New Books in Gender

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Great Books: Julie Carlson on Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" Mar 24, 2020

Show notes

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus when she was nineteen years old on a bet. The novel spawned two centuries of creatures that turn against their makers. It examines the limits of scientific innovation, whether the quest for knowledge must be tempered by morality, and why human beings tend to ostracize, persecute and sometimes kill anything that does not look like them. I spoke with Julie Carlson, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author of a gripping biography of Mary Shelley's family, England's First Family of Writers: Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Mary Shelley (among other books). Shelley's mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, the first modern feminist and a free thinker vilified for her ideas of equality. Her father was a philosopher. In some ways, Mary Shelley was an experiment herself. We also discussed what it means that a woman wrote the first science fiction novel, and why the book and the "daemon" Shelley imagined still proves so powerful today, 200 years after its first publication.

Uli Baer is a professor at New York University. He is also the host of the excellent podcast "Think About It"

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Norman A. Kutcher, "Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule" (U California Press, 2018) Mar 23, 2020

Show notes

Eunuchs. Nobody liked them, everybody seems to have hated them, but, even so, they were an essential part of many states – even in the Qing. Norman A. Kutcher's book Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule (University of California Press, 2018) looks at these little-acknowledged eunuchs, focusing on how the first Qing emperors managed their eunuchs, and in turn what their various management styles reveals about them. Drawing on case reports of crimes committed by eunuchs, official documents, and imperially-commissioned works, Kutcher explores both the rhetoric and reality of eunuch management, revealing countless gaps between the two.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this book expertly reveals all that this gap tells us about eunuchs and the emperors who tried to rule them, and in this interview, Norman provides a look at some of the inspirations and moments that went into the crafting of it.

Sarah Bramao-Ramos is a PhD candidate at Harvard University. She is interested in translation, Manchu language books, and anything that involves a good kesike.

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Sukey Fontelieu, "The Archetypal Pan in America: Hypermasculinity and Terror" (Routledge, 2018) Mar 18, 2020

Show notes

Relying on Carl Jung’s theory of the complex, as well as the archetypal narratives of the Greek character Pan, Sukey Fontelieu’s The Archetypal Pan in America: Hypermasculinity and Terror (Routledge, 2018) seeks to examine a collection of social and political traumas, both personal and collective. The book examines the development of our personal and social identities in psychoanalytic terms, as well as their historical development through large and defining political events, such as the treatment of indigenous populations, foreign military interventions, and the increasing levels of violence at home. The result is a book that sees our current situation as having been in development for quite some time, and that will require deep personal reflection if we are to move forward.

Sukey Fontelieu, PhD attended the University of Essex and Pacifica Graduate Institute and is currently a professor in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies Program at Pacifica.

Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer.

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Melissa Kravetz, "Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics and Professional Identity" (U Toronto Press, 2019) Mar 17, 2020

Show notes

In her new book, Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany: Maternalism, Eugenics and Professional Identity (University of Toronto Press, 2019), Melissa Kravetz examines how German women physicians gained a foothold in the medical profession during the Weimar and Nazi periods, Women Doctors in Weimar and Nazi Germany reveals the continuity in rhetoric, strategy, and tactics of female doctors who worked under both regimes. Additionally, she explains how and why women occupied particular fields within the medical profession, how they presented themselves in their professional writing, and how they reconciled their medical perspectives with their views of the Weimar and later the Nazi state.

Melissa Kravetz is an assistant professor of history at Longwood University.

Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com or on twitter @craig_sorvillo.

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Dennis Baron, "What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She" (Liveright, 2020) Mar 17, 2020

Show notes

Today Dennis Baron talks about his new book What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He & She (Liveright, 2020). Baron is professor emeritus in English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and has written many books about language and its connection to culture. What’s Your Pronoun addresses an important cultural question about women’s rights and the rights and identities of non-binary people, and reveals how we got from he and she to zie, hir, and singular they. Pronouns have sparked a national (and international) debate, prompting new policies about what pronouns to use in schools, workplaces and even prisons. Baron describes the historical context of singular they, how the use of generic he was both used to assert women’s suffrage and to deny it, and the use of neo-pronouns throughout the centuries. What’s Your Pronoun? chronicles the role that pronouns play in establishing our rights and identities. Indeed, the relevance of the question “what’s your pronoun” throughout English’s history may surprise you.

Carrie Gillon is a linguist, editor and writing coach, working in the academic and healthcare sectors. She’s the author of The Semantics of Determiners (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2103) and the co-author of Nominal Contact in Michif (Oxford University Press, 2018). She is also the co-host of the podcast The Vocal Fries, a biweekly podcast about linguistic discrimination (or why judging language is not OK).

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Michael O’Sullivan, "Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918-1965" (U Toronto Press, 2018) Mar 13, 2020

Show notes

How did Catholic mysticism shape politics and religion in 20th-century Germany? What do seers, stigmatics, and Marian apparitions reveal about broader cultural trends? Michael O’Sullivan’s award winning new book examines how longing for the divine paradoxically drove secularism. In Disruptive Power: Catholic Women, Miracles, and Politics in Modern Germany, 1918-1965(University of Toronto Press, 2018), O’Sullivan shares the stories of women who found agency in religious institutions as conduits of the miraculous amid political chaos. In a fascinating examination of politics and religious authority, Disruptive Power shows how miracles sustained religiosity, while ultimately speeding the collapse of church authority.

