New Books in Gender

New Books Network
  • 4.4 (49)
  • Social Sciences
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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

  1. 1d ago

    Realism After the Individual: Women, Desire, and the Modern American Novel with Rafael Walker (U Chicago Press, 2025)

    The realist novel, so the story goes, isn’t really an American genre but a European and British one. And what the realist novel does—again, according to conventional wisdom—is entrench a liberal model of the individual: the self as autonomous and perfectible. Pushing back against these and other received ideas, Rafael Walker offers a self-professed “heretical” view of the history of the American novel in Realism after the Individual: Women, Desire, and the Modern American Novel (U Chicago Press, 2025).  A specialist in American and African American literature as well as gender and sexuality studies, Walker is Associate Professor of English and Black and Latino Studies at Baruch College and the editor of new editions of two essential American novels: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899) and Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929).  In Realism after the Individual, his first book-length study, Walker shows how realist novels written by US authors from the 1890s to the 1920s transform our understanding of what the novel is and does in the American context. These novels are populated, Walker argues, with “post-individualist” individuals, particularly women, who want new things endlessly and who especially want what other people want—because they've adapted to America's brave new world of capitalist consumption and mass culture. In this conversation with Alix Beeston, Walker ranges widely and expertly across literary and intellectual history as he shares about women with insatiable desires, men who are killed off for not desiring enough, and the resonances between early twentieth-century literature and the present political moment. He also offers some recommendations for the important but now all-but-forgotten realist novels we should all be reading. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  2. 5d ago

    Immoral Traffic An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India with Vibhuti Ramachandran (Cambridge UP, 2025)

    Immoral Traffic: An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India (Cambridge UP, 2025) delves into the complex intersection of India's anti-prostitution law and global anti-trafficking campaigns, and how they impact sex workers in both voluntary and involuntary situations. Immoral Traffic examines the role of legal actors and NGOs in implementing these interventions, revealing the mix of paternalism, humanitarianism, punitive care, bureaucracy, and morality in their efforts. Through a sequence of interventions prescribed by India's anti-prostitution law, the book follows the experiences of sex workers, from rescues to courts to carceral shelters. It sheds light on the ways in which donor-driven NGOs draw upon this law to implement anti-trafficking agendas, and how these interventions are navigated by women removed from the sex trade. Detailed and eye-opening, this book is a valuable resource for scholars and students of anthropology, law and society, gender and sexuality studies, South Asian studies, global studies, and critical studies of NGOs and humanitarianism.Vibhuti Ramachandran is an anthropologist of law, gender and sexuality, and South Asia. She serves as an Associate Professor at University of California-Irvine's Department of Global and International Studies, School of Social Sciences. Saumya Dadoo is a PhD Candidate at Columbia University's Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS). Her dissertation focuses on the history of policing and punishment in colonial North India.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  3. 6d ago

    Notes from the Sex Worker Left: Lumpen Theory with Heather Berg (Duke UP, 2026)

    “If whores were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free” (ix). Notes from the Sex Worker Left: Lumpen Theory (Duke UP, 2026) opens with a quote from Clara expanding on the Combahee River Collective 1977 statement. Interweaving interviews and writing by sex workers like Clara, Notes from the Sex Worker Left by Heather Berg offers a political theory that critiques family/couple-form, work, and state, envisioning militant community care. Rejecting the pressure to fit into a category of hardworking, respectable workers dominant even in the Left, Heather Berg extends Marxist theorization of lumpenproletariat: the working-class “who were criminalized, itinerant, and otherwise making a living of ‘dubious means’ ” (13). Although lumpenproletariat is not a cohesive category, with sex workers offering different perspectives and experiences, Berg reads lumpenness as a “critical standpoint” (14) to reimagine the world where we are able to not only survive, but also thrive, collectively. Through theorizing, the book invites the readers to think with sex workers on the question of how we can thrive in this increasingly precarious world. This book is a thought-provoking and beautiful read for anyone who is interested in exploring these questions together at the intersections of gender studies, labor studies, and political theory. Beyond academia, anyone who wants to delve deeper into the couple-form, work, and state structure, dreaming of escape and alternatives, would find this to be a rewarding read.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  4. Oct 6

    Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity with Samar Abdel-Rahman (American U of Cairo Press, 2026)

    Samar Abdel-Rahman's Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity (American University of Cairo Press, 2026) explores male stardom in Egyptian cinema produced during the early years following the Free Officers' revolution of 1952, through the lives and careers of three key stars: Omar al-Sharif, Ismail Yassin, and Farid Shawqi. In attempting to find a balance between the traditional and the modern, the Nasser era placed an emphasis on education, work, and gender equality. Yet, faithfulness to Egyptian traditions and values remained a key part of the state’s vision of collective identity. Samar illuminates how these stars promoted a civic identity that aligned with the regime’s ambitions, and how each of them—through melodrama, comedy, and action—negotiated a different facet of masculine identity that spoke to the ambivalent constructions of hegemonic masculinity during this critical post-colonial period. Samar Abdel-Rahman holds a PhD in film studies from King's College London and  is currently a lecturer of World Cinema at the University of Liverpool. Her research, which focuses on stardom and performance in Middle Eastern and North African Cinemas, has been published in edited volumes including The Routledge Companion to European Cinema. Saman Nasser holds an MA in world history from James Madison University, where he currently works as an educational staff. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  5. Oct 6

    Women in Comics: Iconic Characters and Influential Creators 1923-Today with Susan E. Kirtley and Nhora Lucía Serrano (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026)

