New Books in Gender

Latest Episodes:

Natasha Varner, "La Raza Cosmética: Beauty, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Postrevolutionary Mexico" (U Arizona Press, 2020) Mar 22, 2021

Show notes

A close friend and muse of many of postrevolutionary Mexico's greatest artists, Luz Jiménez's likeness appears across Mexico City in the form of painting, photography, and sculpture. Jiménez's ubiquity has earned her the titles of "the most painted woman in all of Mexico" and "the archetype of Indigenous Mexican woman." And yet the details of her complex life as an Indigenous woman at mid century have long remained shrouded by artistic depictions of her face and body. Jiménez's experience of hypervisibility and simultaneous erasure in postrevolutionary Mexico is no anomaly; during the early to mid-twentieth century, Indigenous women were idealized and objectified as relics of Mexico's past as cultural elites sought to manufacture a distinctly mestizo future. The experiences of modern Indigenous women constitute the focus of Natasha Varner's new book, La Raza Cosmética: Beauty, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Postrevolutionary Mexico (University of Arizona Press, 2020), a vivid recovery of the intersections of settler colonialism, gender, visual culture, and modernity.

Varner employs methods from the fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies and settler colonial studies in an innovative new study of postrevolutionary Mexican visual culture. Drawing upon a range of midcentury media - including newspapers, photography, film, postcards and tourism materials, and more - Varner weaves together narratives of visibility, erasure, survivance, dispossession, and identity that ultimately center upon on Indigenous women's experiences and livelihoods. Despite efforts to erase Indigenous women from Mexico's future, La Raza Cosmética impresses upon us a powerful reminder of Indigenous women's persistence in Mexico - at midcentury as well as in the present.

Annabel LaBrecque is a PhD student in the Department of History at UC Berkeley. You can find her on Twitter @labrcq.

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Hawraa Al Hassan, "Women, Writing and the Iraqi Ba'thist State" (U Edinburgh Press, 2020) Mar 22, 2021

Show notes

Hawraa Al Hassan’s Women, Writing and the Iraqi Ba’thist State: Contending Discourses of Resistance and Collaboration, 1968-2003 (University of Edinburgh Press, 2020) is unique because it both explores discourse concerning women and how women themselves used literature to create a site of resistance to the state. Al-Hassan’s work is also inclusive, as it joins a wider call to make literary studies a space in which works which were previously considered propagandistic can also be seriously considered. My hope for the book is that it will shift perspectives in literary studies to different foci, painting a more complete vision of the literary history of the Arabic language.

Dr Hawraa Al-Hassan is an associate fellow of the Higher Education Academy, having taught Arabic and modern history of the Middle East at the University of Cambridge. Hawraa completed her PhD in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge and gained an MA in Comparative Literature at University College London. She is interested in the cultural history of the Arab world in so far as it relates to totalitarianism, propaganda and nationalism. Hawraa’s research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to the Arab novel as a conduit of group identities. Her current project explores Iraqi Ba’thist involvement in the production of literary and media discourses on gender and nation, whilst considering the potential of resistive ‘counter-public’ spaces, be they Islamic or secular.

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Erica Ball et al., "As if She Were Free" (Cambridge UP, 2020) Mar 22, 2021

Show notes

Edited by Drs. Erica Ball, Tatiana Seijas, and Terri L. Snyder, As if She Were Free (Cambridge University Press, 2020) is a collective biography of African and African-descended women across the Americas.

This collection of twenty-four beautifully crafted chapters, spans across centuries and geographies, giving us a varied and textured reading of women’s lives and experiences. More importantly than that, and herein lies the revolutionary character of this book, As If She Were Free changes our ways of understanding and conceptualizing freedom and emancipation, ultimately transforming how we narrate the past of our societies and understand our present.

As the editors of the book tell us in this interview, this is a feminist project at its core, a useful history for today because African and African-descended women in the Americas, both in the past and present, have crafted their own understandings of freedom, advocated for new ways of defining and living freely, and achieved revolutionary changes in our societies. Enjoy this wonderful conversation!

PS. By the end of the interview, you may notice Tatiana Seijas does not answer some questions. The recording of this episode occurred during the Texas Winter storms, and she had to rush home before sunset. Her commitment to this interview, even under such circumstances, was remarkable even if not surprising for those of us who know her and her love for history.

