New Books in Gender

Being human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture, and while there are important differences between women and men, there is a lot more variation and overlap than we may realize. Sex Is a Spectrum offers a bold new paradigm for understanding the biology of sex, drawing on the latest science to explain why the binary view of the sexes is fundamentally flawed—and why having XX or XY chromosomes isn’t as conclusive as some would have us believe. In this lively and provocative book, leading biological anthropologist Agustín Fuentes begins by tracing the origin and evolution of sex, describing the many ways in the animal kingdom of being female, male, or both. Turning to humans, he presents compelling evidence from the fossil and archaeological record that attests to the diversity of our ancestors’ sexual bonds, gender roles, and family and community structures, and shows how the same holds true in the lived experiences of people today. Fuentes tackles hot-button debates around sports and medicine, explaining why we can acknowledge that females and males are not the same while also embracing a biocultural reality where none of us fits neatly into only one of two categories. Bringing clarity and reason to a contentious issue, Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary (Princeton University Press, 2025) shares a scientist’s perspective on why a binary view of sex and gender is not only misguided but harmful, and why there are multitudes of ways of being human. Agustín Fuentes is professor of anthropology at Princeton University. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

In light of recent conversations about the crisis of masculinity, let's revisit Dr. Andy Oler's book Old-Fashioned Modernism: Rural Masculinity and Midwestern Literature. I sat down with Dr. Oler to discuss the persistent anxiety about masculinity, the role of regional literature in American modernism, and the need for an expansive definition of the Midwest. We also talked about literary representation of futuristic equipment such as the cabbage transplanter. And for our scholar friends, Dr. Oler offers tips on how to secure texts that are not available in libraries or archives.  Andy Oler is a professor in the Department of Humanities and Communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

