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PODCAST

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work

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

41:34

Abigail Ocobock, "Marriage Material: How an Enduring...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/04/21

It is no secret that marriage rates in the United States are at an all-time low. Despite this significant decline, the institution of marriage endures in our society amid historic changes to its meaning and practice. How does the continuing strength of marriage impact the relationships of same-sex couples after the legalization of same-sex marriage?Drawing on over one hundred interviews with LGBTQ+ people, Marriage Material: How an Enduring Institution Is Changing Same-Sex

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73:07

Alisa Kessel, "Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/04/16

Political theorist Alisa Kessel (University of Puget Sound) has an important and impressive new book, Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence. Kessel’s research grew out of her work on questions of consent and how consent is embedded within the social contract structure. Initially the plan for the research was to critique this concept of “rape culture” which had found its way into popular discourse as well as academic work and was somewhat unclear in terms of application

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38:17

Daphne A. Brooks, "Blackstar Rising and the Purple...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/04/14

Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign: The Sonic Afterlives of David Bowie and Prince (Duke UP, 2026) is the first critical anthology dedicated to exploring the legacies of the pop music icons David Bowie and Prince. Daphne A. Brooks brings together an extraordinary array of writers, artists, and scholars, including Greg Tate, Jack Halberstam, Kara Keeling, Eric Lott, and Ann Powers, to offer fresh insight into how Bowie and Prince each fundamentally changed pop culture as musicians who emerged at

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82:47

Leslie Barnes, "Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/04/07

In Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Leslie Barnes examines the ambivalences that mark Southeast Asian sex industries under global imperialism. She explores the multi-layered subjectivities of sex workers, procurers and clients, and interrogates the frameworks in which discourses surrounding sex work circulate. Engaged with debates concerning the status of transactional sex, Sex Work in Southeast Asia explores the symbolic force and

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52:58

Isabelle Held, "Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/04/03

Bullet bras, bazookas, bombshells, bikinis. In Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies (Duke UP, 2026), Dr. Isabelle Held challenges the usual narratives of how war technologies enter domestic use by following plastics on their journey into women’s bodies. Dr. Held explores the effects of military-industrial science and the emergence of nylon, silicone, and plastic foams on embodied and expressive configurations of gender, sexuality, and race. She focuses on the United States between

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63:33

Satya Shikha Chakraborty, "Colonial Caregivers: Ayahs...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/03/25

Colonial Caregivers: Ayahs and the Gendered History of Race and Caste in British India (Cambridge UP, 2025) offers a compelling cultural and social history of ayahs (nannies/maids), by exploring domestic intimacy and exploitation in colonial South Asia. Working for British imperial families from the mid-1700s to the mid-1900s, South Asian ayahs, as Chakraborty shows, not only provided domestic labor, but also provided important moral labor for the British Empire. The desexualized racialized ayah

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71:10

Maud Anne Bracke, "Reproductive Rights in Modern...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/03/09

The introduction of the principle of women's reproductive liberty in France, tentatively by the family planning movement after 1960 and explicitly by the women's liberation movement after 1970, marked a deep shift, transforming public discourses. Yet this principle remained fiercely contested, and moderate and conservative actors responded by foregrounding notions of 'reproductive responsibility', or the expectation that individuals perform the 'right' sexual and family-making behaviour, benefiting

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43:01

Mattie Armstrong-Price, "Respectability on the Line:...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/03/07

Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labor along British and Colonial Indian Railways (U California Press, 2026) by Dr. Mattie Armstrong-Price offers a social and cultural history of railway labor in Britain and colonial India from the 1840s through World War I. The book treats the railway industry as a microcosm through which to study the history of capitalism in the liberal imperial era. Using company records, Dr. Armstrong-Price shows how executives shaped the domestic and working lives

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50:19

Daniel Brook, "The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/03/05

More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, dubbed the "Einstein of Sex," grew famous (and infamous) for his liberating theory of sexual relativity. Today, he's been largely forgotten.In The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025)journalist Daniel Brook retraces Hirschfeld's rollicking life and reinvigorates his legacy, recovering one of the great visionaries of the twentieth century. In an era when gay sex was a crime and gender roles

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66:47

Clarissa E. Francis, "Black Women's Bodily Autonomy,...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/02/28

Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement (Routledge, 2025) explores scholarship, practice, and advocacy for Black women’s pursuit of bodily autonomy, sexual freedom, and pleasure. Inspired by Megan Thee Stallion’s song "Hot Girl Summer" and pleasure activism, Dr. Clarissa E. Francis ("The Real Hot Girl Doc") examines the cultural and social impacts of "hot girl" music and its transformative effects on Black women’s sexual liberation journeys

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63:55

Mark D. Steinberg, "Moral Storytelling in 1920s New...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/02/21

