New Books in LGBTQ+ Studies

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Mischa Oak about his book, Rainbow Wisdom: 18 LGBTQ Life Lessons for Everyone (Page Two Book Inc. 2026) Joyful life lessons from the LGBTQ+ community to help you move through the world with more harmony, authenticity, and possibility. Rainbow Wisdom is a companion for anyone who wants to live more fully. The LGBTQ+ experience can inspire us all. Regardless of sexuality or gender, every person is unique and unusual in some way. Drawing on firsthand research, global thought leaders, and personal reflections, renowned educator Mischa Oak presents 18 uplifting lessons from the LGBTQ+ community that will make anyone feel good. You will learn how to: - Live authentically by asking Why Fit in a Box When You Can Break It Down?- Raise the Bar by leaving behind exhausting debates and embracing conversations rooted in values and hope.- Challenge Queer Fear by confronting misinformation and dismantling “flawgic” (aka flawed logic) with clarity.- Celebrate your own difference with Congratulations! You're You!, a lesson that helps you embrace and affirm your identity—whatever it may be—and walk proudly in your truth. These and other lessons show you how to approach the world with more passion, flair, innovation, and liberty to be yourself, while you shift humanity forward. Whether you're seeking deeper understanding, stronger allyship, or ways to live more freely, Oak invites you into a space of connection, where everyone can draw on LGBTQ+ experiences to live with more joy and make the world a better place. With a rich glossary of LGBTQ+ terms and practical tools for building more welcoming conversations, spaces, and communities, this book will lift you up, push you forward, and remind you that different is powerful. Rainbow Wisdom is also your allyship guide—helping you grow into a more confident and informed ally, and supporting Queer people and their loved ones to feel valued. This is what LGBTQ+ life lessons are all about: seeing yourself and the world in new ways, to be the best version of yourself possible. About the author: Mischa Oak founded LGBTQ Inclusion Training to improve the lives of 2SLGBTQ+ people and support meaningful diversity and inclusion within organizations. With over twenty years of experience as an educator and 2SLGBTQ+ advocate, Oak holds a Master of Education in Social Justice Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning. He gained international recognition as part of the first wave of legal same-sex marriages in the world, featured on the reality TV series My Fabulous Gay Wedding. His involvement in the Queer Liberation movement propelled his lifelong advocacy, including expanding transgender and Queer inclusion in Canadian schools during his seventeen-year teaching career. Today, Oak delivers transformative talks worldwide, guiding teams, communities, educators, care and service providers, and governments toward meaningful 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion. Oak is a Loran Scholar and an alumnus of Queen's University, the University of Toronto, and Memorial University. He lives in Vancouver Island, Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Max Morris's Not Sex Work: Queer Intimacy, Post-identity, and Incidental Encounters in the Digital Era (Routledge, 2025) brings together feminist theory, media studies, and queer research methodologies to offer new, compelling insight the relationships between money, digital platforms, and sex. Through longstanding engagement with gay, queer, and bisexual men who do not describe themselves as sex workers and who exchange sex or sexual services for money through digital platforms, Morris highlights how ‘incidental sex work' problematizes commonly-held assumptions of both work and intimacy. By starting from the position of unsettling what sex work might be, Morris holds space for ambivalences about labour, risk, and sex itself—destabilizing binaries found within both research and policy work. Not Sex Work's attention to how economics and intimacy shapes identity offers important analyses of not only what we might understand sex work to be, but also how digital platforms shape and reshape understandings of gender and sexuality. Max Morris is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology at Oxford Brookes University. Using creative and feminist methodologies, their research focuses on gender, sexuality, HIV, digital platforms, and sex work. Rine Vieth is an FRQ Postdoctoral Fellow at Université Laval. They are currently studying how anti-gender mobilization shapes migration policy, particularly in regards to asylum determinations in the UK and Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Evangelicals claim that their opposition to homosexuality is an inherent feature of their faith, rooted in their unchanging beliefs about the Bible. Most scholars, journalists, and observers have accepted this account; in Born Again Queer: A History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity (Princeton UP, 2026) William Stell upends it. Arguing that the antigay majority in evangelicalism has been less dominant and more vulnerable than previously thought, Stell describes a network of authors, ministers, and professors—all veterans of major evangelical institutions—who worked in the 1970s and 1980s to persuade Christians that their churches should affirm the relationships and ministries of gay and lesbian members. By the late 1970s, some even thought that these activists might shape the future of evangelicalism.Of course, that speculation proved mistaken, and the antigay evangelical majority eventually overpowered the gay-affirming minority. Stell's history of the rise and fall of evangelical gay activism shines a light on this largely forgotten chapter in American evangelicalism. