New Books in Gender

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Mark Beehre, "A Queer Existence: The Lives of Young Gay Men in Aotearoa New Zealand" (Massey University, 2021) Oct 13, 2021

Show notes

Today I talk to Mark Beehre about his new book, A Queer Existence, published by Massey University Press New Zealand 2021.

A Queer Existence is a major documentary project that uses photographic portraiture and oral history to record the life experiences of a group of twenty-seven gay men born since the passing of the Homosexual Law Reform Act in 1986. In New Zealand, discrimination in work was outlawed in 1993, same-sex relationships were granted legal recognition in 2005, and marriage equality followed in 2013. In 2018 Parliament apologised to those whose lives had been blighted by criminal prosecution for expressing their sexuality.

As a result, these men have life experiences very different to earlier generations of gay New Zealand men. Even so, gay men growing up today may continue to feel stigmatised, and for many coming out is still a major hurdle. Candid, powerful and affecting, the first-person narratives of A Queer Existence form a valuable and unique insight into how gay men continue to have to step out of the mainstream and face their own challenges as they forge their queer identities.

Mark Beehre initially trained as a specialist physician and worked for several years in medical practice before studying photography at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland and Massey University. If you want to explore the fantastic work by Mark Beehre, please visit http://www.markbeehre.co.nz/

Ed Amon is a Master of Indigenous Studies Candidate at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, a columnist at his local paper: Hibiscus Matters, and a Stand-up Comedian. His main interests are indigenous studies, politics, history, and cricket. Follow him on twitter @edamoned or email him at edamonnz@gmail.com

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Christopher Phelps and Robin Vandome, "Marxism and America: New Appraisals" (Manchester UP, 2021) Oct 12, 2021

Show notes

If the United States has been so hostile to Marxism, what accounts for Marxism's recurrent attractiveness to certain Americans? Marxism and America: New Appraisals (Manchester University Press, 2021)sheds new light on that question in essays engaging sexuality, gender, race, nationalism, class, memory, and much more, from the Civil War era through to 21st century cultures of activism. This book is an invaluable resource for historians and theorists of US political struggle.

I was joined for this interview by editors Christopher Phelps and Robin Vandome (both University of Nottingham), and contributors Mara Keire (Oxford University) and Andrew Hartman (Illinois State University).

We discussed the impetus behind the book and its broader scholarly context, before turning to Mara's chapter ("Class, commodity, consumption: theorizing sexual violence during the feminist sex wars of the 1980s") and finally Andrew's chapter ("Rethinking Karl Marx: American liberalism from the New Deal to the Cold War"). We hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we enjoyed recording it!

Catriona Gold is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London, researching security, subjectivity and mobility in the 20-21st century United States. Her current work concerns the US Passport Office; she has previously published on US Africa Command and the 2013-16 Ebola epidemic. She can be reached by email or on Twitter.

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Ethnicity and Gender: What It’s Like to be a Gay Muslim Oct 11, 2021

Show notes

Social and political conditions, in association with the self, can hardly be explained by one factor. Instead, they are shaped by several factors in diverse, mutually influencing ways. This is the essence of intersectionality, a concept that helps us understand the complexity of the human experience.

In the third episode of our new themed series Across the Rainbow, catch us in discussion with Dr. Shanon Shah, Visiting Research Fellow in Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London, and author of the article “Ethnicity, Gender and Class in the Experiences of Gay Muslims”.

Drawing from the well of personal experience, Dr. Shah delves into the ways in which multiple axes of social division, such as religion, ethnicity, gender, and class, interact differently in Malaysia, where Islam is the majority and official religion, and in Britain, where it is a minority religion, to produce varied outcomes for gay Muslim men and women in both countries.

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Sara Ahmed, "Complaint!" (Duke UP, 2021) Oct 07, 2021

Show notes

In Complaint! (Duke UP, 2021), Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. To make complaints within institutions is to learn how they work and for whom they work: complaint as feminist pedagogy. Ahmed explores how complaints are made behind closed doors and how doors are often closed on those who complain. To open these doors---to get complaints through, keep them going, or keep them alive---Ahmed emphasizes, requires forming new kinds of collectives. This book offers a systematic analysis of the methods used to stop complaints and a powerful and poetic meditation on what complaints can be used to do. Following a long lineage of Black feminist and feminist of color critiques of the university, Ahmed delivers a timely consideration of how institutional change becomes possible and why it is necessary.

