Katie Barclay, "The Kiss: A History of Passion and Power" (Reaktion Books, 2025)
The Kiss: A History of Passion and Power (Reaktion, 2026) by Professor Katie Barclay tells the surprising history of our most intimate gesture: the kiss. Richly illustrated, it explores a millennium o...
1 Aug 31min
Nick Yablon, "From the Skyscraper to the Wildflower: C. G. Hine's 1905 Photographic Survey of Broadway" (Columbia UP, 2026)
In 1905, when Broadway was already the most famous thoroughfare in New York City, a recreational photographer from Newark, New Jersey named Charles Gilbert Hine set out to document the street’s enti...
22 Jul 37min
Molly M. Brookfield, "Watching the Girls Go By: A History of Street Harassment in the United States" (UNC Press, 2026)
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 histor...
19 Jul 40min
Jay Szpilka, "BDSM Practices in Contemporary Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)
In BDSM Practices in Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), cultural anthropologist and cultural studies scholar Jay Szpilka analyzes th...
7 Jul 1h 8min
Rosa Campbell, "The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared: Shere Hite and the Hite Report" (Melville House, 2026)
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 H...
2 Jul 41min
Michelle Chase and Isabella Cosse eds., "The Cuban Revolution and the New Left: Transnational Histories of Gender, Sexuality, and Family" (U Florida Press, 2026)
Understanding overlooked dimensions of the Cuban Revolution and its impact on the global left in the 1960s and beyond. This volume, The Cuban Revolution and the New Left: Transnational Histories of...
25 Jun 42min
Karl Whittington, "Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2025)
Karl Whittington joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2025). What role does desire play in the mak...
15 Jun 1h 26min
