New Books in LGBTQ+ Studies

Rajiv Mohabir is a dazzling poet of linguistics crossovers, who works in English, Bhojpuri, Hindi and more. He is as prolific as he is polyglot (three books in 2021!) and has undertaken a remarkable array of projects includes the prizewinning resurrection of a forgotten century-old memoir about mass involuntary migration.He joined John and first-time host Ulka Anjaria (English prof, Bollywood expert and Director of the Brandeis Mandel Center for the Humanities) in the old purple RtB studio. During the conversation, Rajiv read and in one case sang poems from his wonderful recent books, Cutlish and Antiman.Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Email: ferry@brandeis.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Saronik interviews Kim about intersectionality, a concept developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw.Kim references two essays by Crenshaw in the episode: one that she read, and one that our previous podcast guest, Chad Hegelmeyer taught.“Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (July 1991) https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039 (Kim read this one)“Demarginalizing the Intersections of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum Iss. 1 (1989) https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8/ (Chad taught this one)Kim recommends that you read the latter.This week’s image is a painting by Alma Thomas, titled “Light Blue Nursery” (1968). The image is made available under a Creative Commons license by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Sissy Insurgencies: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness (Duke University Press, 2022) by Marlon B. Ross focuses on the figure of the sissy in order to rethink how Americans have imagined, articulated, and negotiated manhood and boyhood from the 1880s to the present. Rather than collapsing sissiness into homosexuality, Ross shows how it constitutes a historically fluid range of gender practices that are expressed as a physical manifestation, discursive epithet, social identity, and political phenomenon. He reconsiders several black leaders, intellectuals, musicians, and athletes within the context of sissiness, from Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and James Baldwin to Little Richard, Amiri Baraka, and Wilt Chamberlain. Demonstrating that sissiness can be embraced and exploited to conform to American gender norms or disrupt racialized patriarchy, he also shows how it constitutes a central element in modern understandings of race and gender.Dr. Marlon B. Ross is professor of English at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 2001. Before that, he was professor of English and African American & African Studies at the University of Michigan. His interests include a variety of fields related to race, gender, sexuality, and culture. He is also the author of Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era and The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry.Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

NB: This interview contains explicit language.In Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis (U British Columbia Press, 2022), bioethicist and jurist Florence Ashley historicizes recent developments in bans on transgender conversion practices, explains the legal implications of various conversion therapy bans, and argues for implementation that comes alongside education and action by professional orders. This book would be of great interest to sociolegal scholars, policymakers, those working in healthcare, and scholars simply seeking to further understand the enactment of bans on transgender conversion practices.Survivors of conversion practices – interventions meant to stop gender transition – have likened the process to torture. Ashley rethinks and pushes forward the banning of these practices by surveying these bans in different jurisdictions, and addressing key issues around their legal regulation. Ashley also investigates the advantages and disadvantages of legislative approaches to regulating conversion therapies, and provides guidance for how prohibitions can be improved. Finally, Ashley offers a carefully annotated model law that provides detailed guidance for legislatures and policymakers. Most importantly, this book centres the experiences of trans people themselves in its analysis and recommendations. Florence Ashley can be found on Twitter (https://twitter.com/ButNotTheC...), with their extensive publications available on their website (https://www.florenceashley.com...).Rine Vieth (https://rinevieth.carrd.co/) is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at McGill University, where they research the how UK asylum tribunals consider claims on the basis of belief. Their public writing focuses on issues of migration governance, as well as how inaccessibility and transphobia can shape the practice of anthropological research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