Lisette Varón-Carvajal is a PhD Candidate at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. You can tweet her and suggest books at @LisetteVaron

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Nevin Reda and Yasmin Amin, "Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice: Processes of Canonization Subversion and Change" (McGill Queens UP, 2020) Mar 19, 2021

Show notes

In their groundbreaking new book, Islamic Interpretive Tradition and Gender Justice: Processes of Canonization, Subversion, and Change (McGill, 2020), Nevin Reda and Yasmin Amin raise excellent questions about the existence and formation of a canon in the Islamic tradition. This exciting book comprises ten chapters, organized into three sections: The Qur’an and Its Interpretation; Figurative Representation: Hadith and Biographical Dictionaries; and, finally, Fiqh and Its Application. The volume brilliantly and carefully responds to criticisms against Islamic feminism, such as the claim that Islamic feminist scholarship lacks methodological rigor. Some of the overarching themes that each chapter in the volume shares are providing more ethical and egalitarian interpretations of gendered verses in the Qur’an and interrogating the idea of canonization in Islam. Each author accomplishes this by challenging the unfounded assumption of an established canon in the Islamic tradition; by raising questions about what ijma’ (or consensus) is and if it has ever existed on given issues; and/or by using the methodologies of pre-modern male scholars of Islam only to produce significantly different interpretations on the same matter. Among the topics covered are polygamy, divorce, child marriage, women’s public participation, interreligious marriage, stoning, and so much more.

In today's conversation with Yasmin Amin and Nevin Reda, we discuss the major contributions of the book, the process of compilation, what the authors mean by decanonization and by subverting the canon if one exists, some of the specific chapters of the book, such as on child marriage, polygamy, and biographies of women, and the question of ethical interpretations of the Qur’an in the context of gender.

Shehnaz Haqqani is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Mercer University. She earned her PhD in Islamic Studies with a focus on gender from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018. Her dissertation research explored questions of change and tradition, specifically in the context of gender and sexuality, in Islam. She is currently working on a book project on Muslim women's marriage to non-Muslims in Islam. Shehnaz runs a YouTube channel called What the Patriarchy?!, where she vlogs about feminism and Islam in an effort to dismantle the patriarchy and uproot it from Islam (ambitious, she knows). She can be reached at haqqani_s@mercer.edu.

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Camille Melissa, "Whoretography" (Apple Books, 2017) Mar 18, 2021

Show notes

When Camille Melissa emigrated to the UK from Australia via Paris and entered the sex industry in 2005, she always knew that photography would play a crucial role as she navigated the complex structures – both visible and invisible – of this misrepresented community. The rhetoric surrounding sex work is often frustratingly one-dimensional in mainstream media; those who enter the industry are somehow ‘damaged’, labourers of the patriarchy, powerless individuals who need saving from themselves. Sex work activists continue to challenge the victim narrative forced upon them, across politics, film and art.

Camille is one such activist. She started her online platform Whoretography as a way of examining the intersection of images, technologies, society and the sex workers’ rights movement. As ‘a visual activist platform and a sex work positive publishing house’, Whoretography seeks to answer two fundamental questions: Is it possible to reclaim the word ‘whore’ through creative practice as research? What role does photography play in contemporary online sexual consumption?

“The easy availability of information on the internet has revolutionised the industry’s marketing techniques and its verbal and visual vocabulary,” Camille says, “Digital photographs are now fundamental to the transaction of sex. Photography needs to form a greater part of the sex work discussion; I have learned how negatively impactful photography can be in presenting sex workers as different from and less than other people.”

Camille's Twitter handle is @Whoretography and her website with more information about her ebooks is https://thephotographictheoris... and will be online from May

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The Self-Care Stuff: Parenting and Personal Life in Academia Mar 18, 2021

Show notes

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at cgessler@gmail.com or dr.danamalone@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.

In this episode you’ll hear about: navigating academia, gender creative parenting, and a discussion of the book Raising Them.

Our guest is: Dr. Kyl Myers, author of Raising Them: Our Adventure in Gender Creative Parenting. Kyl is a sociologist, parent, partner, professor, and advocate of gender creative parenting. Kyl’s work has been featured on social media, a TedX Talk, and in numerous articles. She can be found at raisingzoomer.com and at kylmyers.com.

Your host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women, gender, and sexuality.

Listeners to this episode might be interested in:

TheybyParenting.com
Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue, by Christia Spears Brown
Gender Revolution, Documentary from National Geographic
Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon
Raising Them: Our Adventure in Gender Creative Parenting by Kyl Myers
Raising Baby Grey, video and story from The New Yorker

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Vanessa R. Sasson, "Yasodhara and the Buddha" (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020) Mar 18, 2021

Show notes

By combining the spirit of fiction with the fabulism of Indian mythology and in-depth academic research, Vanessa R. Sasson shares the evocative story of the Buddha from the perspective of a forgotten woman: Yasodhara, the Buddha's wife.

Although often marginalized, Yasodhara's narrative here comes to life. Written with a strong feminist voice, we encounter Yasodhara as a fiercely independent, passionate and resilient individual. We witness her joys and sorrows, her expectations and frustrations, her fairy-tale wedding, and her overwhelming devastation at the departure of her beloved.

It is through her eyes that we witness Siddhattha's slow transformation, from a sheltered prince to a deeply sensitive young man. On the way, we see how the gods watch over the future Buddha from the clouds, how the king and his ministers try to keep the suffering of the world from him and how he eventually renounces the throne, his wife and newly-born son to seek enlightenment.

Along with a foreword from Wendy Doniger, Yasodhara and the Buddha (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020) includes a scholarly introduction to Yasodhara's narrative and offers extensive notes along with study questions, to help readers navigate the traditional literature in a new way, making this an essential book for anyone wanting to learn about Buddhist narratives.

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Linda Heidenreich, "Nepantla Squared: Transgender Mestiz@ Histories in Times of Global Shift" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) Mar 17, 2021

Show notes

In the Nahuatl language, nepantla refers to the ancient Mesoamerican “philosophy that views the world through motion-change,” binding past, present and potential futures together in creative tension (p. xvii). In Nepantla Squared: Transgender Mestiz@ Histories in Times of Global Shift (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), Prof. Linda Heidenreich relies on this concept to reflect expansively about identity, subjectivity, and the research process in this volume, mapping potential connections and useful collusions between Chicanx studies and trans studies. In five deeply researched and resonant chapters, they recover the histories of trans mestiz@s, focusing particularly on the lives of Jack Garland in late nineteenth-century California, and Gwen Amber Rose Araujo in late twentieth-century California. In this conversation, Heidenreich and Prof. Mirelsie Velazquez reflect on how the concept of nepantla invites all historians to consider the self and the now as part of the warp and weave of any inquiry into the past. Join us for an impassioned conversation about weaving together rage and hope to imagine a future of possibilities beyond borders.

Mirelsie Velazquez is an Associate Professor & Rainbolt Family Endowed Presidential Professor, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, University of Oklahoma.

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Arnold W. Rachman, "Elizabeth Severn: The 'Evil Genius' of Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2017) Mar 16, 2021

Show notes

Elizabeth Severn: The 'Evil Genius' of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2017) chronicles the life and work of Elizabeth Severn, both as one of the most controversial analysands in the history of psychoanalysis, and as a psychoanalyst in her own right. Condemned by Freud as "an evil genius", Freud disapproved of Severn’s work and had her influence expelled from the psychoanalytic mainstream. In this book, Rachman draws on years of research into Severn to present a much-needed reappraisal of her life and work, as well as her contribution to modern psychoanalysis.

Arnold Rachman’s re-discovery, restoration and analysis of the Elizabeth Severn Papers – including previously unpublished interviews, books, brochures and photographs – suggests that, far from a failure, that the analysis of Severn by Ferenczi constitutes one of the great cases in psychoanalysis, one that was responsible a new theory and methodology for the study and treatment of trauma disorder, in which Severn played a pioneering role.

Elizabeth Severn should be of interest to any psychoanalyst looking to glean fresh light on Severn’s progressive views on clinical empathy, self-disclosure, countertransference analysis, intersubjectivity and the origins of relational analysis.

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Monica D. Fitzgerald, "Puritans Behaving Badly: Gender, Punishment, and Religion in Early America" (Cambridge UP, 2020) Mar 11, 2021

Show notes

The Puritans of Early America did not start out with gendered society and piety. Instead, Monica D. Fitzerald suggests, growing tensions between lay men and clergy over what was perceived as a feminized piety led toward a gradual separation of masculinity and femininity into distinct spheres. In Puritans Behaving Badly: Gender, Religion, and Punishment in Early America(Cambridge UP, 2020), Fitzgerald presents original research in the church disciplinary records of censure cases among Puritan congregations in the first three generations of American Puritanism. The records tell a fascinating story about how, even though the Puritan ministers advocated a holistic spirituality that was at once inwardly pietistic and externally dutiful, the lists of sins and confessions recorded in the chronicles of church discipline cases indicate that only men were being held accountable for sins of duty and honor, and only women for sins of personal spirituality and heart religion. Filled with vivid tales of squabbles, rifts, and deadly rivalries, Fitzgerald's book is sure to fascinate and delight readers interested in the development of religion and culture in early America. Follow Monica on Twitter (@mofitz66), or visit her book page on Cambridge Core.

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