Shraddha Chatterjee is a doctoral candidate at York University, Toronto, and author of Queer Politics in India: Towards Sexual Subaltern Subjects (Routledge, 2018).

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Jaime Lowe, "Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Line of California's Wildfires" (MCD, 2021) Oct 06, 2021

Show notes

A dramatic, revelatory account of the female inmate firefighters who battle California wildfires for less than a dollar an hour On February 23, 2016, Shawna Lynn Jones stepped into the brush to fight a wildfire that had consumed ten acres of terrain on a steep ridge in Malibu. Jones carried fifty pounds of equipment and a chainsaw to help contain the blaze. As she fired up her saw, the earth gave way under her feet and a rock fell from above and struck her head, knocking her unconscious. A helicopter descended to airlift her out. As it took off, she was handcuffed to the gurney. She was neither a desperate Malibu resident nor a professional firefighter. She was a female inmate firefighter, briefly trained and equipped, and paid one dollar an hour to fight fires while working off her sentence. As California has endured unprecedented wildfires over the past decade, the state has come to rely heavily on its prison population, with imprisoned firefighters making up at least 40 percent of Cal Fire’s on-the-ground fire crews. Of those imprisoned workers, 250 are women.

In Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Line of California's Wildfires (MCD, 2021), Jaime Lowe expands on her revelatory work for The New York Times Magazine to follow Jones and her fellow female inmate firefighters before, during, and—if they’re lucky—after incarceration. Lowe takes us into their lives, into the prisons and the women’s decisions to join the controversial program, into the fire camps where they live and train, and onto the front lines, where their brave work is unquestionably heroic—if often thankless.

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Laurie Levin, "Call Me a Woman: On Our Way to Equality and Peace" (One More Page, 2021) Oct 05, 2021

Show notes

When we give women the same respect and opportunities as men, we give the world its best chance for peace, prosperity, and survival.

Angry about sexism and misogyny and what you personally have endured?
Sad for those who suffer because of inequality and greed?
Afraid the world won't get its act together in time to save itself?
Care about human rights and want to be part of the solution?

Laurie Levin's Call Me a Woman: On Our Way to Equality and Peace(One More Page, 2021) begins with a personal story of Levin's early years. She describes how the loss of her mother and multiple sexual assaults, including rape, led to her life's calling. Inside you'll discover:

The most important thing parents can do to change the world
Our unconscious habits that perpetuate inequality
Inspiring stories to shift resentment to empathy, hope, and action
The 7 Habits of Equality to speed our way to gender equality and peace
Inner peace and freedom as you become the solution

Personal interviews with: Lynn Povich, first woman senior editor Newsweek magazine; Maxine Clark, founder Build-A-Bear Workshop; Gloria Feldt, former CEO and President Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NY Times Best-Selling Author; Mark Levin, biotech industry leader, founder, and CEO; Zaron Burnett III, investigative journalist and writer.

Call Me A Woman: On Our Way to Equality and Peace provides real life experiences, global studies, and insights, and the 7 Habits of Equality that will reshape the world into one where all children have equal opportunities, from the beginning to the end of their lives.

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Kerry F. Crawford and Leah C. Windsor, "The PhD Parenthood Trap: Gender, Bias, and the Elusive Work-Family Balance in Academia" (Georgetown UP, 2021) Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Academia has a big problem. For many parents—especially mothers—the idea of "work-life balance" is a work-life myth. Parents and caregivers work harder than ever to grow and thrive in their careers while juggling the additional responsibilities that accompany parenthood. Sudden disruptions and daily constraints such as breastfeeding, sick days that keep children home from school, and the sleep deprivation that plagues the early years of parenting threaten to derail careers. Some experience bias and harassment related to pregnancy or parental leave. The result is an academic Chutes and Ladders, where career advancement is nearly impossible for parents who lack access to formal or informal support systems.

