New Books in Gender

Latest Episodes:

Sarah Lamb, "Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility" (U California Press, 2022) Jul 26, 2022

Show notes

Today, the majority of the world's population lives in a country with falling marriage rates, a phenomenon with profound impacts on women, gender, and sexuality.

In Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility (U California Press, 2022), Sarah Lamb probes the gendered trend of single women living in India, examining what makes living outside marriage for women increasingly possible and yet incredibly challenging. Featuring the stories of never-married women as young as 35 and as old as 92, the book offers a remarkable portrait of a way of life experienced by women across class and caste divides, from urban professionals and rural day laborers, to those who identify as heterosexual and lesbian, to others who evaded marriage both by choice and by circumstance. For women in India, complex social-cultural and political-economic contexts are foundational to their lives and decisions, and evading marriage is often an unintended consequence of other pressing life priorities. Arguing that never-married women are able to illuminate their society's broader social-cultural values, Lamb offers a new and startling look at prevailing systems of gender, sexuality, kinship, freedom, and social belonging in India today.

Garima Jaju is currently a post-doc at Cambridge University.

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On Pious Fashion and Muslim Women Jul 25, 2022

Show notes

Dr. Liz Bucar is a professor in the department of philosophy and religion and Dean’s Leadership Fellow at Northeastern University in Boston. Dr. Bucar is the author of the award-winning Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress which came out from Harvard University Press in 2017, and was issued in paperback in July 2019. Furthermore, Bucar writes and teaches about gender, sexuality, and politics in everyday religious practice. Her public scholarship has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los AngelesTimes, and Teen Vogue.

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Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg, "Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image" (MIT Press, 2022) Jul 20, 2022

Show notes

Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg's edited volume Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image (MIT Press, 2022) offers intersectional, intergenerational, and international perspectives on nonfiction film- and videomaking by and about women, examining practices that range from activist documentaries to avant-garde experiments. Concentrating primarily on the period between the 1970s and 1990s, the contributions revisit major figures, contexts, and debates across a polycentric, global geography. They explore how the moving image has been a crucial terrain of feminist struggle--a way of not only picturing the world but remaking it.

The contributors consider key decolonial filmmakers, including Trinh T. Minh-ha and Sarah Maldoror; explore collectively produced films with ties to women's liberation movements in different countries; and investigate the cinematic expressions of tensions and alliances between feminism and anti-imperialist struggles. They grapple with the need for a broader more inclusive definition of the term "feminism"; meditate on the figure of the grandmother; reflect on realist aesthetics; and ask what a feminist film historiography might look like.

The book, generously illustrated with film stills and other images, many in color, offers ten original texts, two conversations, and eight short essays composed in response to historical texts written by filmmakers. The historical texts, half of which are published in English for the first time, appear alongside the essays.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

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Gabrielle David, "Trailblazers: Black Women Who Helped Make America Great, American Firsts/American Icons" (2leaf Press, 2021) Jul 20, 2022

Show notes

Since slavery, Black women have struggled to liberate themselves from racism and sexism. Yet despite these hurdles and under the most difficult circumstances, they managed to achieve greatness. Trailblazers: Black Women Who Helped Make America Great, American Firsts/American Icons (2leaf Press, 2021) shines a light on these their accomplishments, which often led to widespread cultural change. Trailblazers is a six-volume series that examines the lives and careers of over four hundred brilliant women from the eighteenth century to the present who blazed uncharted paths in every conceivable way.

Each Trailblazers volume is organized into several sections. Along with biographical information and powerful photographs, David provides a historical timeline for each section--written from the viewpoint of Black women--that maps out the significance of the featured women that follow.

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Peter Boag, "Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-Of-the-Century Oregon" (U Washington Press, 2022) Jul 20, 2022

Show notes

On November 19, 1895, eighteen year old Lloyd Montgomery murdered his parents and their neighbor at his home in rural Linn County, Oregon. In Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon(U Washington Press, 2022), Peter Boag, professor of history at Washington State University, tries to explain how this horrific crime came to pass. Boag explains that rural America in the late nineteenth century was in a state of crisis, and rural boyhood in particular was an experience fraught with both symbolism and peril. With an ongoing economic crisis and with violence and death everywhere, young American boys in places like Linn County found themselves with fewer future prospects and more expectations upon their shoulders than ever. The Montgomery murder thus spoke directly to the fears and the hopes that many Americans had for their nation's future, as well as to the inherent violence at the core of the American Western experience.

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

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Darts and Lasers: The Future of Science Fiction, Afro-Futurism, and Feminist Speculative Fiction Jul 20, 2022

Show notes

It’s stardate 99040.01 and lead producer Jay Cockburn is temporarily taking over command of Darts and Letters for an episode.

For this episode, as part of the week’s theme of “ideas in strange places” we boldly go into the strange new worlds of science fiction, revealing how it’s long been a vehicle for radical thought. We dig into post-scarcity, Afrofuturism, and feminist speculative fiction as we set our phasers to fun and go where no podcast has gone before.

This episode is a rebroadcast from our catalogue. We’re revisiting some of our favourites until the new season of Darts and Letters launches on September 18th.

First (@10:54), Cory Doctorow is a journalist, activist, blogger, and author of many books including the post-scarcity speculative fiction novel Walkaway. He takes us through the idea of a post-scarcity world as he breaks down the idea of abundance and what we might do with it, or not.
Then, (@34:52), Nalo Hopkinson is a science fiction writer, editor, professor, and author of Brown Girl in the Ring. She talks to us about Afrofuturism as a critical lens and different ways of seeing the future for different communities — and re-imagining the present. Plus, be sure to read her own recommendation: Sister Mine.
Finally, (@49:43), Batya Weinbaum is a poet, artist, professor, and the editor of FemSpec, an academic journal of feminist speculative fiction. She charts the history of feminism in science fiction and how art, including novels, helps drive social, political, and economic change.

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Darts and Letters is hosted and edited by Gordon Katic; this episode our guest host and lead producer is Jay Cockburn. Gordon Katic is our editor. Our managing producer is Marc Apollonio. Our research assistants for this episode were Addye Susnick and David Moscrop. Our theme song was created by Mike Barber. Our graphic design was created by Dakota Koop.

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Caryn Rose, "Why Patti Smith Matters" (U of Texas Press, 2022) Jul 19, 2022

Show notes

Patti Smith arrived in New York City at the end of the Age of Aquarius in search of work and purpose. What she found—what she fostered—was a cultural revolution. Through her poetry, her songs, her unapologetic vocal power, and her very presence as a woman fronting a rock band, she kicked open a door that countless others walked through. No other musician has better embodied the “nothing-to-hide” rawness of punk, nor has any other done more to nurture a place in society for misfits of every stripe.

Why Patti Smith Matters (University of Texas Press, 2022) is the first book about the iconic artist written by a woman. The veteran music journalist Caryn Rose contextualizes Smith’s creative work, her influence, and her wide-ranging and still-evolving impact on rock and roll, visual art, and the written word. Rose goes deep into Smith’s oeuvre, from her first album, Horses, to acclaimed memoirs operating at a surprising remove from her music. The portrait of a ceaseless inventor, Why Patti Smith Matters rescues punk’s poet laureate from “strong woman” clichés. Of course Smith is strong. She is also a nuanced thinker. A maker of beautiful and challenging things. A transformative artist who has not simply entertained but also empowered millions.

Caryn Rose can be found on Twitter and you can read her work in her newsletter.

Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

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Black Trans Feminism Jul 19, 2022

Show notes

Marquis Bey talks about the radical and abolitionist project of Black Trans Feminism. Rather than an identity formation, it is a politics and modality of being that vitiates the limits of subjectivity. Black Trans Feminism finds joy in irreverence, just like we try to do on High Theory.

You can recalibrate your understanding of the subject by reading Marquis’s forthcoming book Black Trans Feminism, published by Duke University Press. Released next week! On February 25th.

In the episode Marquis references a wonderful quote from Saidiya Hartman, that “A Black revolution makes everyone freer than they actually want to be.” It’s a hard quote to find, but it appears in Frank Wilderson’s interview with C.S. Soong, “Blacks and the Master/Slave Relation” in Afropessimism: An Introduction (Racked & Dispatched, 2017).

Marquis is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English at Northwestern University. They also serve as Faculty Affiliate and Advisory Board Member in Gender & Sexuality Studies and Advisory Board Faculty Member in Critical Theory.

This week’s image was provided by Marquis.

Music used in promotional material: ‘Semiacoustic’ by Pk Jazz Collective

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Melanie Bell, "Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema" (U Illinois Press, 2021) Jul 19, 2022

Show notes

Where are the women in the history of British cinema? In Movie Workers: The Women Who Made British Cinema (U Illinois Press, 2021), Melanie Bell, a Professor of Film History at the University of Leeds, answers this question with a fascinating and compelling narrative telling the forgotten history of women as workers in the film industry. Drawing on union records and oral histories, as well as a wealth of historical knowledge and analysis, the book highlights women’s key contributions from the 1930s to the end of the 1980s, demonstrating the ongoing importance of women’s struggles, and their triumphs, to the film industry today. The book is essential reading across arts, humanities, and social sciences, as well as for anyone who has ever watched a film and wondered about how it was made!

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

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Joy Wiltenburg, "Laughing Histories: From the Renaissance Man to the Woman of Wit" (Routledge, 2022) Jul 18, 2022

Show notes

Joy Wiltenburg's bookLaughing Histories: From the Renaissance Man to the Woman of Wit(Routledge, 2022) breaks new ground by exploring moments of laughter in early modern Europe, showing how laughter was inflected by gender and social power.

"I dearly love a laugh," declared Jane Austen's heroine Elizabeth Bennet, and her wit won the heart of the aristocratic Mr. Darcy. Yet the widely read Earl of Chesterfield asserted that only "the mob" would laugh out loud; the gentleman should merely smile. This literary contrast raises important historical questions: how did social rules constrain laughter? Did the highest elites really laugh less than others? How did laughter play out in relations between the sexes? Through fascinating case studies of individuals such as the Renaissance artist Benvenuto Cellini, the French aristocrat Madame de Sévigné, and the rising civil servant and diarist Samuel Pepys, Laughing Histories reveals the multiple meanings of laughter, from the court to the tavern and street, in a complex history that paved the way for modern laughter.

With its study of laughter in relation to power, aggression, gender, sex, class, and social bonding, Laughing Histories is perfect for readers interested in the history of emotions, cultural history, gender history, and literature.

Elspeth Currie is a PhD student in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women’s intellectual history in early modern Europe.

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