    Susan E. Kirtley and Nhora Lucía Serrano's Women in Comics (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026) is a richly illustrated, essential guide to the importance of women in the comics space from across time and around the globe. Comics in the form of editorial cartoons, comic strips, digital comics, comic books, and graphic novels have combined words and images to tell stories of hundreds of years. Though often overlooked, women have played a vital role in shaping this genre, both as creators and characters within the stories themselves. Through six archetypes frequently found in comics—the patriot, the working woman, the socialite, the fashionista, the reporter, and the spy—Kirtley and Serrano trace some of comics’ most influential women. This insightful exploration of international characters celebrates the feminist role model Wonder Woman, the warrior-maiden Oscar François de Jarjayes in the gender-defying manga tale Berusiyu no Bara (The Rose of Versailles), the real-life groundbreaking journalist Nellie Bly, and many others. Profiles throughout the book highlight the important work of female creators, heralding the bravery of political cartoonists such as Corinne “Coco” Rey and Rayma Suprani, the power of biography as reportage with Marjane Satrapi and Sophia Glock, and the value of visibility with Alison Bechdel and Mariko Tamaki.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  6. Oct 1

    How Girls Achieve

    How Girls Achieve points out a simple and overlooked truth: most schools never had girls in mind to begin with. That is why the world needs what Dr. Sally Nuamah calls “feminist schools,” deliberately designed to provide girls with achievement-oriented identities. And she shows how these schools would help all students, regardless of their gender. Educated women raise healthier families, build stronger communities, and generate economic opportunities for themselves and their children. Yet millions of disadvantaged girls never make it to school—and too many others drop out or fail. Upending decades of advice and billions of dollars in aid, Dr, Nuamah argues that this happens because so many challenges girls confront—from sexual abuse to unequal access to materials and opportunities—go unaddressed. But it isn’t enough just to go to school. What you learn there has to prepare you for the world where you’ll put that knowledge to work. Dr. Nuamah reveals that developing resilience is not a gender-neutral undertaking. Preaching grit doesn’t help girls; it actively harms them. Drawing on her deep immersion in classrooms in the United States, Ghana, and South Africa, Nuamah calls for a new approach: creating feminist schools that will actively teach girls how and when to challenge society’s norms, and allow them to carve out their own paths to success. Guest: Dr. Sally A. Nuamah is an associate professor of Urban Politics in Human Development, Social Policy and Political Science (by courtesy) at Northwestern University. She has received numerous awards; began the TWII Foundation to provide funding for girls striving to be first in their families to go to college; and was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and a Women and Public Policy fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Host is: Dr. Christina Gessler is the producer of the both Academic Life podcast and the show’s weekly newsletter. She is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. Listeners may be interested in: Teacher By TeacherDoing the Work of Equity Leadership for Justice and Systems ChangeBlack Girls and How We Fail ThemLeading from the MarginsHow We Show UpHow Schools Make RaceBlack Woman On BoardRemembering LucilleCan I Say That?Teaching About Race And RacismWelcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! This episode was originally published Nov 6, 2020 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  7. Sep 27

    Fitness for Freedom: Disability, Degeneration, and Modern Irish Writing with Marion Quirici (Syracuse UP, 2025)

    Fitness for Freedom: Disability, Degeneration, and Modern Irish Writing (Syracuse UP, 2025) explores the legacy of intersectional stereotypes of disability, race, gender, sexuality, class, and religion that justified imperial rule in Ireland and the forms of oppression that continued after independence. Marion Quirici identifies models of citizenship and creative autonomy in Irish modernist literature that valorize vulnerability over ability and interdependence over independence. She uncovers a history in which an entire nation, Ireland, was characterized as disabled and therefore “not fit for freedom.” Beyond symbolism, the Famine and decades of emigration led to a perception that Ireland’s racial stocks were depleted, and that those who remained were feeble and few. The fraught relationship between disability and Irishness provides context for Quirici’s analysis of modernist Irish literature. Revivalists such as William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, Pádraic Pearse, and the Gaelic Athletic Association created new mythologies of Irish ability to counter imperial stereotypes, tacitly reinforcing the idea of disability as a disqualification for sovereignty. Certain Irish modernists, however—James Joyce, Edna O’Brien, Samuel Beckett, Brian O’Nolan, and Christy Brown—called the “fitness for freedom” ideology into question. These authors allow us to disentangle disability from unfitness and scrutinize its relationship to liberation. In their work, disability becomes an avenue for exploring the human experience and discovering the inherent creativity and collaborative potential of an interdependent life. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

  8. Sep 26

    Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe with Sophie Lewis

    This episode’s centers on Sophie Lewis’s new book Femmephilia. A collection of essays published in various outlets over the last several years, this book will take readers through a number of disparate topics, from the recent Disney remake of The Little Mermaid to experiments with psychedelics to the bizarre meanings one might find at its end. Uniting it all though is an unapologetically anticapitalist and utopian feminism, one that sees in various examples and experiences of femme glimpses both of the contradictions of our present moment and brief glimmers of what an emancipated world might look like. Sophie Lewis is a freelance writer, with work appearing in a number of outlets including London Review of Books, The Drift and e-flux. Her previous books are Enemy Feminisms, Abolish the Family and Full Surrogacy Now.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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About

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Information

  • Creator
    New Books Network
  • Years Active
    2011 - 2026
  • Episodes
    713
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network
  • Show Website
    New Books in Gender

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