New Books in Gender

New Books Network
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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. 16h ago

    Nora L. Rubel, "Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of the Settlement Cook Book" (Columbia UP, 2026)

    In 1901, Lizzie Black Kander put together a cookbook based on the classes she taught at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. “I was trying to teach a group of young foreign girls in a crowded neighborhood how to cook simple and nutritious food, yet have it attractive and inexpensive as we prepare it in America,” she recalled. The Settlement Cook Book would go on to be the most successful charitable cookbook in American history, remaining a best-seller into the 1970s. Despite including nonkosher recipes, it became a mainstay in Jewish kitchens and an enduring touchstone of Jewish American culture. Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book (Columbia University Press, 2026) by Dr. Nora Rubel tells the remarkable story of The Settlement Cook Book, demonstrating how it shaped Jewish American identity—and was in turn shaped by generations of Jewish women. Dr. Rubel traces the cookbook’s evolution across forty editions over several decades, through waves of immigration, shifting gender roles, upward mobility, suburbanization, and rapid changes in Jewish life. She argues that the book celebrates pluralism, allowing it to serve at once as a tool for Americanization, a repository of tradition, and a platform for culinary innovation. Ultimately, The Settlement Cook Book is a record of American Jewish women’s history, told through the food they made and the lives they led. A cultural biography of an iconic cookbook, this lively and inviting book shares an inclusive vision of American cuisine. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

  2. 2d ago

    Rod Phillips, "Cats: A History" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

    For more than 10,000 years, cats have prowled at the edges of human life. But, starting only a few decades ago, hundreds of millions of them became pets. In Cats: A History (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Professor Rod Phillips shares a sweeping cultural and social history of felines, tracing their shifting place across societies and centuries, from ancient Egypt's revered hunters to Europe's suspected familiars of witches and from shipboard rodent controllers to cherished internet icons. Professor Phillips illustrates how cats have always occupied spaces both familiar and mysterious and how their perceived independence and disruptive nature—and their associations with women, the supernatural, and outsiders—have shaped humans' attitudes toward these fascinating creatures. Cats have been lauded as companions and vermin-killers, reviled as threats to moral and ecological order, and cherished for the very qualities that make them hard to control. This richly textured portrait of cats explores their significance in religion, politics, gender, literature, warfare, and pop culture. It also provides profound insights into our relationships with other animals, especially dogs and rodents. The many roles that cats have played throughout history illuminate a variety of contradictions in humans' perceptions of them: as affectionate yet aloof, adorable and evil, ordinary and exceptional. This book is the definitive story of the feline presence in human history—an elegant study of how we live with animals whom we see as living by their own rules. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

  3. 2d ago

    Wednesdae Reim Ifrach, "Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma" (North Atlantic Books, 2026)

    A creative, body-based guide to healing for queer, trans, and gender-expansive readers—somatic tools and expressive arts to feel safer in your body, rewrite your story, and sustain connection. Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma (North Atlantic Books, 2026) is a practical, consent-centered guide to healing body trauma through embodiment and creativity. Drawing on somatic therapy—grounding, breath, orientation, gentle movement—and expressive arts—collage, drawing, clay, movement, music, voice—within a harm-reduction frame of pacing, choice, and safety plans, Wednesdae Reim Ifrach (REAT, ATR-BC, LPC) shares grounded practices, case vignettes, and simple rituals to help you move from shut down or on high alert into steadier, more connected living. The book follows a simple arc: first, feel and steady your nervous system; next, turn those sensations into art and story; and finally, build rituals and relationships that help the changes last—whether you’re navigating dysphoria, ED recovery, chronic stress, or nervous system dysregulation. Inside you’ll find: Body check-ins (quick prompts to name sensations and needs), short breath & movement practices (1–10 minutes), and sensory prompts (sight/sound/touch/smell/taste) Art invitations (collage, drawing, movement, sound/voice) with step-by-step guidance and safety notes Consent & harm-reduction tools (opt-in/out menus, pacing, crisis planning) to keep the work manageable Community practices & rituals (altar-making, release-writing, witness circles) to anchor change in daily lif A queer-centered lens on healing, embodiment, and creativity Warm, inclusive, and usable on your own or with a therapist, Queer Expressions helps you build a more livable relationship with your body—and a story big enough to hold who you are becoming. Wednesdae Reim Ifrach is a trans/non-binary art therapist and counselor dedicated to providing gender-affirming, trauma-informed care that emphasizes healing-centered engagement, body justice, intersectional social justice, and equitable access to eating disorder treatment. They co-own and operate Rainbow Recovery, offering clinical supervision, consultations, trainings, workshops, counseling, and art therapy services to clients in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. As a full-time professor at Moravian University, Wednesdae teaches mental health counseling, social work, and expressive art courses, inspiring future professionals. Over the past decade, they have led trainings and workshops for organizations such as the American Art Therapy Association, National Alliance for Eating Disorders, and Yale University, among others. Previously, Wednesdae founded the country’s first 2sLGBTQIA+ Eating Disorder Program, served on Project HEAL’s Board, and presided over the Connecticut Art Therapy Association. They currently co-chair the Health Professionals in Training Program on the GLMA Board. Their expertise addresses LGBTQ+ concerns and trauma, honoring each client’s identity. Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

  4. 4d ago

    Diana Cucuz, "Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR" (U Toronto Press, 2023)