Michael O'Sullivan teaches a broad range of courses on European history at Marist College in New York. He earned his BA from Canisius College, and his MA and PhD from the University of North Carolina.

Ryan Stackhouse is a historian of Europe specializing in modern Germany and political policing under dictatorship. His forthcoming book Enemies of the People: Hitler’s Critics and the Gestapo explores enforcement practices toward different social groups under Nazism. He also cohosts the Third Reich History Podcast and can be reached at john.ryan.stackhouse@gmail.com or @Staxomatix.

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Melissa Walker and Giselle Roberts, "Women’s Diaries and Letters of the South" (U South Carolina Press) Mar 13, 2020

Show notes

Professors Melissa Walker of Converse College and Giselle Roberts of Australia’s La Trobe University, editors of the Women’s Diaries and Letters of the South series, discuss the field of documentary editing and how the personal writings of southern women reveal the broader history of life in the U.S. South during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Beth A. English is director of the Liechtenstein Institute's Project on Gender in the Global Community at Princeton University. She also is a past president of the Southern Labor History Association.

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John Hardman, "Marie-Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen" (Yale UP, 2019) Mar 11, 2020

Show notes

Who was the real Marie-Antoinette? She was mistrusted and reviled in her own time, and today she is portrayed as a lightweight incapable of understanding the events that engulfed her. In this new account, Marie-Antoinette: The Making of a French Queen (Yale University Press, 2019), acclaimed historian of 18th-century French history and the biographer of Louis XVI, John Hardman redresses the balance, corrects and tears away the smears and calumny and sheds fresh light and understanding on Marie-Antoinette’s story.

Hardman shows how Marie-Antoinette played a significant but misunderstood role in the crisis of the last years of the ancien regime. Drawing on new and or rarely used sources, he describes how, from the outset, Marie-Antoinette refused to prioritize the foreign policy of her mother, the Queen-Empress Maria-Theresa, bravely took over the helm from Louis XVI after the collapse of his morale, and, when revolution broke out, listened to the Third Estate and worked closely with repentant radicals to give the constitutional monarchy a fighting chance. For the first time, Hardman demonstrates exactly what influence Marie-Antoinette had and when and how she exerted it. In short Hardman, whose biography is only the second by an academic in the past one-hundred years, provides the reader with a valuable insight into the world and the thought of Marie-Antoinette. Accordingly to historian, Monroe Price, writing in the Literary Review, Hardman has written a "fascinating biography", which is "major contribution to the subject." In short, Hardman's book is one that any serious scholar or student of 18th-century French History cannot go without.

Charles Coutinho Ph. D. of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written recently for Chatham House’s International Affairs.

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Berry Grass, "Hall of Waters" (Operating System, 2019) Mar 10, 2020

Show notes

Today I interview Berry Grass, an essayist with a powerful new collection of linked essays called Hall of Waters (Operating System, 2019). Grass’s aim is nothing less than to demythologize the American Midwest. Grass wants us to see something like the true history of the land and the culture from which the Midwest arose, one built on systemic racism, exploitation, marginalization, and violence. At the same time, Grass tries to reckon with what it meant for them to grow up, as Grass puts it, “queer and trans in such a toxic environment.” The result is a book that’s dazzling in its variety and steadfast in its vision: to see clearly how the white dominant culture of the Midwest obscures the land to which it laid claim and the nature of who and what it is, all in the hope of a clearer and truer vision of who we are and how we might, in the end, be accountable to ourselves and one another.

Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. His work ranges from food writing to electronic literature. He is the author of three books, most recently In Praise of Nothing: Essay, Memoir, and Experiments (Emergency Press, 2014). He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org.

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M. Maloney, S. Roberts, and T. Graham, "Gender, Masculinity and Video Gaming: Analysing Reddit’s r/gaming Community" (Palgrave, 2019) Mar 09, 2020

Show notes

What can online social spaces like Reddit’s r/gaming reveal about gender attitudes, masculinized spaces, and turning points in gamer communities? In their new book Gender, Masculinity and Video Gaming: Analysing Reddit’s r/gaming Community (Palgrave Pivot, 2019), Marcus Maloney, Steven Roberts, and Timothy Graham utilize computational and qualitative methods to explore conversations happing on the social media platform Reddit’s gaming subreddit. They explore masculine and feminine gendered comments and discourse using the online platform’s functions like upvoting and downvoting, in addition to textual analysis of comments. Maloney, Roberts, and Graham reveal a continuum of discourses from marginalization to inclusion and contribute to our greater understanding of gendered discourse online.

This book would be a great addition to any gender course, both undergraduate and graduate, as it provides clear theoretical analysis of a popular social media platform. This book will be of interest to Sociologists of gender and culture, as well as scholars of media studies, gender studies, and cultural studies.

Sarah E. Patterson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan.

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