New Books in Women"s History

00:31:52

Flannery and Regina: The Andalusia Chronicles with...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/10/06

The story of two women in the mid-twentieth-century South navigating financial independence, a changing rural landscape, and social norms.Flannery and Regina: The Andalusia Chronicles (NewSouth Books, 2026)tells the story of Flannery O’Connor and her mother, Regina, after Flannery’s lupus diagnosis forced her to move back to Milledgeville, Georgia. Just as her career as one of the twentieth century’s most distinguished writers of short fiction was beginning to take off, the disease that killed her

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00:52:42

Strong State, Weak Links: Eugenics and the Southern...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/30

In the early twentieth century, most US states established eugenics programs to improve the human race through selective breeding. North Carolina ran one of the nation's most aggressive programs; between 1927 and 1977, at least 5,700 people were sterilized and thousands more were committed to institutions. While sterilizations in the 1950s and 1960s disproportionately targeted Black women receiving public assistance, the program's early focus was on poor white women. These policies were framed as

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00:45:41

How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/29

There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to call for an end to segregation. There were reverends and rabbis, activists and Rat-Pack icons—and of course the day’s headliner, whose prophetic dream of a post-Jim Crow world has forever defined the Civil Rights Movement. But there is no “class photo” of the Black women who helped organize the march, performed on its

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01:22:29

Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/26

This episode’s centers on Sophie Lewis’s new book Femmephilia. A collection of essays published in various outlets over the last several years, this book will take readers through a number of disparate topics, from the recent Disney remake of The Little Mermaid to experiments with psychedelics to the bizarre meanings one might find at its end. Uniting it all though is an unapologetically anticapitalist and utopian feminism, one that sees in various examples and experiences of femme glimpses both of

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00:49:45

Tsunami: Women’s Voices From Mexico

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/24

Featuring personal essay, manifesto, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Tsunami: Women’s Voices From Mexico(Feminist Press, 2025)gathers the multiplicity of voices being raised in Mexico today against patriarchy and its buried structures. Tackling gender violence, community building, #MeToo, Indigenous rights, and more, these writings rock the core of what we know feminism to be, dismantling its Eurocentric roots and directing its critical thrust towards current affairs in Mexico today.Asserting

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00:53:11

Christina E. Firpo, "Beauty and the Nation: Women,...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/16

During the interwar years, Vietnamese society witnessed a rapid change in the way women looked. Rejecting the model of a sequestered maiden with blackened teeth and long hair, they embraced a vivid palette of colors—and a colorful lifestyle to match. Before the war, Vietnam would have seemed like an unlikely place for a beauty industry to thrive. Virtuous young women were expected to hide their natural beauty, not manipulate it with makeup or flaunt it at a beauty contest. Yet ordinary women began

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01:00:18

Leda M Perez, "Searching for Democracy: Women,...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/13

How can we achieve lasting social and political equality for women? Dr. Leda Pérez tackles this thorny question in Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) by interrogating egalitarianism in Latin America, where nearly 20% of women work in domestic service. She examines how women’s participation in society, labor, and politics continues to be conditioned by their relationship to domestic and care work.Dr. Pérez argues

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53:37

Leda M Perez, "Searching for Democracy: Women,...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/13

How can we achieve lasting social and political equality for women? Dr. Leda Pérez tackles this thorny question inSearching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) by interrogating egalitarianism in Latin America, where nearly 20% of women work in domestic service. She examines how women’s participation in society, labor, and politics continues to be conditioned by their relationship to domestic and care work.Dr. Pérez argues

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55:42

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/08

Erin Maglaque's new bookPresence: A Hidden History of the Female Body(Astra House, 2026),is a work of early modern history and an account of what it is like to study the past as an embodied person. Having been trained as to disregard the physical self when writing history, Maglaque's worldview completely shifted following the birth of her child. What might it mean to instead, "find a way to write that flowed from the body?"Presenceis her answer. The book draws from a vast array of archival and

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74:08

Sara McDougall, "Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/07

In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault—and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At the center of Jaques’s inquiry was a woman named Jehanne, who took the unusual step of making a criminal complaint in an age when victims of sexual violence did so at their own peril.Justice for Jehanne: The

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36:23

Autumn Lorimer Linford, "Extra! Extra! A History of...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/09/05

