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  • Caroline Séquin, "Desiring Whiteness: A Racial History of Prostitution in France and Colonial Senegal, 1848-1950" (Cornell UP, 2024)
    2024/11/29
    Since the French Revolution of 1789, the absence of laws banning interracial marriages has served to reinforce two myths about modern France--first, that it is a sexual democracy and second, it is a color-blind nation where all French citizens can freely marry whomever they wish regardless of their race. Caroline Séquin challenges the narrative of French exceptionalism by revealing the role of prostitution regulation in policing intimate relationships across racial and colonial boundaries in the century following the abolition of slavery. Desiring Whiteness: A Racial History of Prostitution in France and Colonial Senegal, 1848-1950 (Cornell UP, 2024) traces the rise and fall of the "French model" of prostitution policing in the "contact zones" of port cities and garrison towns across France and in Dakar, Senegal, the main maritime entry point of French West Africa. Séquin describes how the regulation of prostitution covertly policed racial relations and contributed to the making of white French identity in an imperial nation-state that claimed to be race-blind. She also examines how sex industry workers exploited, reinforced, or transgressed the racial boundaries of colonial rule. Brothels served as "gatekeepers of whiteness" in two arenas. In colonial Senegal, white-only brothels helped deter French colonists from entering unions with African women and producing mixed-race children, thus consolidating white minority rule. In the metropole, brothels condoned interracial sex with white sex workers while dissuading colonial men from forming long-term attachments with white French women. Ultimately, brothels followed a similar racial logic that contributed to upholding white supremacy. Dr. Séquin earned a BA and MA in English and American Studies at Université Nancy 2, an MA in Women and Gender Studies at Université Paris 8, and her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. She has won a number of awards from a range of institutions including Best Paper Prize from the Council for European Studies’ Gender and Sexuality Research Network for the article “Marie Piquemal, the ‘Colonial Madam’: Brothel Prostitution, Migration, and the Making of Whiteness in Interwar Dakar”. But I want to call attention to her Edward T. Gargan Prize for the best graduate student paper presented on post-1800 history at the annual conference of the Western Society for French History. Since 2019 she has been an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at Lafayette College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 40 分
  • Mary Ellen Curtin, "She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
    2024/11/28
    During her keynote speech at the 1976 Democratic Party convention, Barbara Jordan of Texas stood before a rapt audience and reflected on where Americans stood in that bicentennial year. "Are we to be one people bound together by a common spirit, sharing in a common endeavor, or will we become a divided nation? For all of its uncertainty, we cannot flee the future." The civil rights movement had changed American politics by opening up elected office to a new generation of Black leaders, including Jordan, the first Black woman from the South to serve in Congress. Though her life in elected politics lasted only twelve years, in that short time, Jordan changed the nation by showing that Black women could lead their party and legislate on behalf of what she called "the common good." In She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan's Life and Legacy in Black Politics (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024), biographer Mary Ellen Curtin offers a new portrait of Jordan and her journey from segregated Houston, Texas, to Washington, DC, where she made her mark during the Watergate crisis by eloquently calling for the impeachment of President Nixon. Recognized as one of the greatest orators of modern America, Jordan inspired millions, and Black women became her most ardent supporters. Many assumed Jordan would rise higher and become a US senator, Speaker of the House, or a Supreme Court justice. But illness and disability, along with the obstacles she faced as a Black woman, led to Jordan's untimely retirement from elected office--though not from public life. Until her death at the age of fifty-nine, Jordan remained engaged with the cause of justice and creating common ground, proving that Black women could lead the country through challenging times. No change in the law alone could guarantee the election of Black leaders. It took courage and ambition for Barbara Jordan to break into politics. This important new biography explores the personal and the political dimensions of Jordan's life, showing how she navigated the extraordinary pressures of office while seeking to use persuasion, governance, and popular politics as instruments of social change and betterment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 13 分
  • Sabrina Strings, "The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance" (Beacon Press, 2024)
    2024/11/27
    More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate what they are looking for in a steady partner, they’ll often rely on superficial norms of attractiveness rooted in whiteness and anti-Blackness. Connecting the past to the present, in The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance (Beacon Press, 2024) sociologist Dr. Sabrina Strings argues that following the Civil Rights movement and the integration of women during the Second Wave Feminist movement, men aimed to hold on to their power by withholding love and commitment, a basic tenet of white supremacy and male domination, that served to manipulate all women. From pornography to hip hop, women—especially Black and “insufficiently white” women—were presented as gold diggers, props for masturbation, and side-pieces. Using historical research, personal stories, and critical analysis, Dr. Strings argues that the result is fuccboism, the latest incarnation of toxic masculinity. This work shows that men are not innately “toxic.” Nor do they hate love, commitment, or sex. Instead, men across race have been working a new code to effectively deny loving partnerships to women who are not pliant, slim, and white as a new mode of male domination. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses 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
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    37 分
  • Julia Kelto Lillis, "Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity" (U California Press, 2022)
    2024/11/25
    Women's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways. Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be perceived in women's sex organs. Treating virginity as anatomical brought both benefits and costs. By charting this change and situating it in the larger landscape of ancient thought, Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity (University of California Press, 2022) illuminates unrecognized differences among early Christian sources and historicizes problematic ideas about women's bodies that still persist today. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Julia Kelto Lillis is Assistant Professor of Early Church History at Union Theological Seminary Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 4 分
  • Steve J. Shone, "Dangerous Anarchist Strikers" (Brill, 2023)
    2024/11/25
    Dangerous Anarchist Strikers (Brill, 2023) explores the ideas of three largely forgotten radical women who participated in labor union strikes in Argentina and Uruguay, Canada, and the United States: Virginia Bolten (c.1876-1960), one of the most militant anarchists of southern South America; Helen Armstrong (1875-1947), a major leader of the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, whose involvement in that important event in Canadian history was, for a long time, obscured by accounts that emphasized the accomplishments of men; and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890-1964), the Wobbly leader who directed many industrial strikes throughout the United States, and was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union, who eventually became the leader of the Communist Party, USA. It also examines the contributions of two similarly neglected anarchist men who participated in labor union strikes and industrial action in New Zealand, Australia, Chile, Argentina, and Japan. Tom Barker (1887-1970) was an anarchist who eventually became a socialist who worked to promote labor unionism on four continents and who tried to create a global One Big Union for sailors. Kōtoku, Shūsui (1871-1911) was a liberal who became a socialist and finally an anarchist. An opponent of governmental imperialism and ecological mismanagement, he studied and translated the works of Western thinkers and sought to apply what he learned from other cultures to the development of Japan. Steve J. Shone is Lecturer in Political Science at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. He received his Ph.D. (1992) in political science from the University of California-Riverside. He has taught at Winona State University, Gonzaga University, and the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. He is the author of Lysander Spooner: American Anarchist(Lexington Books, 2010), American Anarchism (Brill, 2013), Women of Liberty (Brill, 2019), and Rose Summerfield: Australian Radical (Lexington Books, 2022). Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 分
  • Elizabeth Garner Masarik, "The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
    2024/11/24
    With The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State (University of Georgia Press, 2024), Dr. Elizabeth Garner Masarik shows how middle-class women, both white and Black, harnessed the nineteenth-century “culture of sentiment” to generate political action in the Progressive Era. While eighteenth-century rationalism had relied upon the development of the analytic mind as the basis for acquiring truth, nineteenth-century sentimentalism hinged upon human emotional responses and the public’s capacity to feel sympathy to establish morally based truth and build support for improving the welfare of women and children. Sentimentalism marched right alongside women’s steps into the public sphere of political action. The concerns over infant mortality and the “fall” of young women intertwined with sentimentalism to elicit public action in the formation of the American welfare state. The work of voluntary and paid female reformers during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries shaped what would become lasting collaborations between grassroots voluntary organizations and the national government. Women saw a social need, filled it, and cobbled together a network of voluntary organizations that tapped state funding and support when available. Their work provided safeguards for women and children and created a network of female-oriented programs that both aided and policed women of child-bearing age at the turn of the twentieth century. Through an examination of these reform programs, Dr. Masarik demonstrates the strong connection between nineteenth-century sentimental culture and female political action, advocating government support for infant and maternal welfare, in the twentieth century. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses 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
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    1 時間 6 分
  • Robin Phillips and Joshua Pauling, "Are We All Cyborgs Now?: Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine" (Basilian Media, 2024)
    2024/11/22
    All We All Cyborgs Now? (Basilian Media, 2024) is a series of 32 short essay-length reflections on "Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine." Now is an excellent time to be thinking about our relationship with technologies, digital and non-digital alike. Written from a Christian perspective, this book engages prior works on technology, and offers its own useful perspective on key problems of the technological moment in which we find ourselves. Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 3 分
  • Serene Khader, "Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop" (Beacon Press, 2024)
    2024/11/21
    After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop (Beacon Press, 2024), political philosopher Serene Khader advocates for another feminism—one that doesn’t overwhelmingly serve white, affluent #girlbosses. With empathy, passion, and wit, Khader invites the reader to join her as she excavates the movement’s history and draws a blueprint for a more inclusive and resilient future. A feminist myth buster, Khader begins by deconstructing “faux feminisms.” Thought to be the pillars of good feminism, they may appeal to many but, in truth, leave most women behind. Khader identifies these traps that white feminism lays for us all, asking readers to think critically about: –The Freedom Myth: The overarching misconception that feminism is about personal freedom rather than collective equality. –The Individualism Myth: The pervasive idea that feminism aims to free individual women from social expectations. –The Culture Myth: The harmful misconception that “other” cultures restrict women’s liberation. –The Restriction Myth: The flawed belief that feminism is a fight against social restrictions. –The Judgment Myth: The fallacy of celebrating women’s choices without first interrogating the privileges afforded or denied to the women. In later chapters, Khader draws on global and intersectional feminist lessons of the past and present to imagine feminism’s future. She pays particular attention to women of color, especially those in the Global South. Khader recounts their cultural and political stories of building a more inclusive framework in their societies. These are the women, she argues, from whom today’s feminists can learn. Khader’s critical inquiry begets a new vision of feminism: one that tackles inequality at the societal, not individual, level and is ultimately rooted in community. Serene Khader is Jay Newman Chair in Philosophy of Culture at Brooklyn College and Professor of Philosophy and Women's and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. Emily K. Crandall is a Doctoral Lecturer in Women and Gender Studies at Hunter College. She holds a PhD in Political Theory from the Graduate Center, CUNY. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 5 分