New Books in Gender

Latest Episodes:

Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago, "Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing" (Leuven UP, 2022) Feb 12, 2023

Show notes

Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago'sedited volumeBlack Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing(Leuven UP, 2022) questions how the Black female body, specifically the Black maternal body, navigates interlocking structures that place a false narrative on her body and that of her maternal ancestors. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly inquiry and contemporary art, this book addresses these misconceptions and fills in the gaps that exist in the photographic representation of Black motherhood, mothering, and mutual care within Black communities.

The essays and interviews, paired with a curated selection of images, address the complicated relationship between Blackness and photography and in particular its gendered dimension, its relationship to health, sexuality, and digital culture - primarily in the context of racialized heteronormativity. This collection, then, challenges racist images and discourses, both historically and in its persistence in contemporary society, while reclaiming the innate brilliance of Black women through personal stories, history, political acts, connections to place, moments of pleasure, and communal celebration.

This visual exploration of Black motherhood through pictures made by Black woman-identifying photographers thus serves as a reflection of the past and a portal to the future and contributes to recent scholarship on the complexity of Black life and Black joy.

This book emerges from the project Women Picturing Revolution.

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Rolf Nolasco, "Hearts Ablaze: Parables for the Queer Soul" (Morehouse Publishing, 2022) Feb 12, 2023

Show notes

Hearts Ablaze: Parables for the Queer Soul(Morehouse Publishing, 2022), written by Dr. Rolf R. Nolasco Jr., was published by Morehouse Publishing in 2022. In this powerful book, Dr. Nolasco takes us on a journey deeper into the queerness of Jesus and his movement.

These meditations also address the spiritual needs of queer Christians.

This book is a new look at ten selected parables of Jesus, that expands the scope of interpretation of each story to highlight God's extravagant welcome of all people. The perspective in the reflections is deeply personal and written to be used by both individuals and groups. Queer affirming churches, seminaries, and retreat centers will benefit from this resource as they continue to champion the flourishing of their queer siblings in Christ.

Meg Gambino is an artist and activist currently working as the Client and Community Relations Manager at a local nonprofit focused on ending hunger in North Penn. Her life mission is to creatively empower others by modeling reconciliation between communities of people and people on the margins. Find her on Instagram @megambino.

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Shailaja Paik, "The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India" (Stanford UP, 2022) Feb 12, 2023

Show notes

Shailaja Paik's book The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford UP, 2022) is an important reflection on the question of Dalit women and their sexuality question. Through the performance of Tamasha, Paik has relooked into the lifeworld of Dalit women and has argued about what the performance of Tamasha means in Dalit women’s everydayness rather than conventionally understanding it through a moral lens of good vs bad. The framework of ‘manuski’ and ‘assli’ reflects upon the Dalit women quest to transgress ascribed identities and it reinforces Dalit performance as a weapon for the weak. The work is a watershed as it re-centers Dalit woman’s experiences in the sex-gender-caste complex, rather than looking at them as passive recipients of male-centered Dalit assertion.

Shailaja Paik is an Associate Professor at the University of Cincinnati. She is Taft's Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Asian Studies. Her research lies at the intersection of fields concerning Modern South Asia, Dalit Studies, Women’s Studies, and oral History to mention a few.

Kalyani Kalyani is a sociologist and currently teaches at School of Arts and Sciences in Azim Premji University at Bengaluru.

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Sara Petrosillo, "Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture" (Ohio State UP, 2023) Feb 12, 2023

Show notes

Fantastic and informative talk with Sara Petrosillo of the University of Evansville about her new book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture (Ohio State University Press, 2023). Listen all the way to the end for a great description of the process of hunting with birds! While critical discourse about falconry metaphors in premodern literature is dominated by depictions of women as unruly birds in need of taming, women in the Middle Ages claimed the symbol of a hawking woman on their personal seals, trained and flew hawks, and wrote and read poetic texts featuring female falconers.

Sara Petrosillo's Hawking Women demonstrates how cultural literacy in the art of falconry mapped, for medieval readers, onto poetry and challenged patriarchal control. Examining texts written by, for, or about women, Hawking Women uncovers literary forms that arise from representations of avian and female bodies. Readings from Sir Orfeo, Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Machaut, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and hawking manuals, among others, show how female characters are paired with their hawks not to assert dominance over the animal but instead to recraft the stand-in of falcon for woman as falcon with woman. In the avian hierarchy female hawks have always been the default, the dominant, and thus these medieval interspecies models contain lessons about how women resisted a culture of training and control through a feminist poetics of the falconry practice.

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

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Dianne M. Stewart, "Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American Marriage" (Seal Press, 2020) Feb 08, 2023

Show notes

According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American Marriage(Seal Press, 2020) reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis.

Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split up couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north, where the welfare system mandated that women remain single in order to receive government support. And no institution has forbidden Black love as effectively as the prison-industrial complex, which removes Black men en masse from the pool of marriageable partners.

Prodigiously researched and deeply felt, Black Women, Black Love reveals how white supremacy has systematically broken the heart of Black America, and it proposes strategies for dismantling the structural forces that have plagued Black love and marriage for centuries.

