New Books In Gender Studies

At the turn of the nineteenth century, British women novelists were publishing more fiction than their male counterparts, yet their place in literary history remains precarious. In British Women Novelists and the Review Periodical (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Dr. Megan Peiser offers a compelling new perspective on this pivotal period by examining the overlooked power of the review periodical in shaping literary reception, authorial careers, and the novel as a genre. Through a dynamic study of the Novels Reviewed Database, 1790–1820 (NRD)—the first dataset to systematically catalog novels reviewed as novels during the Romantic period—Dr. Peiser demonstrates how these reviews operated not as static judgments, but as an interconnected system of influence, circulation, and criticism. Periodicals functioned as central components of the literary marketplace, steering readers' tastes, framing authors' reputations, and reinforcing cultural notions of gender and genre. Examining the context of these review

In The Goddess in the Mirror: An Anthropology of Beauty (Duke UP, 2025), Tulasi Srinivas offers a pathbreaking ethnography of contemporary Indian beauty parlors in Bangalore. Exploring the gendered world of beauty in the intimate spaces of the salon, whose popularity has exploded amid an urban tech revolution, Srinivas invites us to consider what beauty is and what it does. Visiting diverse salons that cater to various classes, castes, and queer sexualities, she tracks the relationships between clients and workers, revealing the beauty industry's painful political, religious, and economic stakes. Embodiment, religion, and narrative intersect as clients and beauticians tell well-known stories of beautiful Hindu goddesses, heroines, queens, and apsaras, thereby weaving their own ethical subjectivities every day. Following the goddess' allure, radiance, woundedness, fluidity, and fertility, Srinivas situates ideas of beauty within a larger moral and political context where beauty is both a fleeting pursuit and

Gender is becoming a central battleground in contemporary authoritarian politics, but how do autocrats manipulate these debates to their own advantage? Some regimes now pursue a double strategy of simultaneous “gender bashing” and “gender washing”: mobilising anti-gender rhetoric and “traditional values” to attack feminists and roll back equality, while at the same time promoting loyal women into prominent roles to project an image of modernity, reform, and inclusion at home and abroad. By combining repression with reputation laundering, they mask authoritarian practices and complicate the struggle for genuine gender equality. Join the People, Power, Politics podcast as we talk to Elin Bjarnegård and Pär Zetterberg about their latest Journal of Democracy article and explore how this mix of gender bashing and gender washing is reshaping the fight for equal rights and democratic politics. Guest: Elin Bjarnegård is a Professor of Political Science at Uppsala University specialising in gender and politics, poli

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 archetype upheld British imperial whiteness and sexual purity, and later Indian elite 'upper' caste domestic modernity. Chakraborty argues that the pervasive cultural sentimentalization of the ayah morally legitimized British colonialism, while obscuring the vulnerabilities of caregivers in real-life. Using an archive of petitions and letters from ayahs, fairytales they told to British children, court cases, and vernacular sources, Chakraborty foregrounds the precarious lives, voices, and perspectives of these women.

Around 1830, opera houses stopped using castrati, and Rome and the Vatican became home to their glorious singing, engineered by surgery and intensive vocal training. Castrati were long mired in secrecy, obfuscations, and lies about their origin and conditions, not least the last of them, Alessandro Moreschi. In Castrato Phantoms: Moreschi, Fellini, and the Sacred Vernacular in Rome (Zone Books, 2026), musicologist Professor Martha Feldman declines to accept these deep-seated mysteries and concealments. After a decade and more of digging through archives and family histories comes her exciting transdisciplinary and quasi-cinematic account of Moreschi, whose recordings preserve the only sonic trace of a solo castrato.Yet Moreschi’s story extends far beyond him. It opens up intrigues, politics, and histories of the Vatican, everyday histories of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Rome, the world of Roman opera, the city’s unique mélange of sacred and vernacular tropes, and representations of Rome by iconic film d

Irish Digital Cultures: Identity, Contexts, Space (Routledge, 2025) explores how questions of Ireland and Irishness are represented in online environments, and what these phenomena say about contemporary Irish identities both within the country and globally. It will interest Irish Studies, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Race, Gender, Identity, and New Media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

A powerful blend of deeply human stories and rigorous research, The Collective Cure: Upstream Solutions for Better Public Health (Beacon Press, 2026) reveals how social and structural factors like income, occupation, race and ethnicity, neighborhood conditions, and social connections, profoundly shape our well-being. Dr. Monica Wang, an award-winning public health researcher, educator, and working mother who came of age as an Asian American bussing student, brings a personal lens to these complex issues and shares a hopeful, action-oriented vision for building healthier communities from the ground up.Through her own personal and professional journey and the lives of 3 extraordinary women across the US, readers are invited to see how health is shaped in everyday spaces: Marielis, a first-generation Latina student navigating financial insecurity in the Bronx; Dorothy, a semi-retired Black community organizer in rural Alabama; and Rosa, an Indigenous clinical social worker preserving ancestral traditions in T