Using public storytelling as a driving force, Moral Storytelling in 1920s New York, Odessa, and Bombay: Sex, Crime, Violence, and Nightlife in the Modern City (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Dr. Mark D. Steinberg explores everyday social moralities relating to stories of sex, crime, violence, and nightlife in the 1920s city space. Focusing on capitalist New York, communist Odessa, and colonial Bombay, Dr. Steinberg taps into the global dimension of complex everyday moral anxiety that was prevalent in a vital

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70:34

Mark Gallagher, "Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting,...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/01/30

In Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, and Male Sex Appeal (U Texas Press, 2025), Dr. Mark Gallagher presents an examination of male screen sex appeal and the ways that race, ethnicity, and national origin combine with performance tools and film and television style to aid or inhibit actors’ circulation on an increasingly global stage.Sex appeal is complicated, especially for screen actors. Looking good is not enough. Charisma and charm have to register when the camera rolls. And sexiness has to

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55:51

Michael Stambolis-Ruhstorfer, "By the Power Vested in...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/01/30

In both the United States and France, each side of the legal battle over same-sex marriage and parenthood relied heavily on experts. Despite the similarity of issues, however, lawmakers in each country turned to different sets of authorities: from economists and psychoanalysts to priests and ordinary people. They even prized different types of expertise—empirical research in the United States versus abstract theory in France.Exploring the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States and

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51:51

Olivia Weisser, "The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/01/28

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, venereal disease, or the 'pox,' was a dreaded diagnosis throughout Europe. Its ghastly marks, along with their inexorable link to sex, were so stigmatizing that it was commonly called 'the secret disease.' How do we capture everyday experiences of a disease that so few people admitted having? In The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London (Cambridge UP, 2026), Dr. Olivia Weisser presents a remarkable history that invites readers into the

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56:33

Saundra Weddle, "The Brothel and Beyond: An Urban...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/01/28

Saundra Weddle joins fellow Venetianist Jana Byars to talk about her pathbreaking new release, The Brothel and Beyond: An Urban History of the Sex Trade in Early Modern Venice (Penn State UP, 2026). This book deepens our understanding of women’s engagement in urban life through a close study of Venice’s sex trade. Centering questions of gender, agency, and mobility, it reveals how sex workers were embedded in the social and spatial fabric of the city. From the fourteenth through the seventeenth

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55:39

Kong Pheng Pha, "Queering the Hmong Diaspora: Racial...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/01/25

This episode features Dr. Kong Pheng Pha discussing his recently published book, Queering the Hmong Diaspora: Racial Subjectivity and the Myth of Hyperheterosexuality (U Washington Press, 2025).Queering the Hmong Diaspora dismantles narratives that frame Hmong communities as sexual deviant and reveals how legal cases, media representations, and legislative efforts have constructed Hmong Americans as hyperheterosexual and ungovernable subjects. This critical examination of how Hmong Americans are

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44:05

Lauren D. Sawyer, "Growing Up Pure: White Girls,...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/01/22

Gaining mass popularity in the mid-1990s with the True Love Waits rally on the Washington Mall, purity culture began as an urge from evangelical conservatives for Christian adolescents to publicly commit to practicing abstinence until marriage. Throughout this decade and the next, millions of evangelical teenagers performed their commitment to sexual purity by signing pledges and wearing purity rings.Growing Up Pure: White Girls, Queer Teens, and the Racial Foundations of Purity Culture (NYU

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50:26

Juliane Maxwald, "Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy:...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/01/21

Today I spoke with Juliane Maxwald abut her new book Psychoanalytic Sex Therapy: Exploring the Unconscious Life of Sexuality (Taylor & Francis, 2025). Maxwald bridges psychoanalytic theory with contemporary sex therapy to demonstrate that sexual symptoms are rarely just about sex—they're embodied expressions of unconscious conflict, early attachment wounds, relational trauma, and unmet developmental needs. Through eleven richly detailed clinical cases—including Jon's shame-bound spanking

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50:18

Elwin Hofman et al. eds., "The Business of Pleasure:...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/01/17

Elwin Hofman joins Jana Byars to talk about the volume he edited with Magaly Rodríguez García & Pieter Vanhees, The Business of Pleasure: A History of Paid Sex in the Heart of Europe (Leuven UP, 2022). In 2022, the Belgian parliament made a landmark decision by approving the decriminalisation of sex work. This move positioned the small nation as the first country in Europe - and the second globally - to abandon the hypocrisy of tolerance. Yet this was not the first time paid sex in Belgium gained

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39:37

Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder:...

New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work ·

2026/01/16

In Everything Is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder: Confessions of A Former Badass (Street Noise Books, 2025), Professor Cara Gormally draws us into the familiar academic world of chronic busyness. In panel after panel, Cara brings us into a life numbed by overwork. Then, as this graphic memoir shows us, during an ordinary early-morning run, Cara’s watch dings with a Facebook friend request. Their rapist wants to “friend” them.Cara always had a long to-do list; always had many projects; always was

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