New Books in Women's History

Discussions with scholars of women's history about their new books

Books
History
Social Sciences
1426
Daniel Moran,”Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her C...
Daniel Moran’s Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers (University of Georgia Press, 2016) provides a compelling investigation of how O’Connor’s initial reputation of a Southern female writer over the years evolved into her...
43 min
1427
Jelena Batinic, “Women and Yugoslav Partisans: ...
Jelena Batinic’s Women and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2015) examines the role women played in the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance. By placing gender and gender relations at the foref...
55 min
1428
James D. Boys, “Hillary Rising: The Politics, P...
James D. Boys is the author of Hillary Rising: The Politics, Persona, and Policies of a New American Dynasty (Biteback Publishing, 2016). Boys is an associate professor of international political studies at Richmond University.
18 min
1429
April Dammann, “Corita Kent: Art and Soul: The ...
Sister Mary Corita, IHM (1918-1986), was a beloved artist and teacher whose role as the rebel nun continues to inspire contemporary audiences. Corita joined the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1936 when she was just eighteen years old,
41 min
1430
Gail Hornstein, “To Redeem One Person Is to Red...
The life of the German-born, pioneering American psychoanalyst, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, is intriguing enough in itself, but in the biography, To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (Other Books, 2005),
57 min
1431
Ellen Widmer, “Fiction’s Family: Zhan Xi, Zhan ...
Ellen Widmer’s new book tells a story of the life and work of a literary family in China, in order to open out into a fascinating discussion of the ramifications of that story for how we understand and produce relationships between fiction and history....
61 min
1432
Marisa J. Fuentes, “Dispossessed Lives: Enslave...
Marisa J. Fuentes’, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence and the Archive (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) is an important new book that challenges historians to think more carefully about the methods and categories with which they have ...
44 min
1433
Ellen Mayock, “Gender Shrapnel in the Academic ...
Recent controversies surrounding sexual harassment and assault on college campuses have sparked heated discussions surrounding the everyday experiences of women on college campuses. Female students and faculty members have often felt at odds with their...
61 min
1434
Loki Mulholland, et.al. “She Stood for Freedom:...
“Anyone can make a difference. Find a problem, get some friends together, and go fix it. Remember you don’t have to change the world, just change your world.” –Joan Trumpauer Mulholland In the early 1960s, in the segregated South, a white teenager,
42 min
1435
Ellen Fitzpatrick, “The Highest Glass Ceiling: ...
Ellen Fitzpatrick is professor of history at the University of New Hampshire. Her book The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency (Harvard University Press, 2016) provides the story of three women,
55 min
1436
Carol McCabe Booker, ed. “Alone Atop the Hill: ...
Carol McCabe Booker is a Washington, D.C. attorney and former journalist. In the 1960s and 70s, she covered civil rights for the Voice of America, freelanced articles for The Washington Post, Readers Digest, Ebony, Jet, and Black Stars,
78 min
1437
Anne Mac Lellan, “Dorothy Stopford Price: Rebel...
Among the achievements of Irish medicine in the twentieth century was ending the persistent epidemic of tuberculosis throughout the island, and one of the central figures in that effort was Dorothy Stopford Price.
57 min
1438
Michelle Cruz Gonzales, “The Spitboy Rule: Tale...
In her new book The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band (PM Press, 2016), Michelle Cruz Gonzales tells her story as a member of a feminist hardcore punk band. The band, Spitboy, emerged in the early 90s in the Bay Areapunk scene.
50 min
1439
April R. Haynes, “Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiol...
April R. Haynes is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Riotous Flesh: Women, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice in Nineteenth- Century America (University of Chicago Press,
55 min
1440
Cassandra A. Good, “Founding Friendships: Frien...
Cassandra A. Good is the Associate Editor of the Papers of James Monroe at the University of Mary Washington. Her book Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic (Oxford University Press,
50 min
1441
Sabine Arnaud, “On Hysteria: The Invention of a...
Sabine Arnaud‘s new book explores a history of discursive practices that played a role in the construction of hysteria as pathology. On Hysteria: The Invention of a Medical Category between 1670 and 1820 (University of Chicago Press,
65 min
1442
David Potter, “Theodora: Actress, Empress, Sain...
Thanks to the writings of Procopius and other detractors, the Byzantine empress Theodora (c. 495-548 CE) has long been viewed as a depraved and spiteful woman who was a negative influence on her husband Justinian. In his new book Theodora: Actress,
55 min
1443
Marlene Trestman, “Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remar...
As a trailblazing attorney, Bessie Margolin lived a life of exceptional achievement. At a time when the legal profession consisted almost entirely of men, she earned the esteem of her colleagues and rose to become one of the most successful Supreme Cou...
81 min
1444
Srimati Basu, “The Trouble with Marriage: Femin...
Are solutions to marital problems always best solved through legal means? Should alternative dispute resolutions be celebrated? In her latest book The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India (University of California Press,
8 min
1445
Brooke Hauser, “Enter Helen: The Invention of H...
“Women’s history, if they had any, consisted in their being beautiful enough to become events in male lives,” the feminist academic Carolyn R. Heilbrun noted in a series of 1997 lectures, suggesting the need for new narratives and new ways of writing w...
46 min
1446
Matthew H. Sommer, “Polyandry and Wife-Selling ...
First things first: Matthew H. Sommer‘s new book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in the history of China and/or the history of gender. Based on 1200 legal cases from the central and local archives of the Qing dynasty,
68 min
1447
Peter L. Laurence, “Becoming Jane Jacobs” (Univ...
Peter L. Laurence is an associate professor of urban design, history and theory at Clemson University School of Architecture. His book Becoming Jane Jacobs (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) is an intellectual biography of the architecture critic...
60 min
1448
Kate Bolick, “Spinster: Making a Life of One’s ...
“There still exists little organized sense of what a woman’s biography or autobiography should look like,” Carolyn G. Heilbrun wrote in her 1988 classic, Writing A Woman’s Life, noting, “Even less has been told of the life of the unmarried woman.
38 min
1449
Elizabeth A. Wilson, “Gut Feminism” (Duke UP, 2...
Elizabeth A. Wilson‘s new book is a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of science studies and feminist theory. In its introduction, Gut Feminism (Duke University Press, 2015) lays out two major ambitions: it seeks “some feminist theore...
61 min
1450
Michelle Chase, “Revolution within the Revoluti...
This episode features Michelle Chase, who joins us to discuss her fascinating new book, Revolution Within the Revolution: Women and Gender Politics in Cuba, 1952-1962 (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
60 min