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews, Stell documents the work of four prominent activists: the founder of a predominantly LGBTQ+ denomination called the Metropolitan Community Churches, the leader of a gay advocacy organization called Evangelicals Concerned, and the evangelical feminist coauthors of the influential book Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? By recovering the successes of evangelical gay activists and the struggles of their opponents, Stell's account transforms how we think about evangelicalism, how we talk about the culture wars, and how we approach both religion in queer movements and queer activism in religious movements. William Stell teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at New York University. This episode's host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Katie Batza on their recently published book, AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics. Published by the University of North Carolina Press, AIDS in the Heartland demonstrates the unique collaborations of crop duster pilots, church van drivers, nuns, tribal leaders, and synagogue ladies in places such as decommissioned convents, backyard barbecues, high school gyms, and city parks that fostered loud, radical queer politics and homonormative strategies alike. As a result, Batza contends with the respectability of the heart of the nation and how it prevails as core values in national LBGTQ political strategies today. Histories of AIDS in the United States typically regard San Francisco and New York to be the epicenters of the crisis. The Midwest, if considered at all, appears as a footnote to the social, medical, and political struggles of coastal queer communities and communities of color. But the US heartland cultivated its own distinct strategies for survival that became the surprising and lasting blueprint for LGBTQ politics today. Though AIDS cases were relatively low compared to the coasts, the conservative political and religious landscape, lack of medical infrastructure, and diffuse gay communities brought Midwesterners together in unexpected ways. Unearthing this complex story, health activism expert Katie Batza masterfully illustrates the diversity, resilience, innovation, and influence of the Midwest's responses to the AIDS epidemic. Katie Batza is chair of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas and the author of Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s. Their research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late 20th-century United States. Donna Doan Anderson is a research assistant professor in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Maile Aihua Young is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas-Medical Branch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Since the 1990s, a largely underground upwelling of trans creativity has helped new trans identities, communities, and political movements come together. In Trans Cinema: Making Communities, Identities, and Worlds (University of California Press, 2026), Dr. Laura Horak provides an entryway to the wildly diverse and creative cinema made by trans creators, including those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Overlooked until now, this rich collection of media ranges in genre from romantic comedies to horror films and asks essential questions about how to be human and how to craft a livable life in a world on fire. Okay.Using the fundamentals of film studies, Horak reveals the innovative approaches taken by trans and gender-nonconforming artists to explore how we relate to other people, what it's like to have a body, and how we survive in an oppressive society. These filmmakers tackle the challenging paradox of representing trans lives when greater visibility is associated with ever-increasing levels of harm. In the process, they produce art that emphasizes trans survival and resilience and imagines a more expansive world for trans communities. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

It is no secret that marriage rates in the United States are at an all-time low. Despite this significant decline, the institution of marriage endures in our society amid historic changes to its meaning and practice. How does the continuing strength of marriage impact the relationships of same-sex couples after the legalization of same-sex marriage? Drawing on over one hundred interviews with LGBTQ+ people, Marriage Material: How an Enduring Institution Is Changing Same-Sex Relationships (University of Chicago Press, 2024) reveals the transformative impact marriage equality has had on same-sex relationships. Sociologist Dr. Abigail Ocobock looks to same-sex couples across a wide age range to illuminate the complex ways institutional mechanisms work in tandem to govern the choices and behaviors of individuals with different marriage experiences. Dr. Ocobock examines both the influence of marriage on the dynamics of same-sex relationships and how LGBTQ+ people challenge heteronormative assumptions about marriage, highlighting the complex interplay between institutional constraint and individual agency. Marriage Material presents a bold challenge to dominant scholarly and popular ideas about the decline of marriage, making clear that gaining access to legal marriage has transformed same-sex relationships, both for better and for worse. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

The global refugee regime has shifted under our feet. Over the last forty years, international asylum practices have expanded to include the queer and trans displaced. At least thirty-seven countries now recognize LGBTIQ refugees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, with some states providing specialized support. Yet amid this expansion, backlash has intensified against refugee protection as well as the hard-earned rights of LGBTIQ people. In this disquieting context, the protection of LGBTIQ refugees remains partial and exclusionary. The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge (University of California Press, 2026) examines the complexities of queer and trans displacement around the world. Centering personal narratives of LGBTIQ refugees, the book exposes the shortcomings of an international protection regime that is unable to address the harms that drive displacement. Rebecca Buxton and Samuel Ritholtz's analysis of the stakes of queer and trans inclusion in accounts of displacement justice offers a