New Books in Women's History

In her inspiring new book, Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice: Gender, Law and Activism in India (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Mengia Hong Tschalaer charts the strivings and creative struggles of Muslim women’s organizations in contemporary North India for gender justice. Carefully historicized and brimming with nuanced analysis, this book shows the discursive and political strategies through which overlapping and at times competing women’s organizations navigate a contested and complicated public sphere, as they seek to curate a gender emancipatory understanding of Islam. The major strength of this book is the way it presents a vivid picture of the quest for gender justice on the ground, leavened by such critical processes as the composition of gender-just nikah-namas. This important book will engage the interests of a range of scholars and courses on Islam, gender, South Asia, and Islamic law and society.SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. His academic publications are available at https://fandm.academia.edu/SheraliTareen/. He can be reached at stareen@fandm.edu. Listener feedback is most welcome. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Dorothy Sterling wrote her book about nineteenth-century black women in America, she stated in the introduction that the book was not a definitive history of black women but a sourcebook to lead others to “compile a complete history.” And while a complete history of black women has not yet been written, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting has added to the history of black women in Bricktop’s Paris: African American Women in Paris Between the Two World Wars and The Autobiography of Ada Bricktop Smith, or Miss Baker Regrets (SUNY Press, 2015). Sharpley-Whiting does two things with this book; she appeals to the scholar and the mystery reader. The first part of the book captures the multi-life history of twenty-five African American women who lived in Paris as artists, singers, club owners, poets, and writers. Sharpley-Whiting’s stories illustrate how travel and place were transformative for black women despite the length of their stay in Paris. She says, “the book is a moment in time.” In this book, we get to go into that world, a world where they were honored and treated not by the color of their skin, but by their talents. We get to meet many different women along the way. Some stayed for a long time, while others could only stay several months before returning back to the United States. By the end of the 1930s, their time was over.The second part of Bricktop’s Paris is a noir mystery, titled The Autobiography of Ada Bricktop Smith, or Miss Baker Regrets. Sharpley-Whiting illuminates the lines of fact and fiction in the autobiography of Ada Bricktop Smith. The novel explores the black and feminine perspective of image, self-possession, and self-exhibition. The novel takes us to Paris with black American women in salons and saloons crossing boundaries with purpose, and discovering they are the wealth of the nation. Josie Baker and Bricktop what are they up to? And who did it?Bricktop’s Paris was an American Library in Paris Book Award Long List selection and a Choice 2015 Outstanding Academic Title. Sharpley-Whiting is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies and French at Vanderbilt University where she also chairs African American and Diaspora Studies and directs the Callie House Center for the Study of Global Black Cultures and Politics. She publishes an academic murder mystery series under the nom de plume Tracy Whiting. She also teaches a course on Detective Fiction at Vanderbilt. The first novel, an academic cozy-thriller set in the South of France with Professor Havilah Gaie, is titled The 13thFellow: A Mystery in Provence (BooksbNimble Press, May 2015). She has completed the second mystery in this series, Paris A-Go-Go (Books nimble Press, forthcoming 2016), and is currently at-work on a scholarly volume, A Quartet in Four French Movements: A Voodoo Queen, A French Romantic, a Poet, and an African Ethnologist, as well as a family history. She is on the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association (2014-2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jocelyn Olcott is an associate professor of History and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. Her book International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness-raising Event in History (Oxford University Press, 2017) examines the genesis of the UN’s 1975 International Women’s Year (IWY) and the two-week conference of NGOs and government officials held in Mexico City. From the planning to the gathering itself there were conflicts regarding what were the significant women’s issues among the worlds geopolitical divides. Cold War competition colored how delegates, often from the same nation, differed in their expectations. Women from third-world nations expressing concern with the status of subsistence labor, gender violence and racism clashed with women from first-world nation’s concern with marketplace and sexual rights. Conservative, liberal, and radical groups competed for attention and the opportunity to influence the official World Plan of Action. In identifying the most pressing concerns global politics and intersectionality experienced by many could not be avoided. Olcott offers insight into the riveting back stories, conflicts, personalities, and enduring legacy of the IWY a pivotal event for what became known as global feminism.Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is tentatively entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Addie Wyatt stands at the intersection of unionism, feminism, and civil rights activism in post-World War II America. In Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality (University of Illinois Press, 2016), Marcia Walker-McWilliams recounts her life within the context of a nation she helped to change. Born in Mississippi, Addie Cameron grew up in Chicago, where despite her skills as a typist she could only find employment on the floor of a meatpacking plant. As a member of the interracial United Packinghouse Workers of America, she soon moved full time into union work, organizing workers and fighting for their rights. In her capacity as a union official she began a lifelong participation in the civil rights movement by raising funds on behalf of Montgomery Improvement Association during the 1955 bus boycott campaign, and in the 1970s formed coalitions designed to promote African American and female participation in the labor movement. As Walker-McWilliams demonstrates, throughout the many struggles she undertook Addie Wyatt’s faith was an important constant, providing her with a set of values and a source of emotional strength that helped her to persevere against the difficulties she faced. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lori Marso’s new book, Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter (Duke University Press, 2017), delves into Simone de Beauvoir’s political thought, feminism, and activism. The text is a fascinating exploration of these topics and complexities, but Marso takes Beauvoir’s work even further, connecting these concepts to what Marso has defined as the encounter interpreting Beauvoir’s account of the idea of freedom and the experience of freedom not only as an individual but in its relationality. Marso’s impressive engagement with Beauvoir is not just in exploring the theoretical partnering that Beauvoir has with her intellectual contemporaries like Richard Wright and Frantz Fanon, but also in putting Beauvoir into conversation with other theorists and artists, like Lars von Trier–through Beauvoir’s work on Marquis de Sade, or Allison Bechdel–as a fellow feminist theorist, or Hannah Arendt–on the topic of confronting evil and violence. The book is structured into three sections, focusing the reader’s attention on the concepts of enemies, allies, and friends, and how these personal relationships are, by definition, political, and how Beauvoir’s work and thought can and should be used to analyze contemporary cultural artifacts as well as the urgent issues of her day. Marso interrogate Beauvoir’s concept of freedom but not without also connecting that concept to its relational engagement with violence, with oppression, with colonialism, and with the broader expanse of how we think about ourselves within personal and political structures and encounters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Fleeger‘s Mismatched Women: The Siren’s Song Through the Machine (Oxford University Press, 2014) tells the story of women in film and their representation as aberrations, but also as moments of emancipation and agency. Fleeger’s book discusses exceptional voices such as Kate Smith, known as the First Lady of Radio;... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the American Dream (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Julia Mickenberg tells the story of women both famous and unknown, committed radicals and adventure seekers who went to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. She explores their motivations and experiences, as well... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rosalind Rosenberg‘s book Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a multi-layered and rich biography of Pauli Murray, an activist, lawyer and Episcopal priest whose life intersected with the most significant civil and human rights issues of the twentieth century. As a mixed raced woman who felt that her identity was at odds with her body before transsexual had become part of the popular consciousness, Murray’s life provides insight into a lived intersectionality of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Beginning with her southern upbringing, we follow Murray through multiple educational, vocational and identity challenges she suffered. In a journey through a dislocated life, she contributed to multiple movements and institutions working with many key social leaders such as Thurgood Marshall, Eleanor Roosevelt and Betty Friedan. Appearing as a one-person social movement with a deep religious faith she pursued justice not only for herself but also for others. Rosenberg has provided sympathetic insight into the personal cost that Murray incurred on the road to a more equitable society. Rosalind Rosenberg is Professor of History Emerita at Barnard College.Lilian Calles Barger is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is tentatively entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The daughter of the emperor Theodosius I, Galla Placidia successfully navigated the tumultuous politics of the late Roman Empire to rule as regent for her son Valentinian III. In Rome’s Christian Empress: Galla Placidia Rules at the Twilight of the Empire (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), Joyce Salisbury details the extent of this accomplishment by situating it within the context of her time. Orphaned at an early age, Placidia grew up in the household of Stilicho, a Vandal general who had established himself as the most powerful figure in the western Empire. The sacking of Rome in 410 made her the captive of the victorious Goths, eventually marrying their leader Ataulf. After the tragic death of their son and Ataulf’s subsequent assassination brought her hopes of establishing a Romano-Gothic dynasty to an end, she was forced by her ruling half-brother Honorius to marry his general Constantius III. With Constantinus and Honorius’s deaths leaving her son Valentinian as emperor, Placidia became regent for the boy, in which capacity she dealt with the problems of barbarian invasions, rebellious commanders, and the many other challenges of an empire in decline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Leigh Fought is an assistant professor of history at Le Moyne College. Her book Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers a detailed and rich portrait of Frederick Douglass’ private and public life and his many relationships with women. From his enslaved mother Harriet, Sophia Auld the slave mistress that sparked his interest in reading, to his wife of forty-four years Anna Murray, daughter Rosetta and his white second wife Helen Pitts; these were the women who populated his private world. From each he learned lessons about the workings of race, gender and class in America and prepared him to collaborate with many antislavery women including Julia Griffiths, Maria Weston Chapman and Amy Post. He saw his fight for abolition as part of “woman’s cause” bringing him into contact with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Seeing himself as “woman’s rights man,” who had attended the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention in 1848, he was perplexed by the betrayal of many woman’s rights advocates. Fought fills in much of what is lacking in the female “empty space” in the study of Douglass allowing a fuller understanding of his life and ideas. This is an invaluable contribution to Douglass studies.Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her current book project is tentatively entitled The World Come of Age: Religion, Intellectuals and the Challenge of Human Liberation is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices