New Books in Gender

Karl Whittington joins Jana Byars to talk about his new book, Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania State University Press,
2025). What role does desire play in the making of art objects? Art
historians typically answer this question by referring to historical
evidence about an artist's sexual identity or to particular kinds of
imagery. But what about anonymous artists? Or works whose subject matter
is mainstream? We know little about the identities and personalities of
most premodern artists, but this should not hold us back from thinking
about their embodied experience. In this book, Karl Whittington contends
that we can "queer" the works of anonymous makers by thinking about
their embodied experiences creating art. Considering issues of touch,
pressure, and gesture across substances such as wood, stone, ivory, wax,
cloth, paint, and metal, Whittington argues for an erotics of artisanal
labor, in which the actions of hand, body, and breath interact in
intimate ways with materials. Whittington takes seriously the agency of
materials and technical processes, arguing that they necessarily placed
the bodies of artists and artisans into physical situations and
psychological states that can be read through the lens of desire.
Combining historical evidence with speculative description, this
evocative set of essays broadens our understanding of the motivations
and experiences of premodern artists. It will appeal to scholars and
students of art history, medieval studies, gender studies, queer
studies, and anthropology.
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In this episode of the New Books Network, we explore Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman (Anthem Press, 2026),
with anthropologist Dr Marielle Risse. Drawing on nearly two decades of
ethnographic fieldwork, Dr Risse offers a nuanced examination of
marriage practices among Sunni Muslim communities in southern Oman,
challenging many of the assumptions that often underpin Western
discussions of gender, family, and personal autonomy.

Rather than portraying marriage as either oppressive or emancipatory,
Dr Risse presents it as a complex social institution shaped by kinship
networks, religious values, and community expectations. Risse’s work
encourages readers to reconsider familiar ideas about family, marriage,
household, intimacy, autonomy, and social life.

Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is
an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of
religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African
diasporic communities in the Netherlands.

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Marriage rates have fallen dramatically since the 1970s. Yet far
from devaluing marriage, people still overwhelmingly describe marriage
as the highest commitment they can imagine. Most Americans say they want
to marry eventually, and couples who do marry have a lower chance of
divorce than at any time since the 1970s. Increasingly, though, people
tell pollsters they “have no idea” if they actually will end up married. And unlike in the past, young women are more uncertain than young men.

In For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage (Viking, 2026), Stephanie Coontz—author of the “rich, provocative, and entertaining” book Marriage, A History—unravels the roots of such paradoxical trends. Examining five critical periods of historical transformation, she reveals how shifting romantic ideals, gender expectations, sexual mores, and cultural myths have bequeathed us a welter of contradictory beliefs, dysfunctional habits, and emotional earworms that make it hard to adjust our family relationships to the social and economic challenges of twenty-first-century life.

Coontz
demonstrates that today’s widespread nostalgia for a seemingly more
stable past is an understandable reaction to heightened economic
insecurity and eroding social solidarities. But trying to reproduce a
largely imaginary golden age of marriage from the past simply locks us
into a restricted future.

Current public debates about marriage
are dominated by two diametrically opposed groups. One argues that
marriage is the only sure route to personal happiness and social
stability; the other, that marriage is inherently oppressive. Coontz
puts forward a radical middle ground, pointing to surprising new
research on the personal changes and the policy innovations that can
help people create successful relationships, in or out of marriage.
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Can I Say That: Your Go-To Guide for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is your safe space to learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion, and how you can be a force for change. Most DEI books focus on gender, race or the intersection of those two dimensions. This book adopts a broader intersectional lens while also providing concrete tools for allyship.This book is for you if: you want to know more about diversity, equity, and inclusion but don't know where to start; are worried about saying the wrong thing; feel uncomfortable talking about DEI; are worried conversations might escalate or end in conflict; or don't want to be the only one fighting for change.

By explaining the common fears we all face about DEI, you'll feel empowered to talk with confidence and take action.

Guest: Dr. Poornima Luthra is an author, keynote and Tedx speaker, business consultant, and leading practitioner-academic in the field of talent management and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). As a senior faculty at Imperial Business School and external faculty at Copenhagen Business School, she bridges cutting-edge scholarship with real-world impact. She draws on eighteen years of research, teaching experience, and expertise in the field of talent management and DEI in Asia and Europe. She is the author of Leading Through Bias; The Art of Active Allyship; and Diversifying Diversity, and contributor to Harvard Business Review. Can I Say That? was named as one of the 10 best new management books of 2025.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

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What Might Be

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Gay On God's Campus

Empathy Takes Action

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!
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In The Invention of Order: On the Coloniality of Space (Duke University Press, 2026),
Don Thomas Deere retraces the colonial origins of spatial organization
in the Americas and the Caribbean and its lasting impact on modern
structures of knowledge, power, race, gender as well as understandings
of global modernity. The coloniality of space dispossessed Indigenous,
African, and mixed populations as it constructed new systems of control
and movement. Deere demonstrates
how these developments manifested, among other forms, in urban grid
patterns imposed during the development of Spanish colonial cities as
well as totalizing trade routes crisscrossing the Atlantic. Drawing on a
range of thinkers including Enrique Dussel, Édouard Glissant, and
Sylvia Wynter, Deere reveals how movement—who travels, who settles, and
who is excluded—becomes an essential component
of control under colonial rule. Against the violence of spatial
reordering, Deere outlines how novel forms of resistance and insurgency
geographies still take hold, particularly in the Caribbean, where
landscapes remain excessive, eruptive, and uncaptured by the order of modernity.

Don
Thomas Deere is Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at
Texas A&M University. He previously taught at Wesleyan University
and received his PhD with distinction from DePaul University and BA from
Cornell University. He is a Mellon Mays fellow and the recipient of a
Mellon Career Enhancement Faculty Fellowship. His research focuses on
the intersections of Latin American, Caribbean, and Contemporary
Continental Philosophy.

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.
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