vibrant example of theory brought to life. This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool, a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies. Her research focuses on human mobilities and her new book has been published in 2025 by Oxford University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany (Aevo UTP, 2026) brings to life the unrelenting defiance of queer women in fascist Germany. In his latest book, award-winning historian Samuel Clowes Huneke shows how love, queer resistance, and collective action survived in the harrowing circumstances of Nazi rule. Drawing on a decade of archival research, Huneke takes readers into a hidden world, from the wartime balls that lesbian activists continued to organize to the concentration camps where women accused of loving women were imprisoned. Following a diverse cast of characters, Huneke reveals both the oppression that queer women faced and how they resisted fascism in solidarity with one another. Arguing that this solidarity – which transcended race, class, and gender – offers a compelling alternative to today's fractured identity politics, I Will Not Abandon You is a vital, new history of queer life under fascism and a call to rethink the foundations of progressive politics today. Deep Acharya is a PhD student and a George L. Mosse fellow of Modern European Cultural History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working on the history of fatherhood in 20th century Germany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In Queer Indigenous Cinemas, scholar Gabriel S. Estrada offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. This groundbreaking work uses Indigenous directional space and sovereign mapping methods to uncover the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of queer Indigenous lives. The book's seven chapters--each one of the directions--look closely at media such as cinema and streaming videos that draw on Indigenous concepts from diverse nations such as Diné, Caxcan, Kanaka Maoli, and Nehiyawak. Gabriel S. Estrada is a Caxcan/Xicanx professor in religious studies at California State University Long Beach, where ze teaches queer spirituality, Indigenous graduate classes, and Nahuatl literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Under Western Eyes: Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in New Cold War Cultures (Academic Studies Press, 2025) examines the New Cold War between Anglophone Western and Russian media, focusing on its coverage of LGBTIQ+ topics and representations of Russian femininity, masculinity, racial and gender diversity, and disability. It interrogates how the Anglophone media constructs images of vulnerable bodies and groups in Russia, juxtaposing them with the vengeful state and the powerful figure of Putin. These media discourses delineate and unify liberal values as American and Western and contrast them with "backward" Russian values. Paradoxically, in its endeavor to accentuate American dominance and its role in global affairs, various news outlets and entertainment media amplify homophobic, heteronormative, and racist narratives stemming from Russian sources and lend support to Putin's self-portrayal as a formidable opponent to the West. While the West expresses outrage at Putin's criminalization of LGBTIQ+ activity, it draws on homophobic language to mock his shirtless horse-riding and “bromance” with Trump; the West condemns Russia's oppression of women, yet peddles the Orientalist idea of the "Slavic Femme"―that is, the hypersexualized trickster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In Sex Isn't Real: The Invention of an Incoherent Binary (Duke UP, 2026), Beans Velocci traces the history of current high stakes attempts to define sex and to create a world devoid of trans life. Drawing on lab notes, family genealogies, medical case studies, and more, Velocci follows scientists and clinicians from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century and across five disciplines—zoology, eugenics, gynecology, statistical sexology, and transsexual medicine—as their ideas and practices created a definitional tangle. They demonstrate how the sorting of bodies into male and female persists not despite but because of sex's incoherence: the defining features of these categories shift to contain various understandings of anatomy and physiology, theories of race, developments in research and medical methodologies, and bodies that cannot be accounted for in a binary framework. Exposing the endless work required to produce a world in which most people have a binary gender identity that neatly fits their binarily sexed body, Velocci demonstrates that it is not cis people who fit the categories; it's the categories that flex to make them fit. Beans Velocci is Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In this episode of High Theory, Saronik talks to Senthorun Raj about the Emotions of LGBT Rights. Emotions from disgust and fear to love and joy shape the legal frameworks that attempt to govern human sexual behavior around the world. Sen cautions against dividing emotions into good and bad, but instead asks us to take a critical stance on all emotions, to understand how they shape our policies. In the episode, we talk about Sara Ahmed, the Stonewall Riots, conversion therapy, and efforts to mandate for and against inclusive sex education. The transcript lives here as a WordDoc and here as a PDF. Sen's book, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law (Edinburgh University Press 2025) uses emotion as a novel analytic lens to understand, analyse, and critique the relationship between individual, interpersonal, and institutional conflicts over LGBT rights. Emotions are central to the pursuit, organisation, and contestation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in law. Drawing from critical legal theories, this book cultivates the concept of “emotional grammar” to show how emotions structure law reform pursuits by threading together Hansard, legislation, case law, law reform consultations, and statutory guidance. By doing so, it explains why addressing this emotional grammar is