"I don't care what people do in their bedroom, but do they need to flaunt it?" This sentiment is a common refrain in American culture and politics when talking about LGBTQ rights, and as Ohio State historian Dr. Clayton Howard argues, it's a sentence with a history. In The Closet and the Cul-de-Sac: The Politics of Sexual Privacy in Northern California (University of Pennsylvania, 2019), Howard traces the history of the idea of sexual privacy back to the era immediately after World War II, when the "Straight State" began more aggressively incentivizing and policing hetero- and homosexuality respectively. Through acts such as the GI Bill, housing became a central battleground in the Bay Area for determining what normative sex looked like. Soon, churches, schools, and the steps of city hall, all became fronts in a culture war that, as Howard argues, was not quite as black-and-white as scholars sometimes make it seem. Today, legislation such as Florida's so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill have their roots in debates over laws such as California's Briggs Initiative and indeed, stretch all the way back to San Francisco's mid-20th century life as a hub for military life in the Pacific. The Closet and the Cul-de-Sac is an in-depth look at how even the most private areas of an individual's life are often in fact very public indeed.Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Angelina Eimannsberger talks to Saronik about cultural phenomenon Jonathan Van Ness, and movements in queer femininity that they represent.They touch briefly on Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Jean Genet’s Notre Dame des Fleurs, Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness, and the hashtag #transisbeautiful inaugurated by Laverne Cox. They also talk about Michel Foucault’s interview “Friendship as a Way of Life“.Angelina and Saronik had a post-recording conversation about the activistic work that JVN does. On that note, here is a list of organizations they support, and that you can support too:Planned Parenthood, RAINN, Phoenix House, The Trevor Project, National Coalition of Anti Violence Programs, Advocates for Youth, GLSEN, Peer Health Exchange, ASPCA.The image for this episode is a frame titled “Flowering Tree” by the fin de siècle English artist Aubrey Beardsley. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Colm Tóibín, the new laureate for Irish fiction, talks to Joseph Rezek of Boston University, and guest host Tara K. Menon of Harvard. The conversation begins with Colm’s latest novel The Magician, about the life of Thomas Mann, and whether we can or should think of novelists as magicians and then moves swiftly from one big question to the next. What are the limitations of the novel as a genre? Would Colm ever be interested in a writing a novel about an openly gay novelist? Why and how does death figure in Colm’s fiction? Each of Colm’s revealing, often deeply personal answers illuminates how both novels and novelists work. As Thoman Mann wrote of the “grubby business” of writing novels, Colm reminds us of the “day to day dullness of novel writing.” Insight and inspiration only arrive, he warns, after long, hard days of work.Mentioned in this episode:Robinson Crusoe (1719), Daniel DefoePride and Prejudice (1813), Jane AustenThe Portrait of a Lady (1881), Henry JamesThe Wings of the Dove(1902), Henry JamesThe Ambassadors (1903), Henry JamesThe Golden Bowl(1904), Henry JamesThe Blackwater Lightship(1999), Colm TóibínThe Master (2004), Colm TóibínBrooklyn(2009), Colm TóibínThe Testament of Mary(2012), Colm TóibínNora Webster(2015), Colm TóibínThe Magician(2021), Colm TóibínAarthi Vadde is Associate Professor of English at Duke University. Email: aarthi.vadde@duke.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Drawing on a rich body of archival and ethnographic research, Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender-Bending (Indian UP, 2020) illuminates diverse examples of theatrical gender-bending. It shows how, in each case, standard drag discourses do not sufficiently capture the complexity of performers' intents and methods or provide a strong enough foundation for holistically evaluating the impact of this work. Queering Drag offers a redefinition of the genre centralized in the performer's construction and presentation of a "queer" version of hegemonic identity. It also models a new set of tools for analyzing drag as a process of intents and methods enacted to effect specific goals. The book won the 2021 John Leo and Dana Heller Award for Best Book in LGBTQ Studies from the Popular Culture Association and was named one of NBC's "10 LGBTQ books to watch out for in 2020.”Dr. Meredith Heller is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Northern Arizona University, where she has taught since 2014. She earned a Ph.D. in Theater Studies with a Feminist Studies doctoral emphasis from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She specializes in queer theory and critical identity studies, with additional expertise in performance studies, digital media, and popular culture. Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Ireland’s 2015 Marriage Equality referendum is often framed as an incredible achievement just twenty years after sex between men was decriminalized (1993). But starting the story of gay and lesbian rights in Ireland in 1993 is misleading; the work and roots of the major reforms of the 1990s and twenty-first century are in the 1970s, when gay and lesbian activists formed organizations, lobbied for legislative change, and, perhaps most importantly, engaged in the essential work of shifting public perception of same-sex love. In his 2021 book Gay and Lesbian Activism in the Republic of Ireland, 1973-1993, Patrick McDonagh chronicles the work of the groups and individuals who helped shape Ireland into the state it is today. Join us as we chat about the isolation of being gay in a conservative Catholic nation, the fortitude of Ireland’s gay and lesbian groups, and the revolutionary possibilities of Saturday night discos.Averill Earls is the Executive Producer of Dig: A History Podcast (a narrative history podcast, rather than interview-based), and an Assistant Professor of History at Mercyhurst University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Shola von Reinhold is the author of LOTE, a novel about getting lost in the archives and finding what the archives have lost. LOTE won the 2021 James Tait Black prize so who better to join Shola on Novel Dialogue than Ben Bateman of Edinburgh University, lead judge of the prize committee? This conversation takes listeners back to all yesterday’s parties as Shola, Ben, and Aarthi time travel to the Harlem Renaissance and the interwar modernist era. Shola offers up Richard Bruce Nugent as their current figure of fascination (or “transfixion” to use a key image from LOTE), and wonders what it would have been like to move through Harlem and London by Nugent’s side.Recovering the stories of black writers and artists is essential to Shola’s literary project. It is also inseparable from restoring queerness to the once hyper-masculine and “muscular” paradigm of modernism. In a stirring discussion of the aesthetic forms and moods of historical recovery, Ben and Shola sink into the “purpleness” of the fin-de-siècle and explore the critical power of black sensuousness. Talk of decadence, ornamentality, and frivolity shapes the latter half of this episode, and Doris Payne, the West Virginian jewel thief, emerges as an exquisitely improbable modernist heroine!Mentioned in this episode:-Richard Bruce Nugent-Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward, Porgy-E.M. Forster-David Levering Lewis, When Harlem was in Vogue-Saidiya Hartman-Benjamin Kahan, The Book of Minor Perverts-James Joyce, Ulysses-Willa Cather, “Paul’s Case”-Ornamentality via Kant, Hegel, and Adolf Loos-Susan Sontag-Doris Payne – a.k.a “Diamond Doris”-Édouard GlissantAarthi Vadde is Associate Professor of English at Duke University. Email: aarthi.vadde@duke.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies