New Books in Women's History
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.
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1751
Bob Spitz, “Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Juli...
I confess I knew nothing about Julia Child prior to reading Bob Spitz‘s new book. And yet, from the dramatic opening passages through its 500+ pages, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child (Knopf, 2012) held me captive. How many people,
35 min
1752
Juliane Hammer, “American Muslim Women, Religio...
In 2005, Amina Wadud led a mixed-gender congregation of Muslims in prayer. This event became the focal point of substantial media attention and highlighted some of the tensions within the Muslim community. However,
65 min
1753
Andrei Markovits and Emily Albertson, “Sportist...
My wife is a sports fan. Together, we have cheered from the stands at college football games and track meets, for local minor-league baseball clubs and hockey teams. We’ve spent Sunday afternoons watching the National Football League,
52 min
1754
Peggy Schwartz and Murray Schwartz, “The Dance ...
For some time now I’ve been in spaces with dancers and dance scholars who lament the amount of available research on some of the black luminaries in our field. Sometimes the need for a particular project is present for so long that its absence is taken...
34 min
1755
Julietta Hua, “Trafficking Women’s Human Rights...
In Trafficking Women’s Human Rights (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), Julietta Hua analyzes how discourse on human trafficking creates the boundaries of victimhood and thereby restricts concepts of punishment, remedy, and citizenship.
39 min
1756
Karen Ruffle, “Gender, Sainthood, and Everyday ...
What does a wedding in Karbala in the year 680 have to do with South Asian Muslims today? As it turns out, this event informs contemporary ideas of personal piety and social understanding of gender roles. The battlefield wedding of Qasem and Fatimah Ku...
63 min
1757
Jennifer Guglielmo, “Living in Revolution: Ital...
There is exactly one strong woman in the movie “The Godfather,” and she’s not Italian. (It’s “Kay Adams,” played by the least Italian-looking actress alive, Diane Keaton.) Such is the stereotype about Italian women, at least in the U.S.
64 min
1758
Amy Stanley, “Selling Women: Prostitution, Mark...
With prose that is as elegant as the argument is clear, Amy Stanley‘s new book tells a social, cultural, and economic history of Tokugawa Japan through the prism of prostitution. Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets,
65 min
1759
Reiland Rabaka, “Hip Hop’s Inheritance: From th...
Cultural movements don’t exist in vacuums. Consciously or not, all movements borrow from, and sometimes reject, those that came before. In Hip Hop’s Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Hip Hop Feminist Movement (Lexington Books, 2011),
62 min
1760
Janet Kourany, “Philosophy of Science After Fem...
Do social values belong in the sciences? Exploring the relationship between science, society, and politics, Philosophy of Science After Feminism (Oxford UP, 2010) provides a map for a more socially and politically engaged philosophy of science.
66 min
1761
Brenda Dixon Gottschild, “Joan Myers Brown and ...
For the launch of the Dance Channel, I thought long and hard about what the first author interview would be. I felt that it was critically important that this channel begins with a rich conversation between myself and a well respected author whose cont...
39 min
1762
Marnie Anderson, “A Place in Public: Women’s Ri...
In the late nineteenth century the Japanese elite embarked on an aggressive, ambitious program of modernization known in the West as the “Meiji Restoration.” In a remarkably short period of time, they transformed Japan: what was a thoroughly traditiona...
45 min
1763
Lisa Bier, “Fighting the Current: The Rise of A...
American women dominated the swimming competition at the London Olympics, earning a total of sixteen medals in seventeen events. This template of success was set already at the 1920 Games, the first Olympics in which American women swimmers competed.
48 min
1764
Anne Sebba, “That Woman: The Life of Wallis Sim...
The story of Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor is more often than not presented as a great love story: she is the woman for whom the King gave up the throne. It’s precisely this oversimplification of the facts that Anne Sebba seeks to correct in h...
39 min
1765
Sara Marcus, “Girls to the Front: The True Stor...
Harkening out of the United State’s Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, Bikini Kill and Bratmobile made a big enough splash that their names and songs are still recognized by many rock fans. And those of us who do recognize these bands tend to link t...
58 min
1766
Elizabeth Goldsmith, “The King’s Mistresses” (P...
As Elizabeth Goldsmith writes in The King’s Mistresses: The Liberated Lives of Marie Mancini, Princess Colonna, and Her Sister Hortense, Duchess Mazarin (PublicAffairs, 2012), the Mazarin sisters were “arguably the first media celebrities.
41 min
1767
Nwando Achebe, “The Female King of Colonial Nig...
When I saw Nwando Achebe‘s book The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011), I thought: “Really? A female king? Cool!” It turns out Ahebi Ugbabe was not only a female king, but also a female husband and father.
71 min
1768
Timothy Grainey, “Beyond ‘Bend It Like Beckham’...
Two days before this year’s Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich, the top two women’s clubs in Europe played on the same pitch, at Munich’s Olympic Stadium, in the final match of the Women’s Champions League.
52 min
1769
Trevor Getz and Liz Clarke, “Abina and the Impo...
Imagine this: a young African girl, barefoot but wearing a dress and head wrap, clenches her fists and looks you in the eye. Behind her a semi-circle of men, some in suits and some in kente cloth, turn their backs to her. The girl is Abina,
74 min
1770
Sally Bedell Smith, “Elizabeth the Queen: The L...
The second-longest reigning British Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II has always remained an elusive figure, a monumental accomplishment given the media attention focused upon her family. In her new book, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch (Ra...
41 min
1771
Erin D. Chapman, “Prove It On Me: New Negroes, ...
Whoever states the old adage, “A picture is worth a thousand words” grossly underestimates. So Erin D. Chapman shows in Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s (Oxford University Press, 2012).
71 min
1772
Gail Hershatter, “The Gender of Memory: Rural W...
When I teach my course on gender, sexuality, and human rights, my students invariably want to talk about China’s one-child policy. They imagine living in a state where the government tells you how many children you can have – and they’re horrified.
74 min
1773
Kathryn Lofton, “Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon” ...
In December of 2011, Oprah Winfrey appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to talk about her new big plans and her inspirations for the future. Oprah replied, “For me at this particular time in my life I recognize that everything is about moving closer to that whi...
76 min
1774
Ellen F. Brown and John Wiley, Jr., “Margaret M...
Much ink has been spilled in telling the story of the making of Gone With the Wind– be it the book, the movie, or the subsequent musicals and merchandise. So it’s not only refreshing but downright commendable that in their biography,
36 min
1775
Matthew Dennis, “Seneca Possessed: Indians, Wit...
The birth of the American republic produced immense and existential challenges to Native people in proximity to the fledgling nation. Perhaps none faced a greater predicament than the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (popularly known as the...
59 min