important for scholars, lawyers, judges, legislators, and activists seeking to navigate conflicts over LGBT rights and reforms that aim to repair the inequalities faced by LGBT people. Senthorun Raj is an academic human rights lawyer with expertise in issues of race, gender, sexuality, and culture. He works as a Reader in Human Rights Law at Manchester Metropolitan University. Sen's research and teaching interests include LGBTIQ+ rights, emotion, culture, equalities and human rights law, legal education, and critical legal theory. His latest monograph, builds on his previous book, Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury, Intimacy, Identity (Routledge, 2020), which explored the ways emotions shape legal judgments that enable progress for LGBT people. He is also the co-editor of The Queer Outside in Law: Recognising LGBTIQ People in the United Kingdom (Palgrave, 2020) and Queer Judgments (Counterpress, 2025). The image for this episode is a coloured lithograph, from 1868, depicting a double rainbow, by René Henri Digeon after Étienne Antoine Eugène Ronjat. It was sourced by Lili Epstein for High Theory from the Wellcome Collection. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Derek Krueger Monastic Desires: Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and Love of God in Medieval Constantinople (Cambridge UP, 2026) The Byzantine Abbot Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) transgressed the homophobic norms of medieval Orthodox society. His longing for God was distinctly homoerotic, and he depicted union with the divine as a queer sort of marriage. His Orthodox theology of theosis, the deification of the entire person, meant that Symeon taught the salvation of all the parts of the body. But monks also desired the eradication of lust and the punishment of those who fell prey to it. Sermons and biblical commentary defined men who had sex with men as sodomites; and saints' lives warned of the consequences of same-sex desires. Those who renounced sex redirected their desire rather than eliminating it. Symeon's queer erotics shed light on other devotions distinctive to medieval Orthodoxy, including the veneration of saints and worship with icons. Monastic Desires makes a groundbreaking contribution to the history of sexuality and the history of Christianity. New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review Derek Krueger is emeritus professor of religious studies at UNC Greensboro, the author of multiple books including Liturgical Subjects: Biblical Narratives and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium, the editor of far more, and former editor of the book series Divinations: Rereading Late Antiquity. Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

My guest today is Cathryn J. Prince the author of For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman (U Illinois Press, 2026). From her start as one of the youngest activists in US history, Pauline Newman helped shape the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) into a dominant force in industrial America. Cathryn J. Prince follows Newman's life from a youth split between Lithuania and New York City sweatshops to her work as an advisor to New Deal–era labor secretary Frances Perkins. Newman's long hours at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory informed her entrée into labor activism. In the following years, she tirelessly advocated for workers, ran for New York Secretary of State as a socialist, and became the first woman to serve as the ILGWU general organizer. Her interest in the health of workers led to service on the Joint Board of Sanitary Control and a decades-long term as education director of the ILGWU health center. Membership in Eleanor Roosevelt's circle opened doors to government positions and advisory roles that continued into the postwar era. Prince also weaves in the details of Newman's fifty-year relationship with a woman, her struggles with her sexual identity, and her final years. Cathryn J. Prince is an adjunct professor of journalism at Fordham University. Her books include Queen of the Mountaineers: The Trailblazing Life of Fanny Bullock Workman and American Daredevil: The Extraordinary Life of Richard Halliburton, the World's First Celebrity Travel Writer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In Deference and Divergence in Regional Human Rights Courts (Cornell UP, 2026), Dr. Maria A. Sanchez tackles a central tension in global governance: how international human rights courts balance their mandates with the imperative to respect national sovereignty. Despite having similar mandates, the world's three regional human rights courts—the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights—interpret their authority differently, leading to uneven regional enforcement of global human rights principles. Dr. Sanchez traces how the geopolitical dynamics of each court's founding moments have manifested in contemporary disparities across the courts' jurisprudences—focusing on disputes involving freedom of expression, personal integrity rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. Her findings expose a paradox: the courts that were founded in the most inhospitable environments for human rights have ended up asserting the most expansive authority over governments. Deeply researched and insightful, Deference and Divergence in Regional Human Rights Courts speaks to when and how international institutions can leverage authority to intervene in domestic affairs. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Utilizing critical legal methodologies, Alex Powell's Queering UK Refugee Law: Sexual Diversity and Asylum Administration (Bristol UP, 2026) gives a vital and needed analysis of migration and queer life. With deep consideration to the role of systemic disbelief, experiences of dispersal away from urban areas, contemporary shifts in liberal human rights regimes, and even the impact on legal practitioners in the system, Queering UK Refugee Law offers insight into both refugee policy and practice.  