American pop culture loves newsies. The children who bawled out headlines and sold newspapers on city streets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been depicted countless times in movies, Broadway shows, books, music, and more, but somehow it’s only ever the stories of newsboys that are told. Scholarly literature too has focused mostly on boy newsies. Yet for nearly as long as there were newspapers in the United States, there were also newsgirls. Girl newsies were photographed,

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60:35

Catherine Reyes-Housholder, "How Women Win...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/08/28

Between 1990 and 2020, women candidates won only 6% of the world’s presidential races. How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) explains the factors, strategies, and perceptionsthat help (or hinder) women to democratically access their country’s highest political office. Dr. Catherine Reyes-Housholder introduces a theory of gendered incentives and perceived potential to reveal why a political party would break with tradition and nominate a woman. She

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47:22

Shelly Lundberg "How Economics Discovered Women:...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/08/25

In the 1970s, as women started to enter the labor force in unprecedented numbers, economists began to examine their roles as economic actors. The result was the rise of gender economics, now a major subfield with powerful data and new methods comparing the economic lives of men and women. Yet despite decades of progress, many of the most consequential questions about gender inequality remain unresolved.InHow Economics Discovered Women: Bringing Gender Economics into the Twenty-First Century(U

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63:36

Jane Draycott, "Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/08/22

Fulvia was born into wealth, privilege, and prestige around the year 80 BCE, yet there was nothing inherently special about her—she was not a saint, an empress, or a queen. But during the years leading up to the fall of the Roman Republic, Fulvia was moving in the most powerful social circles, and by her death in 40 BCE she had amassed a degree of political and military power unprecedented for a woman.Fulvia’s success came at considerable cost, however. None of her three marriages to politically

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27:44

Rick Ramseyer, "Girl Without a Country: The Untold...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/08/15

Should willingness to kill be a requirement for U.S. citizenship?Girl Without a Country: The Untold Story of a Landmark Fight for U.S. Citizenship(Purdue University Press, 2026) by Rick Ramseyer tells the compelling, confounding story of Martha Graber—a Mennonite, registered nurse, and conscientious objector who in 1929 was twice denied citizenship because she refused to say she would take up arms to defend the United States. The unexpected denials, which came despite Martha's pledge to give her

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46:11

Younus Y. Mirza, "The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/08/12

Mary, the mother of Jesus, has been historically revered throughout the Islamic tradition. This began already in the Qur'an, where she is called by the name "Maryam."The Islamic Mary: Maryam Through the Centuries(Fortress Press, 2025)examines the varied appearances of Maryam in different Islamic cultural and theological contexts. The chapters in this history extend from Maryam's scriptural mentions in the Qur'an and the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, her appearances in medieval debates regarding

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44:43

Julie Kliegman, "Finding Renée Richards: The...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/08/11

Fifty years ago, tennis player Renée Richards made international headlines in her fight to compete in the women’s draw of the 1977 US Open—marking the first time a trans athlete sued to participate in professional sports in the gender category with which they identify. Renée eventually won her case. Though she lost in the first round of the singles tournament, she and her tennis partner made it to the finals in doubles, losing to Martina Navratilova and her partner.Finding Renée Richards: The

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61:30

Daniel Majchrowicz, "A Journey to Mecca and London:...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/08/10

Descended from Mughal nobility, Akhtar al-Nisa Begum Nawab Sarbuland Jung grew up in Hyderabad in southern India, where she lived a quiet, private, and privileged life at the heart of the state's royal court. In 1896, at the age of 20, she married Nawab Muhammad Hamidullah Khan Sarbuland Jung, a prominent lawyer and the scion of a leading Muslimreformist movement. In 1909, the wealthy couple embarked on a four-month journey through the Middle East and Europe, performing the hajj in Mecca and

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75:28

Leopoldina Fortunati, "The Arcana of Reproduction:...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/08/08

The definitive feminist analysis of reproductive and ‘caring’ labor to emerge from Italian feminism of the 1970s. Emerging from the great social upheavals that contested the sexual and racial divisions of labor globally in the 1970s, Leopoldina Fortunati’s classic work expands and transforms how we analyze the sphere of reproduction, redefining the value of the individual’s life and the labor performed in the home. Released here for the first time in its unabridged form with historical notation

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25:49

Valena Beety, "Pink Crime: Fighting Against the...

New Books in Women"s History ·

2026/08/04

A woman miscarries—and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administered—and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia—and spend nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work—and is sentenced to 126 years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system that

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