New Books in Gender Studies

Adrienne Trier-BieniekView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Pop Music] What are female fans of popular music seeking and hearing when they listen to music and attend concerts? In an innovative and fascinating study entitled Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos (The Scarecrow Press, 2013)  Adrienne Trier-Bieniek goes inside the fan culture that surrounds Tori Amos and examines why her music appeals to her fans and how they make meaning of her music. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory and symbolic interaction theory, Trier-Bieniek helps us understand the diverse ways that fans interpret music and how music can have a very personal meaning. The podcast discusses the book and so much more. Trier-Bieniek describes the concerts of Tori Amos, Amos's interactions with fans, including WWE wrestler Mick Foley, and the growth of her fan sites and message boards. The podcast also looks at the relationship between Tori Amos's music and other female artists from Madonna and Lady Gaga to Joni Mitchell and Regina Spektor. Adrienne Trier-Bieniek is a professor of sociology at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. She is co-editor of Gender and Pop Culture – A Text Reader (Sense) and the author of the forthcoming books, Feminist Theory and Pop Culture (Sense) and Fan Girls and Media: Consuming Culture (Rowman and Littlefield). More information about Adrienne Trier-Bieniek can be found at her website.

Katherine FrankView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Anthropology] Dr. Katherine Frank's book, Plays Well in Groups: A Journey Through the World of Group Sex (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), is a fascinating look at the taboo of group sex. Her robust research spans historical references to modern day accounts throughout cultures around the world. Dr. Frank used surveys, interviews, and ethnographic research to uncover why people participate in group sex, and what it means to them. Her work also looks at group sex in a violent setting, such as gang rape, and examines the social, political and power structures involved. Her work on group sex and the complex reaction to it, allow a behind the scenes look at a world that is often portrayed differently than it is actually experienced. Plays Well In Groups provides social, anthropological and historical detail about a world that is both feared and fantasized about. Frank's work is bold and scary, but always engaging. It is an intriguing journey into the complexity of sex and the meaning that it holds for culture and society.

Karen AbbottView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Biography] If group biography is one of the exciting new trends in life-writing (and some say it is), Karen Abbott- the historian, not to be confused with the novelist- proves one of its deftest practitioners- first, in her debut Sin in the Second City, then in the follow-up American Rose (which we discussed back in 2012) and now in her new book: Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War (Harper, 2014). Tracking four women- two Confederates and two Unionists- across battle lines, continents and even, at times, genders, with great verve Abbott weaves together a series of stories, connected by the conflict in which they are occurring and yet also uniquely each women's own. The story of the American Civil War has been told umpteen times, but it is an unexpected element within the familiar which Abbott is concerned with exploring here. Tales of our heroines- Belle Boyd, Emma Edmonds, Rose O'Neale Greenhow and Elizabeth Van Lew, all women most readers will be encountering for the first time- yield an untraditional perspective on women's participation in the war whilst Abbott also gives fresh life to well-known figures: Stonewall Jackson, painted here in broad vivid colors, emerges from the familiar tapestry in his full, eccentric glory almost as a character born anew. Reviewing her first book, USA Today labeled Abbott a "pioneer of sizzle history." It's a label that's stuck and one which is apt for a mode of story-telling driven by such a propulsive kinetic energy, as Abbott's is. But it's important to note that the stories she's telling are sturdy, thoroughly researched and culturally necessary. The word "sizzle" can imply a frothy effervescence, a flash in the pan, and these stories- the stories of these four women in Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy and in her other books- are anything but.

