New Books in Women's History

Between 1885 and 1960, laws and policies designed to repress prostitution dramatically shaped London's commercial sex industry. J. Laite's book Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885-1960 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012) examines how laws translated into street-level reality, explores how women who sold sex experienced criminalization, and charts the complex dimensions of the underground sexual economy in the modern metropolis.Rachel Stuart is a sex work researcher whose primary interest is the lived experiences of sex workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book Typical Girls: The Rhetoric of Womanhood in Comic Strips (Ohio State Press, 2021) Susan Kirtley examines female-created comics that were nationally syndicated starting in the late 1970s-2010. Kirtley uncovers the understudied and developing history of these strips, defining and exploring the ramifications of this expression of women’s roles at a time of great change in history and in comic art. This impressive, engaging, and timely study illustrates how these comics express the complexities of women’s experiences, especially as such experiences were shaped by shifting and often competing notions of womanhood and feminism. Including the comics of Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse), Cathy Guisewite (Cathy), Nicole Hollander (Sylvia), Lynda Barry (Ernie Pook’s Comeek), Barbara Brandon-Croft (Where I’m Coming From), Alison Bechdel (Dykes to Watch Out For), and Jan Eliot (Stone Soup), Typical Girls is an important history of the representation of womanhood and women’s rights in popular comic strips. Rebekah Buchanan is an Associate Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Theatre has long been considered a feminine interest for which women consistently purchase the majority of tickets, while the shows they are seeing typically are written and brought to the stage by men. Furthermore, the stories these productions tell are often about men, and the complex leading roles in these shows are written for and performed by male actors. Despite this imbalance, the feminist voice presses to be heard and has done so with more success than ever before. In From Aphra Behn to Fun Home: A Cultural History of Feminist Theatre (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019), Carey Purcell traces the evolution of these important artists and productions over several centuries. After examining the roots of feminist theatre in early Greek plays and looking at occasional works produced before the twentieth century, Purcell then identifies the key players and productions that have emerged over the last several decades. This book covers the heyday of the second wave feminist movement—which saw the growth of female-centric theatre groups—and highlights the work of playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, Pam Gems, and Wendy Wasserstein. Other prominent artists discussed here include playwrights Paula Vogel Lynn and Tony-award winning directors Garry Hynes and Julie Taymor. The volume also examines diversity in contemporary feminist theatre—with discussions of such playwrights as Young Jean Lee and Lynn Nottage—and a look toward the future.Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes a woman 'bad' is commonly linked to certain 'qualities' or behaviours seen as morally or socially corrosive, dirty and disgusting. Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies: Sex, Performance and Safe Femininity (Bloomsbury, 2020) explores the social, sexual and political significance of women who are labelled bad or dirty. Through case studies (including Empress Stah, RubberDoll or Doris La Trine), the book challenges the notion that sexual, slutty, bad, or dirty women are not worth listening to.Gemma Commane speaks to Pierre d'Alancaisez about her study of neo-burlesque, queer performances, and explicit entertainment as sites of power, possibility, and success.Gemma Commane is Lecturer in Media and Communications at the Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University. She is active in research in the fields of media and cultural studies, and gender and sexuality. Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This collection of narrative essays by sex workers presents a crystal-clear rejoinder: there's never been a better time to fight for justice. Responding to the resurgence of the #MeToo movement in 2017, sex workers from across the industry--hookers and prostitutes, strippers and dancers, porn stars, cam models, Dommes and subs alike--complicate narratives of sexual harassment and violence, and expand conversations often limited to normative workplaces.Writing across topics such as homelessness, motherhood, and toxic masculinity, We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival (Feminist Press, 2021) gives voice to the fight for agency and accountability across sex industries. With contributions by leading voices in the movement such as Melissa Gira Grant, Ceyenne Doroshow, Audacia Ray, femi babylon, April Flores, and Yin Q, this anthology explores sex work as work, and sex workers as laboring subjects in need of respect--not rescue.A portion of this book's net proceeds will be donated to SWOP Behind Bars (SBB).Rachel Stuart is a sex work researcher whose primary interest is the lived experiences of sex workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Mahabharata preserves powerful journeys of women recognized as the feminine divine and the feminine heroic in the larger culture of India. Each journey upholds the unique aspects of women's life. Feminine Journeys of the Mahabharata: Hindu Women in History, Text, and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) analytically examines the narratives of eleven women from the Mahabharata in the historical context as well as in association with religious and cultural practices. Lavanya Vemsani brings together history, myth, religion, and practice to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the history of Hindu women, as well as their significance within religious Indian culture. Additionally, Vemsani provides important perspective for understanding the enduring legacy of these women in popular culture and modern society. Raj Balkaran is a scholar, educator, consultant, and life coach. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Rebirthing a Nation: White Women, Identity Politics, and the Internet (U Mississippi Press, 2021), author Wendy K. Z. Anderson details how white nationalist and alt-right women refine racist rhetoric and web design as a means of protection and simultaneous instantiation of white supremacy, which conservative political actors including Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Ivanka Trump have amplified through transnational politics. By validating racial fears and political divisiveness through coded white identity politics, postfeminist and motherhood discourse functions as a colorblind, gilded cage. Rebirthing a Nation reveals how white nationalist women utilize colorblind racism within digital space, exposing how a postfeminist framework becomes fodder for conservative white women’s political speech to preserve institutional white supremacy.Wendy K. Z. Anderson (she/her) is an independent researcher and instructor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities.Lee M. Pierce (they & she) is Asst Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the State University of New York College at Geneseo. Connect on Twitter, Gmail, etc. @rhetoriclee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Isabel Rosario Cooper, if mentioned at all by mainstream history books, is often a salacious footnote: the young Filipino mistress of General Douglas MacArthur, hidden away at the Charleston Hotel in DC.Empire’s Mistress, Starring Isabel Rosario Cooper (Duke University Press: 2021) by Professor Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez refuses to reduce Cooper’s life to that simple statement. The book investigates Cooper’s life both in the Philippines, where she was a famed vaudeville and film actress, and in the United States, where her life shows the struggles that Asian actors and actresses faced in a prejudiced Hollywood.In this interview I ask Vernadette to introduce us to Isabel Cooper, and go beyond the simplistic historical narrative of her as MacArthur’s mistress. Wel talk about how her life exemplifies how imperialism, gender and entertainment intersected in both the Philippines and the United States. And we briefly explore how this connects with the idea of being “Asian-American”.Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez is Professor of American Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and author of Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai‘i and the Philippines (Duke University Press: 2013), and coeditor of Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai‘i (Duke University Press: 2019).You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Empire’s Mistress. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contrary to claims that socialism opposed the family unit, in Laboring for the State : Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-1971 (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Rachel Hynson argues that the revolutionary Cuban government engaged in social engineering to redefine the nuclear family and organize citizens to serve the state. Drawing on Cuban newspapers and periodicals, government documents and speeches, long-overlooked laws, and oral histories, Hynson reveals that by 1961, and increasingly throughout this decade, revolutionary citizenship was earned through labor. While men were to work outside the home in state-approved jobs, women found their citizenship tied to affording the state control over their reproduction and sexual labor. Through all four campaigns examined in this book - the projects to control women's reproduction, promote marriage, end prostitution, and compel men into state-sanctioned employment - Hynson shows that the state's progression toward authoritarianism and its attendant monopolization of morality were met with resistance and counter-narratives by citizens who so opposed the mandates of these campaigns that Cuban leadership has since reconfigured or effaced these programs from the Revolution's grand narrative.Dr. Hynson and I sat down to talk about her important book, our positionality as researchers, navigating the challenges and politics of the Cuban archives, living your values, and so much more. Enjoy!Rozzmery Palenzuela Vicente is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Florida International University. Her dissertation examines the cultural and intellectual politics surrounding black motherhood in twentieth-century Cuba. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Erin Duncan O’Neill (Assistant Professor, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Elizabeth Emery (Professor, Montclair State University) about Emery’s recent book, Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-Century France, 1853-1914 (Bloomsbury, 2020).Women figured prominently among the leading collectors and purveyors of Asian art in mid-nineteenth-century France, but scholars no longer recognize their influence. In her latest book, Reframing Japonisme,Elizabeth Emery asks us to consider their disappearance in light of the gendered dynamics at play in practices of artistic production and circulation of that period. She presents a trove of materials--art objects, literary accounts, and fragmentary records scattered among diverse archives—to bring renewed attention to women’s contributions to the French discover of Japanese art and its celebration in museums, social settings, and the global art market. In this conversation, Emery and Duncan O’Neill discuss two women at the heart of her story: an avid collector, Clémence d’Ennery, and the premier importer of Asian art with a shop on the rue de Rivoli, Louse Desoye. Emery documents their art education, commercial exchanges, and intellectual legacies alongside cogent analysis of the legal, economic, and literary forces that have conspired to obscure their contributions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices