New Books in Gender

Notions of hip hop authenticity, as expressed both within hip hop communities and in the larger American culture, rely on the construction of the rapper as a Black, masculine, heterosexual, cisgender man who enacts a narrative of struggle and success. In Queer Voices in Hip Hop: Cultures, Communities, and Contemporary Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2022), Lauron J. Kehrer turns our attention to openly queer and trans rappers and presents an alternative and more inclusive narrative about the development of hip hop that includes the contributions of queer people throughout the history of the genre. They consider the role of disco, house music, and the ballroom scene in New York City to demonstrate how these different communities and networks played and continue to play a role in hip hop. Kehrer also explores Bounce, a regional form of hip hop with deep roots in New Orleans and its queer communities that has recently entered national circulation. By centering the performances of openly queer and trans artists of color, Queer Voices in Hip Hop reclaims their work as essential to the development and persistence of hip hop in the United States as it tells the story of the queer roots of hip hop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Stacey Barker and Krista Cooke on the lives of Canadian women and their involvement in the two world wars of the 20th century. They along with co-author Molly McCullough wrote Material Traces of War: Stories of Canadian Women and Conflict, 1914-1945 published by the University of Ottawa Press in 2021 as part of the Canadian Museum of History’s Mercury Series. This book provides short biographies of selected women who served as military nurses, volunteers and workers or who suffered great loss during the two wars. Stacey Barker is an historian in Arts and Military History at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa while Krista Cooke is a Parks Canada curator with two decades of experience in archives and museums. This podcast was produced by Jessica Schmidt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Fantastic and informative talk with Sara Petrosillo of the University of Evansville about her new book, Hawking Women: Falconry, Gender, and Control in Medieval Literary Culture (Ohio State University Press, 2023). Listen all the way to the end for a great description of the process of hunting with birds! While critical discourse about falconry metaphors in premodern literature is dominated by depictions of women as unruly birds in need of taming, women in the Middle Ages claimed the symbol of a hawking woman on their personal seals, trained and flew hawks, and wrote and read poetic texts featuring female falconers. Sara Petrosillo's Hawking Women demonstrates how cultural literacy in the art of falconry mapped, for medieval readers, onto poetry and challenged patriarchal control. Examining texts written by, for, or about women, Hawking Women uncovers literary forms that arise from representations of avian and female bodies. Readings from Sir Orfeo, Chrétien de Troyes, Guillaume de Machaut, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and hawking manuals, among others, show how female characters are paired with their hawks not to assert dominance over the animal but instead to recraft the stand-in of falcon for woman as falcon with woman. In the avian hierarchy female hawks have always been the default, the dominant, and thus these medieval interspecies models contain lessons about how women resisted a culture of training and control through a feminist poetics of the falconry practice.Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Shailaja Paik's book The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford UP, 2022) is an important reflection on the question of Dalit women and their sexuality question. Through the performance of Tamasha, Paik has relooked into the lifeworld of Dalit women and has argued about what the performance of Tamasha means in Dalit women’s everydayness rather than conventionally understanding it through a moral lens of good vs bad. The framework of ‘manuski’ and ‘assli’ reflects upon the Dalit women quest to transgress ascribed identities and it reinforces Dalit performance as a weapon for the weak. The work is a watershed as it re-centers Dalit woman’s experiences in the sex-gender-caste complex, rather than looking at them as passive recipients of male-centered Dalit assertion.Shailaja Paik is an Associate Professor at the University of Cincinnati. She is Taft's Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Asian Studies. Her research lies at the intersection of fields concerning Modern South Asia, Dalit Studies, Women’s Studies, and oral History to mention a few. Kalyani Kalyani is a sociologist and currently teaches at School of Arts and Sciences in Azim Premji University at Bengaluru. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Hearts Ablaze: Parables for the Queer Soul (Morehouse Publishing, 2022), written by Dr. Rolf R. Nolasco Jr., was published by Morehouse Publishing in 2022. In this powerful book, Dr. Nolasco takes us on a journey deeper into the queerness of Jesus and his movement.These meditations also address the spiritual needs of queer Christians.This book is a new look at ten selected parables of Jesus, that expands the scope of interpretation of each story to highlight God's extravagant welcome of all people. The perspective in the reflections is deeply personal and written to be used by both individuals and groups. Queer affirming churches, seminaries, and retreat centers will benefit from this resource as they continue to champion the flourishing of their queer siblings in Christ.Meg Gambino is an artist and activist currently working as the Client and Community Relations Manager at a local nonprofit focused on ending hunger in North Penn. Her life mission is to creatively empower others by modeling reconciliation between communities of people and people on the margins. Find her on Instagram @megambino. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Lesly Deschler Canossi and Zoraida Lopez-Diago's edited volume Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing (Leuven UP, 2022) questions how the Black female body, specifically the Black maternal body, navigates interlocking structures that place a false narrative on her body and that of her maternal ancestors. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly inquiry and contemporary art, this book addresses these misconceptions and fills in the gaps that exist in the photographic representation of Black motherhood, mothering, and mutual care within Black communities.The essays and interviews, paired with a curated selection of images, address the complicated relationship between Blackness and photography and in particular its gendered dimension, its relationship to health, sexuality, and digital culture - primarily in the context of racialized heteronormativity. This collection, then, challenges racist images and discourses, both historically and in its persistence in contemporary society, while reclaiming the innate brilliance of Black women through personal stories, history, political acts, connections to place, moments of pleasure, and communal celebration.This visual exploration of Black motherhood through pictures made by Black woman-identifying photographers thus serves as a reflection of the past and a portal to the future and contributes to recent scholarship on the complexity of Black life and Black joy.This book emerges from the project Women Picturing Revolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American Marriage (Seal Press, 2020) reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis.Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split up couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north, where the welfare system mandated that women remain single in order to receive government support. And no institution has forbidden Black love as effectively as the prison-industrial complex, which removes Black men en masse from the pool of marriageable partners.Prodigiously researched and deeply felt, Black Women, Black Love reveals how white supremacy has systematically broken the heart of Black America, and it proposes strategies for dismantling the structural forces that have plagued Black love and marriage for centuries.Mickell Carter is a doctoral student in the department of history at Auburn University. She can be reached at mzc0152@auburn.edu and on twitter @MickellCarter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Life will always bring us experiences and uncertainty, risks, losses - never planned, never found - emotional upheaval that defines what it means to be vulnerable; to break down to our breakthrough. It is here we find the courage to rise up, become our authentic selves and live our purpose.In this book, twelve women expose their vulnerability, their pain, their truth, their intuitive guidance and insights that led to the courage it has taken to go from the depths of fear, grief, and heartbreak to finding their place in the world. They have come to own their sovereignty, become more empathic, found a new sense of creating a life they love and tapping into gifts that were not recognized prior and found a new vision on their journey.Women Standing Strong Together: A Collection of Stories with Soul Purpose, Volume II (2023) is about finding that powerful place within; our strength from our life experiences. It’s about courage in a world where we feel not good enough and giving ourselves the permission to examine our lives, become uncomfortable and step into the fire to grow stronger. The shattered pieces in our lives create the magic that waits for us to claim our power within. When we allow ourselves to surrender to the divine plan great things are illuminated before us and our path becomes clear, we climb higher and our goddess emerges. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Today I interview Erin Reed. Reed is an activist, public speaker, and writer across multiple platforms, including a Substack newsletter, all of which she gathers under the title “Erin in the Morning.” Reed’s work centers on advocacy for the transgender community and the greater queer community. At the moment, she’s undertaken the momentous task of tracking the anti-trans legislation that’s being forwarded in state houses across the country and exposing its troubling, deceitful, and vicious nature. Through her newsletter, social media posts, and in-person appearances, Reed supports not only trans and queer rights, but also a vision for our communities and our country in which mutual care and kindness are our abiding values. To say it another way, Erin supports the fight against cruel ant-trans legislation currently underway and she also connects her readers with trans girl scouts so she can help these kids with their annual cookie sale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Laura Ann Twagira, an associate professor of history, head of African Studies, and an affiliate with science in society program and feminist gender sexuality studies program at Wesleyan University, talks about her book, Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Embodied Engineering examines how women in rural Mali have used technology to ensure food security through the colonial period, environmental crises, and postcolonial rule. Twagira charts how women in Mali resisted some technological changes in agriculture and kitchens while embracing others, often in the name of pursuing their own notions of how food should taste. Twagira and Vinsel also talk about the need to redefine concepts, such as engineering and technology, in different contexts, and how doing so challenges reigning paradigms, such as that the goal of technology adoption should be increasing productivity and replacing labor - two values that women in Mali rejected. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies