New Books In Gender Studies

The Fox Spirit, the Stone Maiden, and Other Transgender Histories from Late Imperial China (Columbia University Press, 2024) is a fascinating study of transgender lives and practices in late imperial China. This book takes as its core subject matter six court cases from Qing China that involve people who moved away from the gender they were assigned at birth. Focusing on this movement, Matthew H. Sommer looks at the transgender paradigms and literary tropes through which gender-transing was understood, ultimately revealing how acts of gender-crossing and gender boundaries were perceived. This book is an effortless blend of social, legal, and cultural history, and it is filled with captivating legal cases involving forgery and impersonation, fox-spirit mediums, midwives, and those living on the margins of late imperial China. This is definitely a must-read for those interested in Chinese history and gender history, as well as any scholars who need inspiration for what can be done with interesting sources that

Despite global undertakings to safeguard the full enjoyment of human rights, culture, traditional practices and religion are widely used to discriminate against women. In Women’s Human Rights and the Elimination of Discrimination (Brill/Nijhoff, 2016), 17 scholars approach women’s human rights globally, regionally and nationally, combining the perspectives of public and private international law in a hitherto unique manner. Comprehensive legal, culture-based and theoretical overviews are combined with analyses of topical issues, such as unbalanced sex-ratios, intercountry adoption, women as refugees or as “surrogate mothers”, violence against women and cross-border enforcement of protection orders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

For twentieth-century Jewish immigrants and their children attempting to gain full access to American society, performative masculinity was a tool of acculturation. However, as scholar Miriam Eve Mora demonstrates, this performance is consistently challenged by American mainstream society that holds Jewish men outside of the American ideal of masculinity. Depicted as weak, effeminate, cowardly, gentle, bookish, or conflict-averse, Jewish men have been ascribed these qualities by outside forces, but some have also intentionally subscribed themselves to masculinities at odds with the American mainstream.  Carrying a Big Schtick: Jewish Acculturation and Masculinity in the Twentieth Century (Wayne State UP, 2024) dissects notions of Jewish masculinity and its perception and practice in America in the twentieth century through the lenses of immigration and cultural history. Tracing Jewish masculinity through major themes and events including both World Wars, the Holocaust, American Zionism, Israeli statehood, and

Jewish stars have longed faced pressure to downplay Jewish identity for fear of alienating wider audiences. But unexpectedly, since the 2000s, many millennial Jewish stars have won stellar success while spotlighting (rather than muting) Jewish identity. In Millennial Jewish Stars: Navigating Racial Antisemitism, Masculinity, and White Supremacy (NYU Press, 2024), Jonathan Branfman offers case studies on six top millennial Jewish stars: the biracial rap superstar Drake, comedic rapper Lil Dicky, TV comedy duo Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, “man-baby” film star Seth Rogen, and chiseled film star Zac Efron. Branfman argues that despite their differences, each star’s success depends on how they navigate racial antisemitism: the historical notion that Jews are physically inferior to Christians. Each star especially navigates racial stigmas about Jewish masculinity―stigmas that depict Jewish men as emasculated, Jewish women as masculinized, and both as sexually perverse. By embracing, deflecting, or satirizing the

Violent Affections: Queer Sexuality, Techniques of Power, and Law in Russia (UCL Press, 2022) by Alexander Sasha Kondakov uncovers techniques of power that work to translate emotions into violence against queer people. Based on analysis of over 300 criminal cases of anti-queer violence in Russia before and after the introduction of ‘gay propaganda’ law, the book shows how violent acts are framed in emotional language by perpetrators during their criminal trials. It then utilises an original methodology of studying ‘legal memes’ and argues that these individual affective states are directly connected to the political violence aimed at queer lives more generally.  The main aim of Violent Affections is to explore the social mechanisms and techniques that impact anti-queer violence evidenced in the reviewed cases. Kondakov expands upon two sets of interdisciplinary literature – queer theory and affect theory – in order to conceptualise what is referred to as neo-disciplinary power. Taking the empirical observatio

Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen (Vintage, 2024) is a critical memoir about women, reading, and mental illness. When Suzanne Scanlon was a student at Barnard in the 90s, grieving the loss of her mother—feeling untethered and swimming through inarticulable pain—she made a suicide attempt that landed her in the New York State Psychiatric Institute. After nearly three years and countless experimental treatments, Suzanne left the ward on shaky legs.  In the decades after, Suzanne came to understand her suffering as part of something larger: a long tradition of women whose complicated and compromised stories of self-actualization are reduced to “crazy chick” and “madwoman” narratives. She searched for more books, more woman writers, as the journey of her life converged with her journey through the literature that shaped her. Committed is a story of discovery and of questioning linear and neat ideas of recovery. It reclaims the idea of the madwoman as a template for insight and transcendence through the works of

Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution (Verso, 2020), Breanne Fahs has curated a comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos from the nineteenth century to today. Fahs collected over seventy-five manifestos from around the world, calling on feminists to act, be defiant and show their rage. This thought-provoking and timely collection includes not only popular manifestos often taught in women and gender studies courses, but also introduces readers to works from feminist activists who are often placed on the margins. The eight sections of the book cover manifestos from a wide range of feminist activist spectrums: queer/trans, anticapitalist/anarchist, angry/violent, indigenous/women of color, sex/body, hacker/cyborg, trashy/punk, and witchy/bitchy. Fahs has put together a collection that has something for everyone and that is a must-need on every feminist bookshelf. Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English at Western Illinois University. She researches zines, zine writers and the

Black women undertook an energetic and unprecedented engagement with internationalism from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s. In many cases, their work reflected a complex effort to merge internationalism with issues of women's rights and with feminist concerns. To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (U Illinois Press, 2019) examines these and other issues with a collection of cutting-edge essays on black women's internationalism in this pivotal era and beyond. Analyzing the contours of gender within black internationalism, scholars examine the range and complexity of black women's global engagements. At the same time, they focus on these women's remarkable experiences in shaping internationalist movements and dialogues. The essays explore the travels and migrations of black women; the internationalist writings of women from Paris to Chicago to Spain; black women advocating for internationalism through art and performance; and the involvement of black women in politics, activism

Fatima, the daughter of Prophet Muhammad, has an interesting legacy, one that is often shaped by sectarian differences and tensions. The sermon of Fatima, which is the focus of Mahjabeen Dhala's Feminist Theology and Sociology of Islam: A Study of the Sermon of Fatima (Cambridge University Press, 2024), though itself riddled with questions of authenticity, is a compelling incident which brings to light various possibilities of analysis and insights. The issue of fadak or inheritance, which prompts Fatima to take a public stance against the male leaders of the community, such as Abu Bakr, after the passing of her father, results in a rich sermon that has theological and social justice implications, as Dhala highlights. In Dhala's reading of the sermon by Fatima and her response to an injustice experienced by her and her family, Fatima is seen as a theologian and a social activist. Moreover, this study also sheds on light of an example of pre-modern history of Muslim woman’s resistance. This book will be of int

The Politics of Emotion: Love, Grief, and Madness in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Cornell University Press, 2024) by Dr. Nuria Silleras-Fernandez explores the intersection of powerful emotional states—love, melancholy, grief, and madness—with gender and political power on the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. Using an array of sources—literary texts, medical treatises, and archival documents—Dr. Silleras-Fernandez focuses on three royal women: Isabel of Portugal (1428–1496), queen-consort of Castile; Isabel of Aragon (1470–1498), queen-consort of Portugal; and Juana of Castile (1479–1555), queen of Castile and its empire. Each of these women was perceived by their contemporaries as having gone "mad" as a result of excessive grief, and all three were related to Isabel the Catholic (1451–1504), queen of Castile and a woman lauded in her time as a paragon of reason. Through the lives and experiences of these royal women and the observations, judgments, and machinations of th

The 'baby boom' generation, born between the 1940s and the 1960s, is often credited with pioneering new and creative ways of relating, doing intimacy and making families. With this cohort now entering mid and later life in Britain, they are also said to be revolutionising the experience of ageing. Are the romantic practices of this 'revolutionary cohort' breaking with tradition and allowing new ways of understanding and doing ageing and relating to emerge? Based on an innovative combination of sensory ethnography in salsa classes and life history interviews, Ageing and New Intimacies: Gender, Sexuality and Temporality in an English Salsa Scene (Manchester UP, 2024) by Dr. Sarah Milton documents the meanings of desire and romance, and 'new' - or renewed - intimacies, among women in mid and later life. Beginning with women at a transition point, when newly single or newly dating in midlife, the chapters look back over life histories to examine prior relationship experiences at different life stages, and look fo

Kristin J. Jacobson In her new book, The American Adrenaline Narrative (University of Georgia Press), Kristin Jacobson considers the nature of perilous outdoor adventure tales, their gendered biases, and how they simultaneously promote and hinder ecological sustainability. To explore these themes, Jacobson defines and compares adrenaline narratives by a range of American authors published after the first Earth Day in 1970, a time frame selected as a watershed moment for the contemporary American environmental movement. The forty-plus years since that day also mark the rise in the popularity and marketing of many things as "extreme," including sports, jobs, travel, beverages, gum, makeovers, laundry detergent, and even the environmental movement itself. Jacobson maps the American eco-imagination via adrenaline narratives, surveying a range of popular and lesser-known primary texts by American authors, including best-sellers such as Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air and Aron Ralston's Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Last week, I had the privilege to talk with Dr. Kristen R. Ghodsee about her most recent book Second World, Second Sex: Socialist Women's Activism and Global Solidarity during the Cold War (Duke University Press, 2019) and the behind-the-scene details of its making. Ghodsee is a professor in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and an author of nine books and many more articles and essays. Second World, Second Sex addresses a telling gap in the historiography of women rights movements – the contributions of the Second World women rights activists. While careful not to idealize the socialist authoritarian regimes, Ghodsee reveals how deeply problematic and unfair it is to define feminism based on Western-inspired definitions of self-fulfillment or grassroot activism and to dismiss the achievements of women’s state organizations in the Eastern bloc as top-down policies and socialist propaganda. Aiming to retell the UN Decade for Women from a non-Western perspective, this book foll

