New Books in Women's History

Trauma, Memory and Silence of the Irish Woman in Contemporary Literature (Routledge, 2023) studies the manifestations of female trauma through the exploration of multiple wounds, inflicted on both body and mind and the soul of Irish women from Northern Ireland and the Republic within a contemporary context, and in literary works written at the turn of the twenty-first century and beyond. These artistic manifestations connect tradition and modernity, debunk myths, break the silence with the exposure of uncomfortable realities, dismantle stereotypes and reflect reality with precision. Women’s issues and female experiences depicted in contemporary fiction may provide an explanation for past and present gender dynamics, revealing a pathway for further renegotiation of gender roles and the achievement of equilibrium and equality between sexes. These works might help to seal and heal wounds both old and new and offer solutions to the quandaries of tomorrow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The first birth control clinic in El Paso, Texas, opened in 1937. Since then, Mexican-origin women living in the border cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez have confronted various interest groups determined to control their reproductive lives, including a heavily funded international population control campaign led by Planned Parenthood Federation of America as well as the Catholic Church and Mexican American activists. Uncovering nearly one hundred years of struggle, Lina-Maria Murillo reveals how Mexican-origin women on both sides of the border fought to reclaim autonomy and care for themselves and their communities.Faced with a family planning movement steeped in eugenic ideology, working-class Mexican-origin women strategically demanded additional health services and then formed their own clinics to provide care on their own terms. Along the way, they developed what Murillo calls reproductive care— quotidian acts of community solidarity—as activists organized for better housing, education, wages, as well as access to birth control, abortion, and more. In Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the US-Mexico Borderlands (UNC Press, 2025), Murillo lays bare Mexican-origin women's long battle for human dignity and power in the borderlands as reproductive freedom in Texas once again hangs in the balance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sinéad O'Connor, renowned for her angelic voice and activism, overcame a tumultuous upbringing to become a global protest singer and advocate for social justice.O'Connor achieved worldwide success as an angel-voiced, shaven-headed Irish singer of heartfelt songs, but she was far more than just a pop star - she was also an activist and a survivor. Reeling from a troubled childhood at the hands of her violent mother, she spent 18 months living in a former Magdalene Laundry due to her truancy and shoplifting, and suffered her mother's death in a car crash - all by the age of 18.Her pain, anger and compassion would turn her into one of the world's greatest protest singers and activists. She would release ten studio albums during her 36-year music career - the second of which (I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got) would reach number 1 across the world and earn her ten million pounds, half of which she gave to charity. During this time, she would also advocate for survivors of child abuse and racism, and stand up for the LGBT community and women's reproductive rights.Most notably, she would tear up a picture of Pope John Paul II during an episode of Saturday Night Live in order to protest at child sex abuse within the Catholic church, creating headlines around the world and derailing her career.The Real Sinéad O'Connor (White Owl, 2024) features six exclusive interviews with friends and peers who knew her, this is the true story of her extraordinary and courageous journey.Ariane Sherine’s website.Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival. His forthcoming books are Frank Zappa's America (Louisiana State University Press, June 2025) and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, Fall 2025).Bradley on Bluesky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone knows Judy Blume.Her books have garnered her fans of all ages for decades and sold tens of millions of copies. But why were people so drawn to them? And why are we still talking about them now in the 21st century?In The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (Atria, 2024), her remarkable story is revealed as never before, beginning with her as a mother of two searching for purpose outside of her home in 1960s suburban New Jersey. The books she wrote starred regular children with genuine thoughts and problems. But behind those deceptively simple tales, Blume explored the pillars of the growing women’s rights movement, in which girls and women were entitled to careers, bodily autonomy, fulfilling relationships, and even sexual pleasure. Blume wasn’t trying to be a revolutionary—she just wanted to tell honest stories—but in doing so, she created a cohesive, culture-altering vision of modern adolescence.Blume’s bravery provoked backlash, making her the country’s most-banned author in the mid-1980s. Thankfully, her works withstood those culture wars and it’s no coincidence that Blume has resurfaced as a cultural touchstone now. Young girls are still cat-called, sex education curricula are getting dismissed as pornography, and entire shelves of libraries are being banned. As we face these challenges, it’s only natural we look to Blume, the grand dame of so-called dirty books. This is the story of how a housewife became a groundbreaking artist, and how generations of empowered fans are her legacy, today more than ever.Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Studies show that students who have a positive outlook on their lives outperform students who don’t. Is positive thinking a skill? Can it be taught?Our article is: “Teaching Positive Psychology Skills at school may be one way to help student mental health and happiness,” by Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, published in The Conversation, which explores how the components of happiness and connection can be applied to classroom settings around the world. Amid the reduced access to mental health services for many students, and the rising rates of student stress and depression, researchers are finding that positive psychology interventions make a real difference. “Students who’ve been introduced to science-based ideas about happiness,” Dr. Shum writes, “feel more satisfied with life.” She joins us for this episode to explain more.Our guest is: Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, who is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) and a Licensed Psychologist. She serves as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville School Psychology Program. She specializes in positive psychology, motivation, anxiety (including OCD), attention, time management, and well-being (happiness).Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.Listeners may enjoy this playlist: Mindfulness The Well-Gardened Mind Inside Look at Campus Mental Wellness Services You Will Get Through This Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection Managing Your Mental Health During Your PhD Make a Meaningful Life Meditation Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This book tells the remarkable life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon slave who became a queen of France. Described in contemporary sources as beautiful and intelligent, she rose to power through her marriage to the short-lived King Clovis II. As regent for her young son, she promoted social and political reforms in Francia that included the rescue and rehousing of Christian slaves who, like Balthild herself, had been caught up in the human-trafficking practices of the mid-seventh century.Implicated in the violent politics of the era, Balthild spent the remainder of her life in the convent of Chelles where a unique cache of surviving relics and personal items, including her hair, were protected and dispersed as relics over the following centuries. In the nineteenth century, Balthild's anti-slave trade policies were recalled for new audiences when she was adopted as an icon for the cause of the abolition of the slave trade and installed as one of the twenty illustrious women whose statues are situated in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.Although critical to her age, because of the remote time period and the specialized nature of the sources, Balthild is little known today. Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint (Oxford UP, 2024) will correct this oversight by shining a light on a fascinating and courageous figure whose legacy long outlived the era to which she belonged.New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew ReviewIsabel Moreira is Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at the University of UtahMichael Motia teaches in the classics and religious studies department at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caroline Dunn joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Ladies-in-Waiting in Medieval England (Cambridge UP, 2025), which examines female attendants who served queens and aristocratic women during the late medieval period. Using a unique set of primary source–based statistics, Caroline Dunn reveals that the lady-in-waiting was far more than a pretty girl sewing in the queen’s chamber while seeking to catch the eye of an eligible bachelor. Ladies-in-waiting witnessed major historical events of the era and were sophisticated players who earned significant rewards. They had both family and personal interests to advance – through employment they linked kin and court, and through marriage they built bridges between families. Whether royal or aristocratic, ladies-in-waiting worked within gendered spaces, building female-dominated social networks, while also operating within a masculine milieu that offered courtiers of both sexes access to power. Working from a range of sources wider than the subjective anecdote, Dunn presents the first scholarly treatment of medieval English ladies-in-waiting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ancient Sculpture and Twentieth-Century American Womanhood: Venus Envy (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Hallie Franks examines the reception of Graeco-Roman sculptures of Venus and their role in the construction of the body aesthetics of the “fit” American woman in the decades around the turn of the 20th century. In this historical moment, 19th-century anthropometric methods, the anti-corset dress reform movement and early fitness culture were united in their goal of identifying and producing healthy, procreative female bodies. These discourses presented ancient statues of Venus – most frequently, the Venus de Milo – as the supreme visual model of a superior, fit, feminine physique. An America of such Venuses would herald the future prosperity of the “American race” by reviving the robust health and moral righteousness of the ancient Greeks.Venuses had long been symbols of beauty, but the new situation of Venus statues as an aesthetic and moral destination for women set up a slippage between ideal sculpture and living bodies: what did it mean for a woman to embody – or to try to embody – the perfect health and beauty of an ancient statue? How were women expected to translate this model into flesh? What were the political stakes to which this vision of a nation of American Venuses was bound? Who was believed to conform to this ideal, and who was excluded from it? In taking on these questions, Dr. Franks engages with physical culture and dress-reform media, modern artwork that adapts Graeco-Roman traditions, anthropological texts, art histories of ancient Greece, film, advertising and medical reporting on women's health.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can we write women’s authorial roles into the history of industrial cinema in South Asia? How can we understand women’s creative authority and access to the film business infrastructure in this postcolonial region? In Women’s Transborder Cinema: Authorship, Stardom, and Filmic Labor in South Asia (University of Illinois Press, 2024), Esha Niyogi De draws on rare archival and oral sources to explore these questions from a uniquely comparative perspective, delving into examples of women holding influential positions as stars, directors, and producers across the film industries in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.Author Esha Niyogi De is a senior lecturer in the Writings Programs division at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the co-editor of South Asian Filmscapes: Transregional Encounters (2020) and author of Empire, Media, and the Autonomous Woman: A Feminist Critique of Postcolonial Thought (2011).The episode is hosted by Ailin Zhou, PhD student in Film & Digital Media at University of California - Santa Cruz. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Medieval women ruled over kingdoms, abbeys, and households; produced stunning works of art and craft; and did the hard work that kept ordinary families fed and clothed. Though women’s contributions were often diminished or completely ignored in written accounts, art tells a different story: women appear everywhere, from the margins of illuminated manuscripts to grand tapestries. In Women in the Middle Ages: Illuminating the World of Peasants, Nuns, and Queens (Abbeville Press, 2024), historian Gemma Hollman uses the visual as well as the written record to uncover the real lives of medieval European women.Hollman traces the lives of women across society, dedicating chapters to nuns like Hildegard of Bingen, abbess, mystic, and polymath; courtiers like Christine de Pisan, author of pioneering works on women’s role in society; warriors like Joan of Arc; and the everyday women whose names are lost to history. Illustrated with nearly 200 varied and fascinating works of medieval art, Women in the Middle Ages offers a new perspective on the lives and contributions of medieval women and how they were portrayed. This book is a treasure for anyone interested in the Middle Ages or women’s history.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices