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PODCAST

New Books in Women"s History

New Books Network

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. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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All Episodes

0:00

Steven K. Green, "American Infidelity: The Gilded Age...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/29

Today I'm speaking with Steven K. Green, Fred H. Paulus Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of History and Religious Studies at Willamette University. We are discussing his book,American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love, and Feminism(Oxford University Press, 2026). Since the first permanent Protestant settlement in Jamestown in 1607, Protestant Christianity has waxed and waned through a series of revivals, migrations, and challenges from alternative faiths like

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76:32

Claire Hubbard-Hall, "Her Secret Service: The...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/27

Since the inception of the Secret Service Bureau back in 1909, women have worked at the very heart of British secret intelligence - yet their contributions have been all but written out of history. Now, drawing on private and previously-classified documents, leading historian Claire Hubbard-Hall brings their gripping true stories to life inHer Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024).From encoding orders and decrypting enemy messages to penning

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56:01

Elisabeth van Houts, "Empress Matilda: Queen of the...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/25

Born in 1102, Empress Matilda combined the blood of two dynasties: the house of Wessex and their conquerors, the dukes of Normandy. As a widowed German empress, she was named as heir successor by her father, Henry I. But, after his death in 1135, Matilda’s place on the English throne was usurped by her cousin, Stephen of Blois. Civil war followed, and she ruled the south-west of England in opposition. InEmpress Matilda: Queen of the Romans, Ruler of the English(Yale University Press, 2026),

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121:51

Debolina Dutta, "A Jurisprudence of Conversations:...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/22

Grounded in empirical studies, this bookis both a history of the emergence of feminist jurisprudence inpost-colonial India and a model of innovative legal research. The book inaugurates a creative practice of scholarly activism that engages a new way of thinking about law and feminist jurisprudence, one that is geared to acknowledge and take responsibility for the hierarchies in Indian academic practices. Its method of conversation and accountability continues the feminist tradition of taking

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69:11

Lucy D. Curzon, "Art and Citizenship in Conflict:...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/20

Art and Citizenship in Conflict: British Women War Artists, 1939-45(Manchester UP, 2026) by Dr. Lucy Curzon examines the work of women war artists in order to highlight the complexity of citizenship and gender in Britain during the Second World War. Evelyn Dunbar, Mary Kessell, Ethel Gabain, Stella Schmolle, and Laura Knight, among others, were commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC) to document the millions of women who took up sometimes unconventional roles-in agriculture, the

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45:35

Anja Foerschner, "Female Art and Agency in...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/19

InFemale Art and Agency in Yugoslavia, 1971–2001(Bloomsbury, 2024), Anja Foerschner offers a compelling exploration of the women artists, curators, scholars, and activists who shaped the cultural landscape of Yugoslavia and its successor states. Drawing on both original research and existing scholarship, she traces the emergence of the New Art Practice of the late 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the pivotal role of Belgrade’s Student Cultural Centre, where women were instrumental in forging a

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40:38

Molly M. Brookfield, "Watching the Girls Go By: A...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/19

Molly Brookfield’s book, Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States(University of North Carolina Press, 2026)explores the historical, legal, and cultural history of street harassment in the United States. Historically, Brookfield identified the "masher panic" (late 19th–early 20th century) when reformers and municipalities labeled male accosting of women a public problem and enacted anti-masher ordinances or applied disorderly-conduct laws. On law and

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44:32

Nora L. Rubel, "Recipes for the Melting Pot: The...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/15

In 1901, Lizzie Black Kander put together a cookbook based on the classes she taught at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. “I was trying to teach a group of young foreign girls in a crowded neighborhood how to cook simple and nutritious food, yet have it attractive and inexpensive as we prepare it in America,” she recalled. The Settlement Cook Book would go on to be the most successful charitable cookbook in American history, remaining a best-seller into the 1970s. Despite including nonkosher

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60:46

Gayle F. Wald, "This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins,...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/15

Ella Jenkins (1924–2024) was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century, although many people have never heard of her. A pioneer in children’s music and an innovative educator, Jenkins recorded forty albums and influenced countless children and adults over a sixty-year career. Gayle Wald places Jenkins’s life and work within the larger contexts of the civil rights movement, the folk revival, and the changing worlds of children’s education and entertainment in This is

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35:29

Diana Cucuz, "Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds:...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/11

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Diana Cucuz about her book, Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR (University of Toronto Press, 2023) and also asks her for advice to beginner scholars studying gender and the Cold War. A bit about Dr. Cucuz’s book: throughout the Cold War, Soviet citizens had limited access to US life and culture. Amerika, a glossy Russian-language magazine similar to Life, provided a rare exception. Produced by the United States

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61:50

Meena Khandelwal, "Cookstove Chronicles: Social Life...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/08

Stove improvers have been designing and promoting “clean” or “efficient” biomass cookstoves in India since the 1940s and have been frustrated to find their carefully engineered stoves abandoned in trash heaps or repurposed as storage bins, while the traditional mud chulha retains a central place in the kitchen. Why do so many Indian women continue to use wood-burning, smoke-spewing stoves when they have other options? Based on anthropological research in Rajasthan, Cookstove Chronicles:

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45:46

Lauren Duval, "The Home Front: Revolutionary...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/06

What was it like to live in a city experiencing occupation by a foreign army? What did it mean when a family had to quarter an officer in their home? More specifically, how did military occupation affect the women and men who lived in those cities, and alter the gender system? Lauren Duval’s The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence (Omohundro Institute and the University of North Carolina Press, 2025) tackles the these questions by

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58:59

Rachel Silveri, "The Art of Living in Avant-Garde...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/04

With The Art of Living in Avant-Garde Paris: Ethics and Self-Making in Dada, Simultanism, and Surrealism (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Rachel Silveri takes a fresh look at the desire to unify art and life, an ambition long regarded as foundational to the European historical avant-gardes. She reveals how many early twentieth-century artists saw their own everyday lives—their bodies, identities, and relationships—as a type of creative material and a central component to their avant-garde

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40:24

Rosa Campbell, "The Book That Taught the World to...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/07/02

Despite being one of the leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, today Shere Hite is little known, little written about, and, unsurprisingly, little read. Her groundbreaking book, The Hite Report, was the first feminist exploration of the link between sex and male power. It sold millions of copies when first published in 1976 and revolutionised the way people thought about marriage and the female orgasm. How, then, did it, and Hite, disappear from public consciousness? In The Book

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72:27

Chiara Formichi, "Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women,...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/06/30

In her most recent publication, Domestic Nationalism: Muslim Women, Health, and Modernity in Indonesia (Stanford UP, 2025), Chiara Formichi argues that Muslim women in Java and Sumatra, from the late 1910s to the 1950s, were central to Indonesia's progress as guardians and promoters of health and piety through gendered activities of care work. While sidelined in the Dutch colonial project of hygienic modernity, women's labor of social reproduction became increasingly visible during the Japanese

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49:08

Nancy Micklewright, "Fashion in Late Ottoman...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/06/30

Over the 19th century, the women of Istanbul gradually transformed their appearance, adopting European dress and new modes of self-fashioning, including photographs. Fashion in Late Ottoman Istanbul: Photography and Identity in a Global City (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Dr. Nancy Micklewright reconstructs a complex fashion history, and the dramatic changes that took place in women's lives in this period, and given the diverse population of Istanbul in terms of ethnicity, class, race and religion, attends

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0:00

Robin Dembroff, "Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/06/22

In Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality (Oxford University Press, 2026), Robin Dembroff shows us that we don't just live in a patriarchal world. We live in a world that patriarchy taught us to see. Patriarchy is not simply a system where men dominate women, Dembroff argues. It is a deeper reality-shaping force that legitimizes economic exploitation, political injustice, and social cruelty by dividing all of us into the rigid categories of Man, Woman, Animal, and Child.These

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46:13

Stephanie Coontz, "For Better and Worse: The...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/06/14

Marriage rates have fallen dramatically since the 1970s. Yet far from devaluing marriage, people still overwhelmingly describe marriage as the highest commitment they can imagine. Most Americans say they want to marry eventually, and couples who do marry have a lower chance of divorce than at any time since the 1970s. Increasingly, though, people tell pollsters they “have no idea” if they actually will end up married. And unlike in the past, young women are more uncertain than young

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79:46

Sarah McNamara, "Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/06/11

Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the Sunshine State. Located on the eastern edge of Tampa, Ybor City was a neighborhood of cigar workers and Caribbean revolutionaries who sought refuge against the shifting tides of international political turmoil during the early half

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59:29

Michael Staudenmaier, "White, Black, Brown: Becoming...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/06/10

Independenthistorian Michael Staudenmaier joins Michael Stauch to discuss his new book about “becoming Puerto Rican” in Chicago. Staudenmaier’s book, White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago (University of North Carolina Press, 2026), describes how generations of Puerto Rican organizers and activists, facing persistent exploitation, discrimination, and marginalization in the postwar United States, drew on competing versions of nationalism to challenge the racial order in one of

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