Melanie C. HawthorneView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Biography] "Why write the biography of a nobody?" That is the question with which Melanie C. Hawthorne begins Finding the Woman Who Didn't Exist: The Curious Life of Gisèle d'Estoc (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) but in justifying the writing of such a life and then, in turn, excavating its contours, Hawthorne winds up exploring a number of issues fundamental to the genre of biography. In particular, the biographer's inability fill all gaps, the frequent encounters with dead ends and his/her reliance, at times almost wholly, upon sheer luck. Also, the legacies of the biographers who have gone before us. In d'Estoc's case, as Hawthorne writes, "It is almost as though these experts avoided finding proof of d'Estoc's existence and one has to ask why." One of the significant contributions of  Finding the Woman Who Didn't Exist is its transparency- Hawthorne's willingness to include in her text the details of research, alongside serious critical engagement with the notion of what it means to be a researcher in the humanities and why humanities research matters. This flows seamlessly throughout her exploration of d'Estoc's life as she explores the fluidity of life stories, the need to continually rearrange and reevaluate them, "to keep creating unexpected bends on the old narrative paths in order to wake us up to seeing them in a new light." To illustrate this, she uses the story of a 19th century French writer/artist/anarchist, a woman who once pretended to be someone else and whose false identity ultimately historically hijacked the original. It's a story steeped in its times and yet one which also appears surprisingly modern here, and one which- as it is written- highlights fundamental truths about the genre. One of my favorites is this: "Stories teach us not to take things for granted, and the final lesson of biography is that despite the fact that specific stories always begin and end somewhere, in real life there are no such definitive markers." The story Hawthorne presents of d'Estoc is deliberately left messy, which is- in the end- perhaps its greatest strength.

Shabana MirView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Islamic Studies] In the post 9/11 era in which Muslims in America have increasingly felt under the surveillance of the state, media, and the larger society, how have female Muslim students on US college campuses imagined, performed, and negotiated their religious lives and identities? That is the central question that animates Dr. Shabana Mir's dazzling new book Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). This book was the winner of the Outstanding Book Award awarded by the National Association for Ethnic Studies. In her book, Dr. Mir engages a number of interlocking themes such as the varied and at times competing understandings of Islam among female Muslim undergraduates, the haunting legacy of Orientalist discourse and practice on U.S. college campuses, questions of religious authority among Muslim students on campus, and contradictions of pluralism in US higher education. Through a theoretically sophisticated and compelling ethnographic study focused on the college experience of female Muslim undergraduates at George Washington University and Georgetown University in Washington DC, Dr. Mir brings into view the hopes, tensions, and aspirations that mark the intersections of their religious and academic and social lives on campus. Some of the specific issues analyzed in this book include female Muslim American understandings of and attitudes towards alcohol culture on campus, clothing and the hijab, and questions of gender and sexual relations. Dr. Mir's incredibly nuanced study shows both the diversity and complexity of the undergraduate experience for Muslim American students. This truly multidisciplinary book will be of much interest to not only scholars of Islam, American religion, gender, and anthropology, but also to anyone interested and invested US higher education.

Tine M. GammeltoftView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in East Asian Studies] Tine Gammeltoft's new book explores the process of reproductive decision making in contemporary Hanoi. Haunting Images: A Cultural Account of Selective Reproduction in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2014) develops an anthropology of belonging, paying special attention to the ways that women and their communities understand and make decisions based on ultrasound imaging technologies. In the course of making life-and-death decisions, the subjects of Gammeltoft's book confronted ethically demanding circumstances through which they forged moral selves. Inspired by the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Haunting Images considers their reproductive choices as acts of collective belonging, producing the subjectivities of both mother and fetus. The book considers these choices in light of the extended repercussions of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the local specificity of biopower, national concepts of "population quality," and the precarity of individual attachments to social collectives. The second half of the book follows the experiences of women who were informed via 3D ultrasound scans that the children they expected would be anomalous, tracing their choices, questions, contexts, and encounters with childhood disability.  It is a powerful and deeply affecting study

Wendy LowerView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Genocide Studies] It seems quite reasonable to wonder if there's anything more to learn about the Holocaust.  Scholars from a variety of disciplines have been researching and writing about the subject for decades.  A simple search for "Holocaust" on Amazon turns up a stunning 27,642 results.  How can there still be uncovered terrain? Wendy Lower shows it is in fact possible to say new things about the Holocaust (to be fair, she's following a handful of other scholars who have focused on gender and the Holocaust).  Her questions are simple.  What did the approximately 500,000 women who went East to live and work in the territories occupied by the German armies know about the killing of Jews (and other categories of victims)?  To what degree did they participate in the killing?  How did this experience affect them after the war? Her answers are disturbing, to say the least.  For Lower uncovers ample evidence that women both witnessed and participated in the so-called "Holocaust by Bullets" in Eastern Europe.  The patterns of participation varied, as did their acknowledgement of their actions.  But the evidence is undeniable that women played a significant role in facilitating the Final Solution. Lower, along with people writing about Rwanda, about the frontiers of Australia and the United States, and a variety of other moments in time and space, illustrates our need to pay more attention to women and to gender in our study of mass violence.  Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), is an admirable contribution to the discussion, well-researched, well-written and emotionally compelling.  I can't think of a better place to start in examining these issues.

Cymene HoweView on AmazonWith Intimate Activism: The Struggle for Sexual Rights in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua (Duke University Press, 2013), Cymene Howe offers an ethnography of activism. Woven into Nicaragua's political history of revolution and U.S. intervention, the struggle for sexual rights there takes place on three stages: in intimate settings of lesbian discussion groups, in the public sphere marked by demonstrations, press conferences and celebrations, and in visual and print media. Howe's informants (activists, advocates, students, educators, television actors, members of Nicaragua's queer community) illustrate the transformations and continuities in the culture of sexuality in Nicaragua.

Clare Haru CrowstonView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in French Studies] Anyone who's been paying attention to the flurry around the French economist Thomas Piketty's 2013 Capitalism in the Twenty-first Century (Le Capital au XXIe siècle) knows how à la mode the economy is at the moment. Contemporary ideas and debates about capital, debt, and austerity are only part of what makes Clare Crowston's Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France (Duke University Press, 2013) such an interesting read in 2014. In this detailed study of the varied economic, political, social, and cultural meanings and practices of "credit" from the seventeenth through the eighteenth century, Crowston draws our attention to mutually constitutive worlds and systems of circulation. At once a genealogy of credit; an economic, social and cultural history of fashion; and an examination of the roles of gender and desire in Old Regime France, Credit, Fashion, Sex makes an important contribution to our understanding of the origins of the French Revolution while respecting the historical integrity of the period that came before. In addition to its conceptual and historiographical insights regarding credit and the complexities of Old Regime society, the book offers readers a fascinating and extensively-researched analysis of the everyday practices and systems of exchange that operated "behind the scenes" of more familiar stories. For example, the book illuminates the mythology and critiques surrounding Marie Antoinette, the queen who embodied like no one else the intersection between ideas about credit, fashion, and sexuality in the era before 1789. At the same time, Crowston gives us a glimpse of other figures and social actors who played vital roles in the society of the period: Rose Bertin, the queen's dressmaker; the fashion merchants who made so much luxury and refinement possible, as well as all those wives not married to Louis XVI who traded on/in their husbands' credit, participating in multiple economic and cultural systems of circulation and power.  

Denise BrennanView on AmazonDenise Brennan's second book, Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States (Duke University Press, 2014), examines how individuals who were trafficked into forced labor go about rebuilding their lives afterward. Through her ethnography of lived experience and her analysis of immigration policy, Brennan shows that trafficking and forced labor are common byproducts of our capitalist system that relies on cheap and unregulated labor. Migration patterns are gendered, and the persons whose experiences shape this book — Maria, Elsa, and many others — are mostly women in the caregiving and sex industries. Brennan argues that U.S. policy has used anti-trafficking policy to forward a separate agenda of ending prostitution and other sex work, thereby distorting protections for female and male trafficking victims in all labor industries, and drastically limiting the number of T visas allocated since 2000. The book is one of scholarly activism: as an anthropologist, Denise Brennan combines research and advocacy to improve the lives of victims and to modify the realities of trafficking and forced labor.

Paula A. MichaelsView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] The twentieth-century West witnessed a revolution in childbirth. Before that time, most women gave birth at home and were attended by family members and midwives. The process was usually terribly painful for the mother. Beginning in the nineteenth century, however, doctors started to "medicalize" childbirth. Physicians began to think of ways to ease the pain of childbirth. Two main options were explored. One–drugs–is quite familiar to us, for it is the primary tool used by doctors to make women comfortable during the birth process today. The other–"psychoprophylaxis"–has now passed into memory. The most famous form of psychoprophylaxis, and the subject of  Paula A. Michaels excellent book Lamaze: An International History  (Oxford University Press, 2014), is known as the "Lamaze method." Its history is fascinating and surprising: born in the Soviet Union (or was it the United Kingdom?), it migrated to France, and then to much of Europe. It then jumped the Atlantic and became a quasi-political force in the United States ("natural childbirth"). And Lamaze is still with us, though in a form hard to recognize. Listen in.

Michael SalterView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Book in Sociology] Sometimes it's hard to imagine how certain types of violence can occur, and organized multi-perpetrator abuse certainly fits into this category.  Ritual abuse, sadistic abuse and pedophilia rings are often things we see in episodes of "Law and Order," without having to think of the reality of the victims that actually experience this type of cruelty.  In Organised Sexual Abuse (Routledge, 2013), Michael Salter attempts to bring to light this often-hidden and seldom-believed type of crime.   He describes his own experience being the caretaker of someone who was continuously abused and harassed well into adulthood, including his attempts to reach out to law enforcement and hospital workers, most of whom had trouble believing that this kind of abuse was actually taking place.  Salter also talks about the connection between views of hypermasculinity and abuse, and the ways in which violence is often a "collective masculine performance."  Through in-depth qualitative research, Salter takes us into a horrifying journey of a reality that we cannot afford to ignore.

Kristin LiebView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Pop Music] It is a challenge for all musicians to find success in the modern music industry, but women face unique challenges. Cultural narratives shape how female artists get sold to the public and those narratives, in turn, affect how the public consumes the music of these women artists. Kristin Lieb examines the business decisions that shape the careers of female pop artists.  Her book, Gender, Branding and the Modern Music Industry (Routledge, 2013), explores this terrain and develops a lifecycle model for female artists. This model describes how many female artists enter pop music as "good girls" only later to become "temptresses," which then can transform into a range of possible branding options from "divas" and "exotics" to "whores" and "hot messes."  Lieb developed this model by interviewing the business managers, marketers, and agents who are shaping how artists get branded and marketed. In the interview, Lieb applies this model to a wide range of artists from Miley Cyrus and Lorde to Adele and Madonna. She offers tremendous insight about how behind the scenes business and marketing decisions shape the artists that become successful Dr. Kristin Lieb is an assistant professor of marketing communication at Emerson College. Before coming a professor, she worked as a freelancer for Billboard and Rolling Stone and worked as a marketing executive for several music-related companies.

View on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Islamic Studies] Many Muslim debates regarding women are solely situated in legal or political frameworks. For example, we often find this tendency in conversations about women's leadership in the mosque or the politics of veiling. Sa'diyya Shaikh, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, provides a unique approach to these discussions that puts feminist hermeneutics in dialogue with the thought of the prolific Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi (1165-1240). In Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ʿArabi, Gender and Sexuality (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) she explores contestations over embodiment and gender, spirituality and leadership, sexuality and power in order to rethink patriarchal epistemologies in contemporary Muslim discourses. She argues that contesting positions on gender in these debates are underpinned by certain assumptions about human nature, its gendering, and existence. Shaikh outlines the social and ritual consequences of spiritual (in)equality and initiates reflections on Islamic notions of the central category "human being." Shaikh leads us through Ibn 'Arabi's dynamic anthropology, ontology, and cosmology and links abstract philosophical concepts with concrete daily relationships between men and women. In our conversation we discussed Islamic feminism, apophatic unsayings and hermeneutic of subversions, Ibn 'Arabi's interpersonal relationships with women, parallels between the macrocosm and microcosm, Muslim exegesis, notions of creation, interpretations of Adam and Eve, Jesus' birth from the Virgin Mary, and masculine and feminine in Islam.

Michelle KingView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in East Asian Studies] Michelle King's new book explores the intertwined histories of imperialism and infanticide. Situating the histories of infant killing and abandonment in China within a broader history of these practices in western Europe and across Eurasia, Between Birth and Death: Female Infanticide in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford UP, 2014) thus wrests the notion of female infanticide from an uncritical identification with a historical or imagined "China." Instead of assuming this identification, King's book asks when female infanticide became "Chinese," and uses the chapters of Between Birth and Death to introduce readers to a fascinating archive of texts, images, memoirs, morality plays, scientific treatises, monuments, catechisms, devotional cards, newspaper articles, and other materials that forms the substratum from which changing perceptions of female infanticide were born and transformed through the nineteenth century and beyond. King offers sympathetic readings of the motivations of a wide spectrum of individuals, from women who chose to drown their daughters to philanthropic activists within and beyond China who fought against the practice, to children who donated pennies from their allowance to ensure that Chinese babies would be baptized.  It is a balanced, clearly written, and persuasively argued account of an exceptionally timely topic that deserves a wide readership.