New Books in Gender

Latest Episodes:

Martha Moffitt Peacock, "Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives: Imaging Women of Consequence in the Dutch Golden Age" (Brill, 2020) Jun 08, 2021

Show notes

Today we are joined by Martha Moffitt Peacock, Professor of Art History at Brigham Young University about her new book, Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives: Imaging Women of Consequence in the Dutch Golden Age, out in 2020 with Brill.

In Heroines, Harpies, and Housewives, Peacock provides a novel interpretive approach to the artistic practice of imaging women of consequence in the Dutch Golden Age. From the beginnings of the new Republic, visual celebrations of famous heroines who crossed gender boundaries by fighting in the Revolt against Spain or by distinguishing themselves in arts and letters became an essential and significant cultural tradition that reverberated throughout the long seventeenth century. This collective memory of consequential heroines who equaled, or outshone, men is frequently reflected in empowering representations of other female archetypes: authoritative harpies and noble housewives. Such enabling imagery helped in the structuring of gender norms that positively advanced a powerful female identity in Dutch society.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

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Bethany Hicok, "Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive" (Lever Press, 2020) Jun 08, 2021

Show notes

What more can we learn about legendary American writer Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79), dubbed by Bethany Hicok “the most stunning poet of the twentieth century”, by exploring the wonderful archives of her life and work at Vassar? Why are literary archives coming back into vogue? How do new techniques in digital humanities create novel possibilities for archival-based research and publication? And how can we develop collaborative methods of studying and teaching in literary archives?

In this lively, well-crafted podcast, leading Bishop scholar Bethany Hicok of Williams College completely fails to control her infectious enthusiasm for Elizabeth Bishop’s writings. She explains to Duncan McCargo why Bishop has become for her the poet of the pandemic, and above all what happened when she spent three weeks embedded in the Vassar archives with sixteen other scholars and poets – a project that resulted in this beautifully produced and copiously illustrated edited volume.

Since Elizabeth Bishop and the Literary Archive is an Open Access publication, you can and should download it (free of charge), so you can read along here.

Duncan McCargo is an eclectic, internationalist political scientist and literature buff: his day job is directing the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

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Mary D. Garrard, "Artemisia Gentileschi and Feminism in Early Modern Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2020) Jun 08, 2021

Show notes

Artemisia Gentileschi is by far the most famous woman artist of the premodern era. Her art addressed issues that resonate today, such as sexual violence and women’s problematic relationship to political power. Her powerful paintings with vigorous female protagonists chime with modern audiences, and she is celebrated by feminist critics and scholars.

Artemisia Gentileschi and Feminism in Early Modern Europe (Reaktion Books, 2020) breaks new ground by placing the artist in the context of women’s political history. Mary D. Garrard, noted Gentileschi scholar, shows that the painter most likely knew or knew about contemporary writers such as the Venetian feminists Lucrezia Marinella and Arcangela Tarabotti. She discusses recently discovered paintings, offers fresh perspectives on known works, and examines the artist anew in the context of feminist history. This beautifully illustrated book gives for the first time a full portrait of a strong woman artist who fought back through her art.

Allison Leigh is Assistant Professor of Art History and the SLEMCO/LEQSF Regents Endowed Professor in Art & Architecture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her research explores masculinity in European and Russian art of the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries.

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Axel Englund, "Deviant Opera: Sex, Power, and Perversion on Stage" (U California Press, 2020) Jun 07, 2021

Show notes

In Deviant Opera: Sex, Power, and Perversion on Stage (University of California Press, 2020), Axel Englund examines an increasingly common trope in opera direction: the use of imagery associated with the kink and BDSM communities. This imagery underscores the themes of sexuality and domination that run through the opera repertory, and it also calls attention to the essential artificiality of operatic performance: opera, after all, is another form of role play. Some stagings have also used BDSM imagery to subvert problematic gender portrayals in classic opera, or even to call out the power imbalances offstage in the world of contemporary opera, which has recently been rocked by revelations of abuse at the highest level. Englund's book will be interesting to opera fans, kinksters, and anyone interested in contemporary efforts to breathe life into classic works of theatre.

Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.

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Judith Surkis, "Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930" (Cornell UP, 2019) Jun 04, 2021

Show notes

Judith Surkis's Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930 (Cornell UP, 2019) traces the intersection of colonialism, law, land expropriation, sex, gender, and family during the century after the French conquest of Algeria in 1830. Seeking to assimilate Algerian land while differentiating Algerian Muslims from European settlers, colonial authorities developed a system that confined Muslim law to family matters while subjecting Algerian property to French Civil law. Securing and extending French sovereignty over Algeria, this system deprived Algerian Muslims of full citizenship rights while reinforcing French colonial authority.

Sex, Law, and Sovereignty is a rigorous and provocative critical "history of the present" that illuminates the persistence of the "Muslim question" in contemporary France. In chapters focused on polygamy, repudiation, and child marriage, the book traces the ways that the French fantasies of the family, including the sexualization of Muslim women and a preoccupation with the sexual "excesses" of Muslim men, found expression in legislation that segregated the legal control of property from the regulation of bodies, beliefs, and personhood. A fascinating genealogy that understands colonial law and the problem of difference within a broader cultural field, the book is an impressive, compelling analysis with striking resonances for a Franco-Algerian present still shaped by the legacies of the colonial past.

Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and its empire. If you have a recent title to suggest for the podcast, please send her an email (panchasi@sfu.ca).

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Women Singer-Songwriters of 1970s Japan: A Discussion with Satoko Naito Jun 04, 2021

Show notes

Lasse Lehtonen speaks to Satoko Naito about his research on Japanese women singer-songwriters of the 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on popular pioneers like Yumi Matsutoya (Yūmin), Miyuki Nakajima, and Takako Okamura, Dr. Lehtonen discusses how the artists assert their agency and artistry, not necessarily through their lyrics but via what Matsutoya once identified as "backstage feminism." He also shares his ideas on the important potential of incorporating music history and musicology in the study of social and cultural histories. Dr. Lehtonen is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Tokyo.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk

Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast

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Francine Tremblay, "Organizing for Sex Workers’ Rights in Montréal: Resistance and Advocacy" (Lexington Books, 2020) Jun 04, 2021

Show notes

Francine Tremblay's book Organizing for Sex Workers’ Rights in Montréal: Resistance and Advocacy (Lexington Books, 2020) is based on a case study about Stella, l’amie de Maimie a Montréal sex workers' rights organization, founded by and for sex workers. It explores how a group of ostracized female-identified sex workers transformed themselves into a collective to promote the health and well-being of women working in the sex industry. Weighed down by the old and tenacious whore symbol, the sex workers at Stella had to find a way to navigate the criminality of sex work and sex workers, in order to do advocacy and support work, and create safer spaces for sex workers to engage in such advocacy. This book focuses on sex workers, but the advocacy challenges and strategies it outlines can also apply to the lives of other marginalized groups who are often ignored, pitied, or reviled, but who are seldom seen as fully human.

Listeners may also be interested in this article by Tromblay and a report for The Doctors of The World.

Rachel Stuart is a sex work researcher whose primary interest is the lived experiences of sex workers.

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Heather Berg, "Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism" (UNC Press, 2021) Jun 03, 2021

Show notes

Every porn scene is a record of people at work. But on-camera labor is only the beginning of the story. Porn Work takes readers behind the scenes to explore what porn performers think of their work and how they intervene to hack it. Blending extensive fieldwork with feminist and antiwork theorizing, Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism (UNC Press, 2021) details entrepreneurial labor on the boundaries between pleasure and tedium. Rejecting any notion that sex work is an aberration from straight work, it reveals porn workers' creative strategies as prophetic of a working landscape in crisis. In the end, it looks to what porn has to tell us about what's wrong with work, and what it might look like to build something better.

Rachel Stuart is a sex work researcher whose primary interest is the lived experiences of sex workers.

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Ruth Roth on the Wisdom of the Catholic Church Jun 02, 2021

Show notes

What wisdom does the Roman Catholic Church hold for our modern world? Can it become more inclusive? Join us as we speak to Ruth Roth, a Roman Catholic Woman Priest, who was ordained by a Bishop of the Church as part of one such effort.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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Cat M. Ariail, "Passing the Baton: Black Women Track Stars and American Identity" (U Illinois Press, 2020) Jun 02, 2021

Show notes

At almost any international sporting event in which the US competes, it is now common (and appropriate) to remark on the composition of the American team’s ethnic and racial diversity. It is now accepted that a competitor with “USA” on their jersey/uniform does not have to “look” a certain way in order to represent the country . They can be African American, Latino/a, Asian American, Native American, or any other racial or ethnic background.

For many decades of Olympic/international competition, this was not the case. It is the challenge to these limitations that Cat Ariail discusses in her work, Passing the Baton: Black Women Track Stars and American Identity (University of Illinois Press, 2020). Here, by examining the careers and importance of women such as Alice Coachman, Mae Faggs, and Wilma Rudolph, the author demonstrates the tensions and opportunities created by the US’ desire to triumph against Eastern-bloc foes (both on the field of athletic competition, as well as in international diplomacy). Ultimately, it was the talent of these competitors that overcame many discriminatory assumptions and forced the nation’s sports cultures (both white and African American) to broaden the notion of who could don the USA moniker in Olympic venues such as Melbourne and Rome.

While eventually coming to accept, grudgingly, the notion that African American women should compete on behalf of the USA, not all barriers fell, as Ariail argues in her chapters on Wilma Rudolph. Here, she focuses on the fact that Rudolph “looked” the way a US female athlete should. Further, her “performance” closely mirrored what was expected of white female athletes (this, in turned, required the covering up of Rudolph being an unwed mother). Still, she looked the part, and this made it possible for more African American women, and eventually white females, to gain acceptance so as to be able to compete for the US in track and field.

This work provides an excellent overview of the talent and determination it took for female athletes from schools such as Tennessee State University to challenge, and surmount, many, though not all, of the limitations that the sporting culture of post-World War II US society placed on them.

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