026)
The centerpiece of Melodrama as Provocateur (Duke UP, 2026) is an essay by Linda Williams (1946–2025). Williams was Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her highly influential work reframed some of cinema’s most neglected or denigrated genres from a...
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Yulia Gradskova et al., "Good Mothers, Nations and Nationalisms: Cases from Lithuania, Russia and Sweden" (CEU Press, 2026)
In this episode, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press, 2026) talks with Yulia Gradskova and Ieva Bisigirskaitė, two of the three authors behind Good Mothers, Nations and Nationalisms: Cases from Lithuania, Russia and Sweden. Together with Soheyla Yazdanpanah, they explore what nationalists mean by…
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Julie Kliegman, "Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer" (HarperOne, 2026)
Fifty years ago, tennis player Renée Richards made international headlines in her fight to compete in the women’s draw of the 1977 US Open—marking the first time a trans athlete sued to participate in professional sports in the gender category with which they identify. Renée eventually won her...
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Carly Thomsen, "Reproductive Justice, Queerly" (U California Press, 2026)
Queer theory and reproductive justice need each other—now more than ever. As liberals and leftists increasingly frame reproductive justice in terms of LGBTQ+ rights, often adopting the language of “queerness,” it has become difficult to see that their political demands and strategies are often...
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Valena Beety, "Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity" (New Press, 2026)
A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia—and spend nearly twenty years in...
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Murat C. Yildiz, "The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul" (U Texas Press, 2026)
The history of sports in Turkey is deeply contested. Over the decades, journalists, pundits, non-professional historians, sports scholars, and everyday people have offered competing narratives about the origins of modern sports in the late Ottoman Empire. In The Ottoman World of Sports:...
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The Letters of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections–alternately humorous, provocative, affectionate, and philosophical–with her extensive community. While her letters often contain poems, and some letters consist entirely of a...
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Rahim Thawer and Maryam Khan eds., "Queer and Muslim: On Faith, Family, and Healing" (U Regina Press, 2026)
Rahim Thawer and Maryam Khan's new edited volume Queer and Muslim: On Faith, Family and Healing (U Regina Press, 2026) is a powerful anthology that brings together writers, activists, and scholars who meditate, reflect, and share stories of queer Muslim life, that contains the complexity of rage,...
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Steven K. Green, "American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Today I'm speaking with Steven K. Green, Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of History and Religious Studies at Willamette University. We are discussing his book, American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism (Oxford University Press,...
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Susannah Heschel and Sarah Imhoff, "The Woman Question in Jewish Studies" (Princeton UP, 2025)
The Woman Question in Jewish Studies (Princeton UP, 2025) is a critical look at the difficulties women face in the field of Jewish studies, drawing on quantitative data, personal stories, and the gendered history of the field. The field of Jewish studies has expanded significantly in recent…
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Claire Hubbard-Hall, "Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence" (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024)
Since the inception of the Secret Service Bureau back in 1909, women have worked at the very heart of British secret intelligence - yet their contributions have been all but written out of history. Now, drawing on private and previously-classified documents, leading historian Claire Hubbard-Hall...
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Elisabeth van Houts, "Empress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English" (Yale UP, 2026)
Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed German empress, she was named as heir successor by her father, Henry I. But, after his death in 1135, Matilda’s place on the English throne was usurped…
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Galina Bogatova, "Casting War As Love: Russian Colonialism in Familial Terms" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026)
Casting War As Love: Russian Colonialism in Familial Terms (Palgrave Macillan, 2026) by Dr. Galina Bogatova unpacks the hidden imperial logic behind Russia’s dominance over its neighbors, revealing how the Kremlin weaponizes "familial system" myths to justify control, including its full-scale...
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Debolina Dutta, "A Jurisprudence of Conversations: Law, Life and Feminism in Post-colonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Grounded in empirical studies, this book is both a history of the emergence of feminist jurisprudence in post-colonial India and a model of innovative legal research. The book inaugurates a creative practice of scholarly activism that engages a new way of thinking about law and feminist...
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Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
In Female Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001 (Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing...
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Khiara Bridges, "Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans" (MIT Press, 2026)
An unsettling exploration of the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care.From a leading expert on race, class, maternal health, and reproductive rights.Racism in maternal healthcare is not reserved for the…
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Molly M. Brookfield, "Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States" (UNC Press, 2026)
Molly Brookfield’s book, Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2026) explores the historical, legal, and cultural history of street harassment in the United States. Historically, Brookfield identified the "masher…
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Stacey Copeland, "Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
Stacey Copeland, Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage and Identity at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, joins Jana Byars to talk about Lavender Sounds: From Lesbian Radio to Queer Feminist Soundwork (University of Michigan Press, 2026) delves into...
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Chad S. A. Gibbs "Survival at Treblinka: Geography, Gender, and Social Networks in Jewish Resistance" (U Wisconsin Press, 2026)
On August 2, 1943, prisoners at the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka, located in occupied Poland, launched an uprising against their captors, during which hundreds successfully escaped while guards killed as many in the process. In this groundbreaking work, Chad S.A. Gibbs draws upon recently...
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Nora L. Rubel, "Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of the Settlement Cook Book" (Columbia UP, 2026)
In 1901, Lizzie Black Kander put together a cookbook based on the classes she taught at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. “I was trying to teach a group of young foreign girls in a crowded neighborhood how to cook simple and nutritious food, yet have it attractive and inexpensive as we prepare it in...
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Rod Phillips, "Cats: A History" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)
For more than 10,000 years, cats have prowled at the edges of human life. But, starting only a few decades ago, hundreds of millions of them became pets. In Cats: A History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Professor Rod Phillips shares a sweeping cultural and social history of felines,...
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Wednesdae Reim Ifrach, "Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma" (North Atlantic Books, 2026)
A creative, body-based guide to healing for queer, trans, and gender-expansive readers—somatic tools and expressive arts to feel safer in your body, rewrite your story, and sustain connection. Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma (North Atlantic...
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Diana Cucuz, "Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Diana Cucuz about her book, Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR (University of Toronto Press, 2023) and also asks her for advice to beginner scholars studying gender and the Cold War. A bit about Dr. Cucuz’s book:...
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Jay Szpilka, "BDSM Practices in Contemporary Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
In BDSM Practices in Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), cultural anthropologist and cultural studies scholar Jay Szpilka analyzes the way that BDSM is practiced in contemporary Poland. Based on extensive field research, she asks…
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Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity
Dances and balls appear throughout world literature as venues for young people to meet, flirt, and form relationships, as any reader of Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, or Romeo and Juliet can attest. The popularity of social dance transcends class, gender, ethnic, and national boundaries. In...
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Rachel Silveri, "The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
With The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Rachel Silveri takes a fresh look at the desire to unify art and life, an ambition long regarded as foundational to the European historical avant-gardes....
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Rosa Campbell, "The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared: Shere Hite and the Hite Report" (Melville House, 2026)
Despite being one of the leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, today Shere Hite is little known, little written about, and, unsurprisingly, little read. Her groundbreaking book, The Hite Report, was the first feminist exploration of the link between sex and male power. It sold...
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Kate Dannies, "Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire: Family, Law and War" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
Conscripting Breadwinner Soldiers in the Late Ottoman Empire: Family, Law and War (Edinburgh UP, 2026) by Dr. Kate Dannies examines the gender and family dimensions of mobilisation for the First World War in the Ottoman Empire, situating the war in a long-nineteenth-century social history of...
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Nancy Micklewright, "Fashion in Late Ottoman Istanbul: Photography and Identity in a Global City" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Over the 19th century, the women of Istanbul gradually transformed their appearance, adopting European dress and new modes of self-fashioning, including photographs. Fashion in Late Ottoman Istanbul: Photography and Identity in a Global City (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Dr. Nancy Micklewright…
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Chiara Formichi, "Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia" (Stanford UP, 2025)
In her most recent publication, Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia (Stanford UP, 2025), Chiara Formichi argues that Muslim women in Java and Sumatra, from the late 1910s to the 1950s, were central to Indonesia's progress as guardians and promoters of health and...
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Michelle Chase and Isabella Cosse eds., "The Cuban Revolution and the New Left: Transnational Histories of Gender, Sexuality, and Family" (U Florida Press, 2026)
Understanding overlooked dimensions of the Cuban Revolution and its impact on the global left in the 1960s and beyond. This volume, The Cuban Revolution and the New Left: Transnational Histories of Gender, Sexuality, and Family (University of Florida Press, 2026) reconsiders revolutionary Cuba's...
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Robin Dembroff, "Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality" (Oxford UP, 2026)
In Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality (Oxford University Press, 2026), Robin Dembroff shows us that we don't just live in a patriarchal world. We live in a world that patriarchy taught us to see. Patriarchy is not simply a system where men dominate women, Dembroff argues. It is a...
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Jackie M. Blount, "Straighten Up, Girls and Boys: How Schools Have Shaped Sexuality and Gender" (Harvard Education Press, 2026)
In Straighten Up, Girls and Boys: How Schools Have Shaped Sexuality and Gender (Harvard Education Press, 2026), acclaimed historian and educator Jackie M. Blount exposes the hidden history of how American schools have carefully shaped and policed gender and sexuality--affecting every student and...
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Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity
A woman miscarries and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administers and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia and spend nearly twenty years in...
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Joe P. L. Davidson, "Saving Utopia: Imagining Hopeful Futures in Dystopian Times" (MIT Press, 2026)
There is no alternative. The End of History. Climate Apocalypse. It seems that our contemporary moment is defined by the idea that things can only get worse or, in the most optimistic reading, perhaps stay as they are. Ideas for things getting better, utopian ideas, seem in short supply. It is…
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About this show
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies
Hosted by
New Books Network