In 1849, the Mary Ann Shadd Cary had not yet become one of the first Black woman newspaper editors in North America. She was decades away from being admitted to Howard University’s Law School and becoming the first Black woman to so enroll in the United States. She had not yet begun to lobby for women’s right to vote, and she had not yet emigrated to Canada, where she would rise to prominence as a formidable abolitionist and emigrationist. Though many years would pass before she made a name for herself as a gifted writer, editor, lecturer, educator, lawyer, and suffragist, in 1849, Mary Ann Shadd Cary was already certain of one thing: “We should do more, and talk less.” Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Black Radical Feminist (Oxford Univeristy Press, 2023) includes letters, newspaper articles, organizational records, and never-before-published handwritten notes and essay drafts that illustrate how Shadd Cary participated in major Africana philosophical debates during the nineteenth century. Racial uplift, women’s rights, emigration, citizenship and economic self-determination for Black people in general and Black women in particular, were all subjects of Shadd Cary’s writings and activism throughout her lifetime, shaping Black radical theory and praxis. She is one of many nineteenth-century Black women theorists whose intellectual contributions are often overlooked. By interrogating Shadd Cary’s Black radical ethic of care, this book reveals the philosophies that have shaped Black women's centuries-long struggle for rights and freedom. Nneka D. Dennie is Assistant Professor of History, core faculty in Africana Studies, and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington and Lee University. She is also co-founder and president of the Black Women’s Studies Association. Dr. Dennie’s research examines Black feminism and Black intellectual thought with an emphasis on nineteenth-century African American women thinkers. Her work has been published in Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International; Feminist Studies; Atlantic Studies: Global Currents; The Routledge Companion to Black Women's Social and Cultural Histories; The Oxford Handbook of W.E.B. Du Bois, and more. You can find the host, Sullivan Summer, online, on Instagram, and at Substack, where she and Dr. Dennie continue their conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Alongside superheroes, supervillains, too, have become one of today’s most popular and globally recognizable figures. However, it is not merely their popularity that marks their significance. Supervillains are also central to superhero storytelling to the extent that the superhero genre cannot survive without supervillains. Bringing together different approaches and critical perspectives across disciplines, in Supervillains: The Significance of Evil in Superhero Comics (Rutgers University Press, 2025) Dr. Nao Tomabechi troubles overly hero-centered works in comics studies to reconsider the modern American myths of the superheroes. Considering the likes of Lex Luthor, the Joker, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Loki, Venom, and more, Supervillians explores themes such as gender and sexuality, disability, and many forms of Otherness in relation to the notion of evil as it appears in the superhero genre. The book investigates how supervillains uphold and, at times, trouble dominant ideals expressed by the heroism of our superheroes. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Narrating Irish Female Development, 1916-2018 (Edinburgh UP, 2024) studies narratives of Irish female and feminized development, arguing that these postmodern  narratives present Irish female maturation as disordered and often deliberately disorderly. The first full-length study of the Irish female  coming of age story, the book develops a feminist psychoanalytic narratology, derived from the belated oedipalization of Joyce’s bildungsheld, to read these stories. This study argues that all Irish maturation stories are shaped by the uneven and belated maturation story  of the Irish republic itself, which took as its avatar the Irish woman,  whose citizenship in that republic was unrealized, as indeed was her citizenship in an Irish republic of letters. Dougherty takes the writing  of Irish women as seriously as other critics have taken Joyce’s work. Discusses texts by James Joyce, John McGahern, Hannah Lynch, Kate O’Brien, Lady Gregory, Maud Gonne, Mary Colum, Elizabeth Bowen, Edna O’Brien, Dervla Murphy, Clare Boylan, Nuala O’Faolain, Eavan Boland, Anne Enright, Claire Keegan, Eimear McBride, Éilís ní Dhuibhne, Melatu Uche Okorie, and Soula Emmanuel Examines the form, narration, and content of fictional, non-fictional, and national narratives Develops a feminist psychoanalytic narratology Synthesizes historical, sociojuridical, feminist, post-colonial, and literary historical narratives of Irish development Jane Elizabeth Dougherty is Professor in the School of Literature, Writing and Digital Humanities and affiliate faculty in the School of Africana and Multicultural Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Helen Penet is a lecturer in English and Irish Studies at Université de Lille (France). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Inclusion, Exclusion, Agency, and Advocacy: Experiences of Women With Physical Disabilities in China, With Worldwide Implications (IAP, 2024) explores the lived experiences of six women, including the author herself, with physical disabilities in China. The book provides in-depth descriptions of each woman's experiences in different aspects and analyze the commonalities and differences in their experiences through their life courses. The book explores answers to some of these questions: How do physically disabled women make sense of their experiences? What are some of the empowering and/or disempowering moments/events in their lives, if any? What are disabled women's experiences in terms of education, employment, relationships, family life, and social activism? How does some of the disabled women in the book become motivated and mobilized to work on disability issues? This book serves to amplify Chinese disabled women's stories and make their presence more visible. Too often, dominant narratives and depictions of disability are written by people without disabilities, while disabled people's voices are either invisible or secondary. Sadly, this phenomenon is not new and disability advocates have been faced with these types of narratives for quite some years. To have one's own voice and speak up is to claim subjectivity, agency, and power. Different stories told by women with disabilities themselves can enrich our understanding of disability and gender. These stories have the potential to challenge dominant and oppressive narratives prevalent in our ableist societies. The stories included in this book could provide space and potential to connect with disabled people (people with either visible or invisible disabilities) elsewhere. Women's empowering experiences and encounters shown in this book could inspire relevant stakeholders to think of ways to better understand and support disabled women in their environments. This book will have wide implications for readers not only in China, but also in other parts of the world. Many disability stories of exclusion and/or empowerment of the world are still hidden and not reflected upon. The author invites readers to reflect on their own experiences and how societies have impacted the life courses of individuals with or without disabilities in their respective social, political, economic, and cultural environments. Cultural and social change around disability can start with anyone who are touched by genuine stories of vulnerability and reflexivity, as the ones to be shared in this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

In Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo's Pink Economies (Duke UP, 2025), Michelle H. S. Ho traces the genders manifesting alongside Japanese popular culture in Akihabara, an area in Tokyo renowned for the fandom and consumption of anime, manga, and games. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in josō and dansō cafe-and-bars, establishments where male-to-female and female-to-male crossdressing is prevalent, Ho shows how their owners, employees, and customers creatively innovate what she calls emergent genders—new practices, categories, and ways of being stemming from the simultaneous fracturing, contestations, and (re)imaginations of older forms of gender and sexual variance in Japan. Such emergent genders initiate new markets for alternative categories of expression and subjectivity to thrive in a popular cultural hub like Akihabara instead of Tokyo’s gay and lesbian neighborhood of Shinjuku Ni-chōme. By rethinking identitarian models of gender and sexuality, reconfiguring the significance of capitalism for trans studies and queer theory, and decentering theoretical frameworks incubated in a predominantly United States academic context, Ho offers new ways of examining how trans and gender nonconforming individuals may survive and flourish under capitalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

In Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England (University of London Press, 2025), Hannah Jeans explores the reading habits of early modern women and the ways in which their reading became a site of identity formation and promotion. Jeans studies both contemporary prescriptions around women's reading, particularly their consumption of religious and romance texts, as well the actual activity of women. Additionally, Reading, Gender and Identity covers some less-well known genres with which women engaged, such as news media and scientific texts. Drawing on a range of sources, like annotations, inscriptions, commonplace books, and self-writing, Jeans presents a fascinating account of the broad range of readings that early modern women participated in, and the multifaceted identities they crafted from these activities. It is an excellent read for anyone interested in the history of reading, print and manuscript culture, self-fashioning, or gender in early modern England. Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women’s intellectual history in early modern Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Political theorist Lori Marso has been intrigued by filmmaker Chantal Ackerman for many years and has integrated Ackerman’s work into her courses at Union College and into her writings and scholarship as well. So it is no surprise that Feminism and the Cinema of Experience (Duke UP, 2024) is both an academic and a personal journey into Ackerman’s work but also the ways in which Ackerman’s work and similar kinds of artistry have made their way into our imaginations and our cinematic spaces. In Feminism and the Cinema of Experience Marso uses both Ackerman’s cinematic work and the written work of Simone de Beauvoir to frame a variety of approaches to thinking about feminism and contemporary film. As Marso explains, Ackerman’s work attends to and notices women’s experiences, often with the kinds of cinematography that are used to explore these experiences in ways that make audiences a bit uncomfortable. Part of the thrust of Marso’s analysis is interrogating what it means to “feel like a feminist.” This is an important component to the discussion in Feminism and the Cinema of Experience since this feeling may be a space where we are puzzled by what we actually do feel and we need to accept that we are alright sitting with that discomfort and with that inconclusive affect. Feminism and the Cinema of Experience explores the ways that cinema and film shift our senses, through what we see, hear, and the focus of our thinking. Film is also a profoundly emotional experience, especially if we are in a theater with others or viewing it in a community. The discussions that we have with others about what we have seen and experienced are political—this is a form of political engagement and a kind of democratic engagement. Marso provides the reader with different genres and categories that help us think about films within the broader framework at hand. And within these sections, many more contemporary films are put into conversation with Ackerman’s work. Finally, Marso wrote an epilogue of a kind that brings Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie into the discussion as well. This is an important and thoughtful examination of contemporary cinema—but it is also a valuable analysis of feminism and feminist thought as we see it all around us, but particularly in narrative form on the silver screen. Feminism and the Cinema of Experience is fascinating, engaging, and opens doors to new and different ways of thinking and seeing and experiencing. Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

In Transformismo, M. Myrta Leslie Santana draws on years of embedded research within Cuban trans/queer communities to analyze how transformistas, or drag performers, understand their roles in the social transformation of the island. Once banned and censored in Cuba, transformismo, or drag performance, is now state-sponsored events. Transformismo suggests that these performances are making critical interventions in Cuban trans/queer life and politics and in doing so, the volume offers critical insight into how Cuba's postsocialist reform has exacerbated racial, sexual, and economic inequalities. Leslie Santana argues that mainstream trans/queer nightlife in Cuba is entangled with the island's tourism economy, which has shaped the aesthetics and social makeup of transformismo in coastal Havana, which largely caters to foreigners. Leslie Santana considers how Black lesbian and transgender transformistas are expanding understandings of sexual selfhood and politics on the island, particularly questioning the ways that Black women's creativity is prominently featured in the aesthetics of tourism and trans/queer nightlife, while Black women themselves are denied social and material capital. M. Myrta Leslie Santana is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California San Diego. Katie Coldiron is the Outreach Program Manager for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and PhD student in History at Florida International University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies