Gregory Mitchell, “Tourist Attractions: Performing Race and Masculinity in Brazil’s Sexual Economy” (U. Chicago Press, 2015)

In Pregnancy in the Victorian Novel (Ohio State University Press, 2023), Livia Arndal Woods traces the connections between literary treatments of pregnancy and the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth occurring over the nineteenth century. In the first book-length study of the topic, Woods uses the problem of pregnancy in the Victorian novel (in which pregnancy is treated modestly as a rule and only rarely as an embodied experience) to advocate for "somatic reading," a practice attuned to impressions of the body on the page and in our own messy lived experiences. Examining works by Emily Brontë, Charlotte Mary Yonge, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and others, Woods considers instances of pregnancy tied to representations of immodesty, poverty, and medical diagnosis. These representations, Woods argues, should be understood in the arc of Anglo-American modernity and its aftershocks, connecting back to early modern witch trials and forward to the criminalization of women for pregnancy outcomes in twenty-first-century America. Ultimately, she makes the case that by clearing space for the personal and anecdotal in scholarship, somatic reading helps us analyze with uncertainty rather than against it and allows for relevant textual interpretation. Livia Arndal Woods earned her PhD in English Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). As a scholar, she focuses on Victorian literature and culture, women and gender studies, and the medical humanities. Dr. Woods is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Latoya Johnson is an editor, writer, and bibliophile with a master's in Humanities. Her research and writing interests include books and reading in popular culture, the public history of women's fiction, and women in Greco-Roman mythology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

18 Okt 202339min

What it feels like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture (Penn State Press, 2021) by Dr. Stephanie Larson interrogates an underexamined reason for our failure to abolish rape in the United States: the way we communicate about it. Using affective and feminist materialist approaches to rhetorical criticism, Dr. Larson examines how discourses about rape and sexual assault rely on strategies of containment, denying the felt experiences of victims and ultimately stalling broader claims for justice. Investigating anti-pornography debates from the 1980s, Violence Against Women Act advocacy materials, sexual assault forensic kits, public performances, and the #MeToo movement, Dr. Larson reveals how our language privileges male perspectives and, more deeply, how it is shaped by systems of power—patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, and heteronormativity. Interrogating how these systems work to propagate masculine commitments to “science” and “hard evidence,” Dr. Larson finds that US culture holds a general mistrust of testimony by women, stereotyping it as “emotional.” But she also gives us hope for change, arguing that testimonies grounded in the bodily, material expression of violation are necessary for giving voice to victims of sexual violence and presenting, accurately, the scale of these crimes. Larson makes a case for visceral rhetorics, theorizing them as powerful forms of communication and persuasion. Demonstrating the communicative power of bodily feeling, Dr. Larson challenges the long-held commitment to detached, distant, rationalized discourses of sexual harassment and rape. Timely and poignant, the book offers a much-needed corrective to our legal and political discourses. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

8 Okt 202347min

In the 1970s, the invention of the home pregnancy test changed what it means to be pregnant. For the first time, women could use a technology in the privacy of their own homes that gave them a yes or no answer. That answer had the power to change the course of their reproductive lives, and it chipped away at a paternalistic culture that gave gynecologists-the majority of whom were men-control over information about women's bodies. However, while science so often promises clear-cut answers, the reality of pregnancy is often much messier. Pregnancy Test (Bloomsbury, 2023) explores how the pregnancy test has not always lived up to the fantasy that more information equals more knowledge. Karen Weingarten examines the history and cultural representation of the pregnancy test to show how this object radically changed sex and pregnancy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