This interview with Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz about Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Identity and Libraries and Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Archives and Practice (available in 2024 from the Litwin Books Series on Gender and Sexuality in Library and Information Studies) explores how queerness is centered within library and archival theory and practice. Smith-Cruz and co-editor Sara A. Howard invited library and archives workers to share conversations which became the chapters for these two volumes. These conversations explore a huge range of topics: identity, community practice and outreach, visibility and coming out or being outed in the library, as well as the archive as a site for reclamation, narrative storytelling, ancestral recalling, and historical revisioning within LGBTQ+ communities. Contributions to these volumes integrate interpersonal experiences of professionalism for queer folks in the field, dive into their relationships and points of connection with each other and the communities they

Throughout US history, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people have been pathologized, victimized, and criminalized. Reports of lynching, burning, or murdering of LGBTQ people have been documented for centuries. Prior to the 1970s, LGBTQ people were deemed as having psychological disorders and subsequently subject to electroshock therapy and other ineffective and cruel treatments. LGBTQ people have historically been arrested or imprisoned for crimes like sodomy, cross-dressing, and gathering in public spaces. And while there have been many strides to advocate for LGBTQ rights in contemporary times, there are still many ways that the criminal justice system works against LGBTQ and their lives, liberties, and freedoms. Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System (Lexington Books, 2020) examines the state of LGBTQ people within the criminal justice system. Intertwining legal cases, academic research, and popular media, Nadal reviews a wide range of issues—rangi

What does the history of men tell us about life today? In Men and Masculinities in Modern Britain: A History for the Present (Manchester UP, 2024), the editors Matt Houlbrook, a Professor of Cultural History at the University of Birmingham, Katie Jones, an independent scholar living in Birmingham, and Ben Mechen, an Associate Lecturer in Modern British History at University College London, bring together a range of essays presenting historical research and contemporary reflections on both the history and historiography of men. The collection is organised into four themes across institutions, histories, everyday lives and bodies. The themes gather an eclectic yet interrelated set of chapters ranging from how bureaucracy intersects with race and gender, through reflections on sexuality and censorship, to place based analysis of work and communities. Essential reading for both historians and anyone interested in understanding contemporary society, the book is available open access here. Learn more about your ad

I Spit On Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies (Headpress, 2024) by Heidi Honeycutt is the first book-length history of female horror directors from the late 1800s to present day. Having conducted hundreds of interviews and watched thousands of horror films, Honeycutt defines the political and cultural forces that shape the way modern horror movies are made by women. The women's rights and civil rights movements, new distribution technology, digital cameras, the destruction of the classic studio system, and the abandonment of the Hays code have significantly impacted women directors and their movies. So, too, social media, modern ideas of gender and racial equality, LGBTQ acceptance, and a new generation of provocative, daring films that take shocking risks in the genre. Includes short films, anthologies, documentaries, animated horror, horror pornography, pink films, and experimental horror.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a

In Dance Music Spaces: Clubs, Clubbers, and DJs Navigating Authenticity, Branding, and Commercialism (Lexington Books, 2022), Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo examines the production of physical and digital spaces in dance music, and how the players—clubs, clubbers, and DJs—use authenticity, branding, and commercialism to navigate them. An in-depth study into three women DJs—The Blessed Madonna, Honey Dijon, and Peggy Gou—reveals a new concept, “authenticity maneuvering.” In it Danielle Hidalgo exposes how the strategic use of a rave ethos both bolsters acceptance in dance music spaces and hides often problematic commercial practices. This timely, thoughtful, and deeply personal book presents a compelling analysis of the complicated interplay between dancing bodies, digital practices, and spatial offerings in contemporary dance music. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexingto

In this episode Hizer Mir and his co-author Sahar Ghumkhor talk to Shareef Muhammad about the phenomenon of Muslims in the Manosphere. Shareef is a scholar of history based in Atlanta, Georgia, who works on Muslims, race and third worldism - especially the experience of Black Muslims in the context of imperial America. This interview results from an article Sahar and Hizer wrote about the Muslim Manosphere, which observes the behaviour of Muslim men in alt right online spaces. Together with Shareef, they explain what drives these Muslim men to make alarming alliances with the far-right white supremacist men they meet online, and what this means for their understanding of Muslim masculinity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Paige Reynolds's book Modernism in Irish Women's Contemporary Writing: The Stubborn Mode (Oxford UP, 2023) examines the tangled relationship between contemporary Irish women writers and literary modernism. In the early decades of the twenty-first century, Irish women's fiction has drawn widespread critical acclaim and commercial success, with a surprising number of these works being commended for their innovative redeployment of literary tactics drawn from early twentieth-century literary modernism. But this strategy is not a new one. Across more than a century, writers from Kate O'Brien to Sally Rooney have manipulated and remade modernism to draw attention to the vexed nature of female privacy, exploring what unfolds when the amorphous nature of private consciousness bumps up against external ordering structures in the public world.  Living amid the tenaciously conservative imperatives of church and state in Ireland, their female characters are seen to embrace, reject, and rework the ritual of prayer, the f