The #MeToo revelations put a twenty-first-century stamp on the age-old story of women’s mistreatment in Hollywood. In Women in Hollywood's Dream Factory: Tales of Inequality, Abuse, and Resistance (U Illinois Press, 2026) Karen McNally edits a collection focused on examining and revising film history in the aftermath of the women’s stories, past and present, that have come to light.The collection begins with essays on the interplay between reality and imagination in narratives and representations of women’s experiences of unequal treatment. In Part 2, contributors discuss how the gendered attitudes of the media’s stories enable inequality in Hollywood and look at the forces that arise whenever women resist these media assaults. The next section addresses the structures that built the inequalities and mistreatment while Part 4 revisits established narratives to challenge, renew, and expand upon our understanding of film history through women’s stories. Essays in the final section address the combination of i

Mothers and fathers use their time differently, with women spending roughly twice as many hours on family labor as men. But what about the gendered differences in the ways women and men think? What’s on Her Mind examines the cognitive labor that families depend on, and reveals why this essential aspect of family life is disproportionately handled by women—even in couples that aspire to practice equality. While most accounts of household labor center on how people use their time, Dr. Allison Daminger focuses on a less visible and less easily quantifiable aspect of family life. She introduces readers to the concept of cognitive labor—anticipating, researching, deciding, and following up—and shows how women in different-gender couples do most of this critical work. Dr. Daminger argues that cognitive labor has less to do with personality traits—for example, she’s type A while he’s laid-back—and more to do with learned skills that men and women deploy in distinct ways. Yet not all couples fall into the personalit

Katelyn Stauffer, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia, has an excellent new book focusing on how voters and citizens perceive the legitimacy and functionality of political institutions, especially when they think there are women elected to those institutions. The Politics of Perception: How Beliefs About Women’s Inclusion Shape Democratic Legitimacy in the United States (Oxford UP, 2025) weaves together a number of different threads to reach some interesting conclusions about women in elected office and the trust that voters have in those elected offices and institutions. Stauffer starts the research trajectory with a framing around representation, and how the different kinds of representation within elected bodies connects to how voters think about those bodies themselves and whether they trust them and think they are effective. This opens the path to bring in the question of gender, and how voters’ or citizens’ perceptions of how many women are in legislative bodies also co

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 not only themselves and their families, but the nation at large. Such responsibilisation underpinned the legal reforms of the 1960s-70s, framing a notion of reproductive citizenship based on a tension between individual rights and social norms. Reproductive Rights in Modern France: Feminism, Contraception, and Abortion, 1950-1980 (Oxford UP, 2025) breaks new ground by taking an intersectional approach to the defining moments of this period: the legalisation of contraception (the laws of 1967 and 1974) and the liber

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 of higher-grade employees with an eye to cultivating their respectability. Meanwhile workers' writings reveal how railway towns provided opportunities for some employees to maintain non-heteronormative living arrangements. The book tracks these histories of everyday life while also outlining stories of early trade unionism. In Britain, railway unionists established benefit funds that mimicked company-sponsored provident funds, while in colonial India workers fought to gain access to company benefits on equal terms

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 rigid, Hirschfeld taught that each of us is their own unique mixture of masculinity and femininity. Through his public advocacy for gay rights and his private counseling of patients toward self-acceptance, he became the intellectual impresario of Berlin's cabaret scene and helped turn his hometown into the world's queer capital. But he also enraged the Nazis, who ransacked his Institute for Sexual Science and burned his books. Driven from his homeland, Hirschfeld traveled to America, Asia, and the Middle East to resea

Working-Class Courtship, Marriage, and Divorce in Scotland, 1855–1939 (Oxford UP, 2025) by Professor Eleanor Gordon, Professor Katie Barclay, and Dr. Jeff Meeks is the first book-length study of the history of working-class courtship and marriage in Scotland, from the establishment of civil registration to the introduction in 1939 of legislation which abolished irregular marriage and introduced civil marriage. Adopting a 'life course' approach, the book explores the social, economic, and cultural contexts of romantic partnerships, from courtship through to marital or family dissolution.Drawing from a wide range of sources that capture official accounts and discourses on the one hand, and the testimony and experience of working-class people on the other, the book offers a uniquely broad and textured view of courtship and marriage in this period. In so doing, it advances recent historiographical debates surrounding marriage in the Anglophone world, particularly the mutability of 'love', and whether the late nin

Many of us take diapers for granted. Yet diaper insecurity is a common, often hidden consequence of poverty in the US, where nearly half of American families with young children struggle to get enough diapers. Drawing on interviews with mothers dealing with this overlooked issue, in Living Diaper to Diaper: The Hidden Crisis of Poverty and Motherhood (U California Press, 2026) Dr. Jennifer Randles shows how diapers have unique practical and symbolic significance for the well-being of families. Tracing the social history of diapering, Randles unravels a complex story of caregiving inequalities, the environmental impacts of child-rearing, and responsibility for meeting children’s basic needs. Yet it is also a hopeful story: the book chronicles the work of people who manage diaper banks as well as the growing diaper distribution movement. A hard-nosed yet nuanced tale of parenting, Living Diaper to Diaper is an eye-opening examination of inequality and poverty in America. This interview was conducted by Dr. M

Throughout the twentieth century, many women in Ireland and Britain endured shame and institutionalisation for becoming pregnant outside of marriage. In Single Mothers in Twentieth-century Ireland and Britain: Pregnancy, Migration and Institutionalization (Bloomsbury, 2025), Dr. Lorraine Grimes examines the journeys made by hundreds of pregnant Irish women to Britain as they fled to escape their local communities. Their experiences in Britain, however, were not free of stigma and Dr. Grimes's book analyses the nuances of the institutional networks both in Britain and Ireland which these women utilised. Single Mothers in Twentieth Century Ireland and Britain focuses on the experiences of women from 1926-1973 in cities with high Irish emigrant populations, including London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow. Unlike official narratives such as Ireland's Commission of Investigation into the Mother and Baby Homes, this book prioritises the experiences of the survivors and ensures that women's experiences are cen

Decolonial Care: Reimagining Caregiving in the French Caribbean (Rutgers UP, 2025) examines the relationship between the legacies of colonialism and the dynamics of caregiving that have emerged from the French Caribbean. Putting in dialogue postcolonial studies and care studies, this book elucidates how caring and uncaring have been historically shaped by colonialism and shows how media and narratives help develop decolonial approaches to care that sustain human life and livable environments. Guest Jennifer Boum-Maké is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Georgetown University. In addition to her monograph, she has co-edited 2025’s Graphic Narratives of Resistance: Advocating for Representation and Social Justice in French-Language Bandes Dessinées. In addition to many journal articles and contributions to collected volumes, she serves on a number of editorial boards and is one of the founders of Kwazman vwa: New Paths in Caribbean literature, an online series hosting conversations with

This episode features Yashica Dutt, journalist and author of Coming Out as Dalit. We began with a discussion of her choice to write a memoir, the significance of the memoir as a genre of Dalit writing, the politics around passing as upper caste, and what her mother’s role in the life taught her about Dalit feminism as a counter to Brahminical patriarchy. We then moved on to what her work as a journalist in India and the U.S. has revealed about the differences in the operations of caste in the two contexts. Finally, we ended with her coverage of the Zohran Mamdani campaign, both its promises and its failure to address the caste question head-on. Guest: Yashica Dutt is a journalist and author whose writings can be found on her Substack, Featuring Dalits and in New Lines magazine. Mentioned in the episode: Yashica Dutt, Coming Out as Dalit Rohith Vemula: an Indian PhD scholar at the University of Hyderabad whose suicide drew attention to widespread institutional casteism. Kumari Mayawati: first Dalit woman

Drawing on a wide range of texts, from understudied ethnographic and scientific works to canonical literature and philosophy, Sophie Salvo uncovers the prehistory of the inextricability of gender and language. Taking German discourses on language as her focus, she argues that we are not the inventors but, rather, the inheritors and adapters of the notion that gender and language are interrelated. Particularly during the long nineteenth century, ideas about sexual differences shaped how language was understood, classified, and analyzed. As Salvo explains, philosophers asserted the patriarchal origins of language, linguists investigated “women’s languages” and grammatical gender, and literary Modernists imagined “feminine” sign systems, and in doing so they not only deemed sex-based divisions to be necessary categories of language but also produced a plethora of gendered tropes and fictions, which they used both to support their claims and delimit their disciplines. Articulating Difference: Sex and Language in

Why do certain women become icons of evil? Five Evil Women: Hindley, West, Wuornos, Homolka, Tucker (Reaktion, 2026) by Professor Joanna Bourke offers the first comparative, non-sensationalist account of five of the most reviled women in the modern Anglophone world: Myra Hindley, Rosemary West, Aileen Wuornos, Karla Homolka and Karla Faye Tucker. It examines their lives, crimes and cultural reception in the UK, USA and Canada, asking how violence committed by women is understood, judged and remembered. Going beyond moral outrage or tabloid headlines, the book explores how concepts of 'evil' are shaped by history, belief systems and social context. Through historical and ethical reflections, it offers a deeper, more critical engagement with female violence, and considers how society should respond to those who commit acts of unimaginable harm. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civ