27 Sep 202340min

Tracy Rutler's Queering the Enlightenment: Kinship and Gender in Eighteenth-Century French Literature (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, Liverpool UP, 2021) explores the imaginaries of novels and plays from the "liminal" period that followed the end of Louis the XIV's reign in France. Examining a range of French works from the 1730s and 1740s, including writing by Antoine François Prévost, Claude Crébillion, Pierre de Marivaux, and Françoise de Graffigny, Rutler traces a set of utopian themes and impulses that questioned and resisted heteronormativity and bourgeois family relations during this period. Interrogating gender, sexuality, and kinship in both the content and the form of their work, these authors challenged patriarchal power and relations as the foundations of state and society in France. At once intimate and political, the characters, scenes, and narratives these authors produced also posed questions about (the) Enlightenment more broadly. In readings informed by thinkers like Foucault and Rancière, as well as the work of psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer theorists, Queering the Enlightenment is divided into three sections: Family Remains, Prodigal Sons, and Narrative Spinsters. Beginning with an analysis of eighteenth-century powerhouses Montesquieu and Voltaire on patriarchal decline and repair, Rutler goes on to consider literary representations of reproduction, masculinity, the public sphere, marriage, maternity, and same-sex community. The book will be of great interest to literary scholars and historians alike, particularly anyone interested the legacies of the Enlightenment and how historical struggles/debates over kinship, gender, and sexuality continue to resonate in the present. Roxanne Panchasi is an Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada who specializes in twentieth and twenty-first century France and empire. She is the founding host of New Books in French Studies, a channel launched in 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

23 Sep 202356min

Innovative essays that explore how men perform femininity and what femininity looks like without women What counts as “male femininity”? Is it simply men behaving in effeminate ways or is it the absence of masculinity? Male Femininities (NYU Press, 2023) presents a nuanced, critical collection of essays that highlight the extent to which male femininities are neither an imitation of femaleness nor an emptying of masculinity. These innovative essays focus on both gay and straight men, and transmasculine and genderqueer people in their construction and performance of femininity, thereby revealing the possibilities that open up when we critically examine femininity without women. Male Femininities asks, What does femininity look like for men? The contributors—highly regarded scholars and rising stars—cover a range of topics, including drag queens, cosmetic enhancements, trans fertility, and gender-non-conforming childhoods. Male Femininities illuminates what happens when we decouple femininity from female bodies and how even the smallest cracks and fissures in the normative order can disrupt, challenge, and in some cases reaffirm our existing sex-gender regime. This volume pluralizes the concept of male femininities and leads readers through an exploration of how gender, sex, and sexuality are manifested in the United States today. Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

20 Sep 202345min

In Contemporary Chinese Queer Performance (Routledge, 2022), Hongwei Bao analyses queer theatre and performance in contemporary China. Boa documents various forms of queer performance - including music, film, theatre, and political activism - in the first two decades of the twenty first century. In doing so, Bao argues for the importance of performance for queer identity and community formation. This trailblazing work uses queer performance as an analytical lens to challenge heteronormative modes of social relations and hegemonic narratives of historiography. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre and performance studies, gender and sexuality studies and Asian studies. Shu Wan is currently matriculated as a doctoral student in history at the University at Buffalo. As a digital and disability historian, he serves in the editorial team of Digital Humanities Quarterly and Nursing Clio. On Twitter: @slissw. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

18 Sep 202338min

Children of all ages are abused in every country in the world, by members of every society, culture, religion, and socio-economic class. About 120 million children under twenty, or one child in ten, report sexual abuse. We often blame children for their own abuse instead of holding the perpetrators responsible for their crimes. When perpetrators are prosecuted, punishments are rarely severe. Remarkably, we sometimes justify child sex abuse, or even facilitate it, allowing it to continue, not only in hidden places, but even in the open. Beverley Chalmers' book Child Sex Abuse: Power, Profit, Perversion (Grosvenor House, 2022) exposes the stunning extent of child sex abuse in today's world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

16 Sep 202355min

Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture--drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage. Jacob Bloomfield is a Zukunftskolleg Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Konstanz and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent. His research is situated primarily in the fields of cultural history, the history of sexuality, and gender history. Jacob is the author of Drag: A British History (2023). His second monograph will be about the historical reception to, and cultural impact of, musician Little Richard. Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

13 Sep 202342min