In The PhD Parenthood Trap: Gender, Bias, and the Elusive Work-Family Balance in Academia(Georgetown UP, 2021), Kerry F. Crawford and Leah C. Windsor reveal the realities of raising kids, on or off the tenure track, and suggest reforms to help support parents throughout their careers. Insights from their original survey data and poignant vignettes from scholars across disciplines make it clear that universities lack understanding, uniform policies, and flexibility for family formation, hurting the career development of parent-scholars. Each chapter includes recommendations for best practices and policy changes that will help make academia an exemplar of progressive family-leave policies. Topics covered include pregnancy, adoption, miscarriage and infant loss, postpartum depression, family leave, breastfeeding, daily parenting challenges, the tenure clock, and more. The book concludes with advice to new or soon-to-be parents to help them better navigate parenthood in academia.

The PhD Parenthood Trap provides scholars, academic mentors, and university administrators with empirical evidence and steps to break down personal and structural barriers between parenthood and scholarly careers.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch.

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Takkara K. Brunson, "Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba" (U Florida Press, 2021) Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

In Black Women, Citizenship, and the Making of Modern Cuba (University of Florida Press, 2021), Dr. Takkara Brunson examines the political strategies used by Afro-Cuban women between 1886 and 1959 to call for greater rights and opportunities for Afro-Cubans. Afro-Cuban women channeled their energy for Black rights through letter writing, sitting for photographs and comportment, founding their own organizations, and seeking and winning political offices in the Communist Party, to name a few of their strategies. While pursuing the political avenues available to them, Black women also navigated and had to contend with patriarchy and racelessness. In putting together this compelling story, Brunson undertook research in archives in Cuba and the United States. She hones in on the lives of particular women in each chapter to show how they advanced calls for Black citizenship and rights. Brunson builds on the work of Latin American and Cuban history as well as Black feminist scholarship to center Black women as critical protagonists in the struggle for Black rights and freedom.

Dr. Takkara Brunson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Texas A&M University.

Reighan Gillam is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.

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Ivana Bajic-Hajdukovic, "Can You Run Away from Sorrow?: Mothers Left Behind in 1990s Belgrade" (Indiana UP, 2020) Sep 29, 2021

Show notes

How does emigration affect those left behind? The fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s led citizens to look for a better, more stable life elsewhere. For the older generations, however, this wasn't an option. In this powerful and moving work, Ivana Bajic-Hajdukovic reveals the impact that waves of emigration from Serbia had on family relationships and, in particular, on elderly mothers who stayed.

With nowhere to go, and any savings given to their children to help establish new lives, these seniors faced the crumbling country, waves of refugees from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, NATO bombing, the failing economy, and the trial and ouster of Slobodan Milosevic. Can You Run Away from Sorrow?: Mothers Left Behind in 1990s Belgrade (Indiana UP, 2020) poignantly depicts the intimacy of family relationships sustained through these turbulent times in Serbia and through the next generation's search for a new life. Bajic-Hajdukovic explores transformations in family intimacy during everyday life practices-in people's homes, in their food and cooking practices, in their childcare, and even in remittances and the exchange of gifts.

"Can You Run Away from Sorrow?" illustrates not only the tremendous sacrifice of parents, but also their profound sense of loss-of their families, their country, their stability and dignity, and most importantly, of their own identity and hope for what they thought their future would be.

Anna Domdey, M.A., studied Cultural Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of Goettingen and is currently doing professional training in the field of museology, but she still likes to engage with compelling anthropological research.

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Amanda Konkle and Charles Burnetts, "Perspectives on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Nuanced Postnetwork Television" (Syracuse UP, 2020) Sep 24, 2021

Show notes

The new collection, Perspectives on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Nuanced Postnetwork Television (Syracuse University Press, 2021) by Amanda Konkle and Charles Burnetts explores the hit series with an off-putting title and a decidedly retrograde premise. The CW dramedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a surprising choice for critical analysis. But, loyal viewers quickly came to appreciate the show’s sharp cultural critique through masterful parody, and this strategy has made it a critical darling and earned it several awards throughout its run. In ways not often seen on traditional network television, the show transcends conventional genre boundaries—the Hollywood musical, the romantic comedy, the music video—while resisting stereotypes associated with contemporary life. The essays in this collection underscore the show’s ability to distinguish itself within the current television market. Focusing on themes of feminism, gender identity, and mental health, contributors explore the ways in which the show challenged viewer expectations, as well as the role television critics play in identifying a show’s “authenticity” or quality.

Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate 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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