    In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Diana Cucuz about her book, Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR (University of Toronto Press, 2023) and also asks her for advice to beginner scholars studying gender and the Cold War. A bit about Dr. Cucuz’s book: throughout the Cold War, Soviet citizens had limited access to US life and culture. Amerika, a glossy Russian-language magazine similar to Life, provided a rare exception. Produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA), America’s first peacetime propaganda organization, Amerika was used to influence the Soviet public and convince women in particular that an American-style consumer culture and conservative gender norms could better their lives. Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds relies on USIA archives, issues of Amerika, and American women’s magazines such as the Ladies’ Home Journal to show how, during the postwar period, USIA officials deployed idealized images of American women as happy, fulfilled, and feminine wives, mothers, and homemakers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

  5. Jul 7

    Jay Szpilka, "BDSM Practices in Contemporary Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

    In BDSM Practices in Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), cultural anthropologist and cultural studies scholar Jay Szpilka analyzes the way that BDSM is practiced in contemporary Poland. Based on extensive field research, she asks what social, cultural, and political conditions are necessary for BDSM to be possible to practice in the first place. Through a nuanced analysis of the way that practitioners navigate conflicting understandings and politics of kink, this book provides an alternative to Western-centric narratives of BDSM communities and challenges a number of long-standing notions about the status kink which circulate in sexuality and queer studies. Jay Szpilka is a visiting fellow at Edinburgh Napier University and an assistant professor at SWPS University in Poland. She is the author of BDSM Practices in Contemporary Poland, and her work has been published in the Feminist Review, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Teksty Drugie, and the Australian Feminist Studies. Atalia Israeli-Nevo is an anthropology PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

  6. Jul 6

    Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity

    Dances and balls appear throughout world literature as venues for young people to meet, flirt, and form relationships, as any reader of Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, or Romeo and Juliet can attest. The popularity of social dance transcends class, gender, ethnic, and national boundaries. In the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish culture, dance offers crucial insights into debates about emancipation and acculturation. While traditional Jewish law prohibits men and women from dancing together, Jewish mixed-sex dancing was understood as the very sign of modernity—and the ultimate boundary transgression. Writers of modern Jewish literature deployed dance scenes as a charged and complex arena for understanding the limits of acculturation, the dangers of ethnic mixing, and the implications of shifting gender norms and marriage patterns, while simultaneously entertaining their readers. In this book, Sonia Gollance examines the specific literary qualities of dance scenes, while also paying close attention to the broader social implications of Jewish engagement with dance. Combining cultural history with literary analysis and drawing connections to contemporary representations of Jewish social dance, Gollance illustrates how mixed-sex dancing functions as a flexible metaphor for the concerns of Jewish communities in the face of cultural transitions. Join YIVO for a discussion of Gollance's book with Josh Lambert, professor and director of the Jewish Studies Program at Wellesley College. Buy the book This book talk originally took place on October 26, 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

  7. Jul 4

    Rachel Silveri, "The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

    With The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Rachel Silveri takes a fresh look at the desire to unify art and life, an ambition long regarded as foundational to the European historical avant-gardes. She reveals how many early twentieth-century artists saw their own everyday lives—their bodies, identities, and relationships—as a type of creative material and a central component to their avant-garde practice. These artists abandoned traditional forms of artmaking and venues of art viewing, instead aspiring to integrate art with everyday life, creating an “art of living.”  Considering Tristan Tzara’s performances of Dadaist identity, Sonia Delaunay’s simultaneous fashions and self-branding, and the collective endeavor to open and operate the Surrealist Research Bureau, Silveri offers a new narrative about how the artists of interwar Paris developed experiential life practices that resisted dominant forms of “lifestyle” and normative discourses surrounding gender, ethnicity, and office work. This book argues that ethical questions of “How should I live?” and “How should I relate to others?” were as important to the avant-garde as politics, and that aspirations to change the world played out in daily practices of self-making. Hannah Freed-Thall is Professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture at NYU. She is the author, most recently, of Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal Commons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

  8. Jul 2

    Rosa Campbell, "The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared: Shere Hite and the Hite Report" (Melville House, 2026)

    Despite being one of the leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, today Shere Hite is little known, little written about, and, unsurprisingly, little read. Her groundbreaking book, The Hite Report, was the first feminist exploration of the link between sex and male power. It sold millions of copies when first published in 1976 and revolutionised the way people thought about marriage and the female orgasm. How, then, did it, and Hite, disappear from public consciousness? In The Book that Taught the World to Orgasm and then Disappeared: Shere Hite and The Hite Report (Melville House and New South, 2026), Australian historian Dr. Rosa Campbell combines original research and sharp cultural analysis to explore the complicated life and literary legacy of Shere Hite. Expanding on her ideas about sex – namely, that sex is sexist – the book explores Hite’s fraught childhood, struggles working in the porn industry, and eventual cancellation by the far-right Evangelical movement. All the while, Dr. Campbell holds Hite and The Hite Report to account for their own failings and absence of intersectionality. In a post-#MeToo world, with the far-right on the march globally, Dr. Rosa Campbell’s examination of shifting ideological movements is essential to understanding the current feminist movement, as well as how conservative and reactionary efforts can silence even the most successful of women. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

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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
    1.1K
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © New Books Network
  • Show Website
    New Books in Gender

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