Mickell Carter is a doctoral student in the department of history at Auburn University. She can be reached at mzc0152@auburn.edu and on twitter @MickellCarter

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Gloria Coppola et al., "Women Standing Strong Together: A Collection of Stories with Soul Purpose, Volume II" (2019) Feb 07, 2023

Show notes

Life will always bring us experiences and uncertainty, risks, losses - never planned, never found - emotional upheaval that defines what it means to be vulnerable; to break down to our breakthrough. It is here we find the courage to rise up, become our authentic selves and live our purpose.

In this book, twelve women expose their vulnerability, their pain, their truth, their intuitive guidance and insights that led to the courage it has taken to go from the depths of fear, grief, and heartbreak to finding their place in the world. They have come to own their sovereignty, become more empathic, found a new sense of creating a life they love and tapping into gifts that were not recognized prior and found a new vision on their journey.

Women Standing Strong Together: A Collection of Stories with Soul Purpose, Volume II (2023) is about finding that powerful place within; our strength from our life experiences. It’s about courage in a world where we feel not good enough and giving ourselves the permission to examine our lives, become uncomfortable and step into the fire to grow stronger. The shattered pieces in our lives create the magic that waits for us to claim our power within. When we allow ourselves to surrender to the divine plan great things are illuminated before us and our path becomes clear, we climb higher and our goddess emerges.

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Erin in the Morning: A Interview with Erin Reed, LGBTQ+ Activist and Substacker Feb 06, 2023

Show notes

Today I interview Erin Reed. Reed is an activist, public speaker, and writer across multiple platforms, including a Substack newsletter, all of which she gathers under the title “Erin in the Morning.” Reed’s work centers on advocacy for the transgender community and the greater queer community. At the moment, she’s undertaken the momentous task of tracking the anti-trans legislation that’s being forwarded in state houses across the country and exposing its troubling, deceitful, and vicious nature. Through her newsletter, social media posts, and in-person appearances, Reed supports not only trans and queer rights, but also a vision for our communities and our country in which mutual care and kindness are our abiding values. To say it another way, Erin supports the fight against cruel ant-trans legislation currently underway and she also connects her readers with trans girl scouts so she can help these kids with their annual cookie sale.

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Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Technology in 20th Century Mali Feb 06, 2023

Show notes

Laura Ann Twagira, an associate professor of history, head of African Studies, and an affiliate with science in society program and feminist gender sexuality studies program at Wesleyan University, talks about her book, Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Embodied Engineering examines how women in rural Mali have used technology to ensure food security through the colonial period, environmental crises, and postcolonial rule. Twagira charts how women in Mali resisted some technological changes in agriculture and kitchens while embracing others, often in the name of pursuing their own notions of how food should taste. Twagira and Vinsel also talk about the need to redefine concepts, such as engineering and technology, in different contexts, and how doing so challenges reigning paradigms, such as that the goal of technology adoption should be increasing productivity and replacing labor - two values that women in Mali rejected.

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Rachel Adelman, "The Female Ruse: Women's Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible" (Sheffield Press, 2017) Feb 05, 2023

Show notes

In Rachael E. Adelman's monograph The Female Ruse: Women's Deception and Divine Sanction in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield Press, 2017) she explores how the feminine trickster archetype plays a central role in the Hebrew bible and is an important forces that drives the narrative forward and unmasks wisdom.

From Eve to Esther, the Hebrew Bible is replete with gendered tales of trickery. A lie is uttered, a mask donned, a seduction staged, while redemption is propelled forward, guided by the divine hand. From the first 'female ruse' - Eve presenting the fruit of the tree of knowledge to Adam - humanity becomes embodied, engaged in history, moving from the Garden to exile, from wandering to homeland and redemption (and back again). Consider Rebekah dressing her beloved son in goatskins to steal the blessing from his blind father; Lot's daughters lying with their drunken father, and then conceiving the founding fathers of Ammon and Moab; Leah and Rachel, the mothers of the twelve tribes of Israel, duping Jacob on their wedding night; Tamar's seduction of Judah, her father-in-law, who then bears the progenitor of the Davidic line; Naomi sending Ruth to the threshing floor to seduce Boaz by night; Bathsheba invoking an oath that King David had supposedly made in order to forward Solomon, her son, as successor to the monarchy; and Queen Esther concealing her Jewish identity in the Persian imperial court. Over the course of nine chapters, the author traces these narratives of deception; in each case, God is in cahoots with these feminine agents in advancing the providential plan. A tension holds between the 'best laid plans' of men and the divine will as forwarded by women. Drawing on classic rabbinic sources and modern literary exegesis, the author exposes the conflict between the simple progression of genealogies and the process of selection through alliances of family and kin. Women are at the crux of that conflict, seemingly compelled to choose the indirect route while the deity appears to endorse their lie.

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Reclaiming a Lost Vision of Feminism: A Conversation with Erika Bachiochi Feb 04, 2023

Show notes

The overturning of Roe v. Wade has led to a flurry of commentary and wondering, "Where next?" But, it also begs deeper questions: what is the history of abortion and sex-positivity within the feminist movement, and how did Roe affect our views on sex? Feminist legal scholar Dr. Erika Bachiochi is the founder and director of the Wollstonecraft Project at the Abigail Adams Institute and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Here, she discusses these questions as well as her recent book on Mary Wollstonecraft, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision(University of Notre Dame Press, 2021).

Annika Nordquist is the Communications Coordinator of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and host of the Program’s podcast, Madison’s Notes.

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