Through interviews, analyses of case law, and a rigorous application of queer theory, Powell gives readers an understanding of not just UK asylum law, but the bureaucracies, policies, and assumptions that shape it. From narratives to state understandings of 'credibility,' Powell demonstrates not just barriers to asylum claims on the basis of sexuality, but broader concerns around normative state conceptions of identity. Queering UK Refugee Law is a timely and critical work on sexuality, migration, and its intersections. Alex Powell is an Associate Professor in Law at Warwick Law School. His research focuses on law, gender, sexuality and migration, particularly in the UK. Rine Vieth is an FRQ Postdoctoral Fellow at Université Laval. They are currently studying how anti-gender mobilization shapes migration policy, particularly in regards to asylum determinations in the UK and Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Sapphic Adolescent Girls in Irish Young Adult Fiction: Queering Girlhood (Routledge, 2025) is the first sustained critical analysis of the representation of sapphic adolescent protagonists in contemporary Irish Young Adult (YA) literature. Ten YA novels published between 2017 and 2023 by both well-established and emerging Irish female authors are examined, analysing sapphic characters to demonstrate how Irish YA literature can transform and re-imagine sapphic literary representations. This book offers a critical evaluation of how lesbianism and bisexuality have been introduced into Irish YA literature, while also addressing the significance of racism, religion, violence against women and girls, friendships, and parental abandonment in shaping queer identities. This study is ideal for postgraduates and academics in the fields of Irish Studies, Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, and Queer Studies, as well as students interested in YA literature, comparative literature, and contemporary literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In December 2025, writer, civil rights attorney, playwright, speaker, and Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall spoke with New Books Network host, Sullivan Summer, about her book, A Protest History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2025). Little did Browne-Marshall and Summer know that, at the time of the book's paperback release in early 2026, the nation would be in the midst of widespread and ongoing protests. So Browne-Marshall is back, this time with conversation focused specifically on the chapter of the book titled, “Protesting Violent Policing.” In this episode, we mention Terence Keel's The Coroner's Silence (Beacon Press, 2025). Keel's New Books Network episode is available here. A Protest History of the United States: In this timely new book in Beacon's successful ReVisioning History series, professor Gloria Browne-Marshall delves into the history of protest movements and rebellion in the United States. Beginning with Indigenous peoples' resistance to European colonization and continuing through to today's climate change demonstrations, Browne-Marshall sheds light on known and forgotten movements and their unsung leaders, offering insights into past successes and setbacks. Drawing upon legal documents, archival material, memoir, government documents and secondary sources, A Protest History of the United States expands the definition of protest beyond traditional marches and rallies. Acts of resistance also include journalism, legal battles, boycotts, everyday defiance, and more. Browne-Marshall highlights stories of individuals from all walks of life and time periods who helped bring strong attention to their causes. As contemporary movements struggle with inertia and doubt, Browne-Marshall underscores the essential role of protest as an American tradition in shaping and preserving democratic principles. By illuminating the strategies and sacrifices of activists past and present, A Protest History of the United States empowers readers to find their own voice in today's fights for justice. Find author Gloria J. Browne-Marshall at her website and on Instagram. Find host Sullivan Summer at her website, on Instagram, and on Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

The City Aroused: Queer Places and Urban Redevelopment in Postwar San Francisco (University of Texas Press, 2024) by Dr. Damon Scott is a lively history of urban development and its influence on queer political identity in postwar San Francisco. By reconstructing the planning and queer history of waterfront drinking establishments, Dr. Scott shows that urban renewal was a catalyst for community organising among racially diverse operators and patrons with far-reaching implications for the national gay rights movement. Following the exclusion of suspected homosexuals from the maritime trades in West Coast ports in the early 1950s, seamen's hangouts in the city came to resemble gay bars. Local officials responded by containing the influx of gay men to a strip of bars on the central waterfront while also making plans to raze and rebuild the area. This practice ended when city redevelopment officials began acquiring land in the early 1960s. Aided by law enforcement, they put these queer social clubs out of business, replacing them with heteronormative, desexualized land uses that served larger postwar urban development goals. Dr. Scott argues that this shift from queer containment to displacement aroused a collective response among gay and transgender drinking publics who united in solidarity to secure a place in the rapidly changing urban landscape. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming 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 Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder: Confessions of A Former Badass (Street Noise Books, 2025), Professor Cara Gormally draws us into the familiar academic world of chronic busyness. In panel after panel, Cara brings us into a life numbed by overwork. Then, as this graphic memoir shows us, during an ordinary early-morning run, Cara's watch dings with a Facebook friend request. Their rapist wants to “friend” them. Cara always had a long to-do list; always had many projects; always was busy. But as their rapist continued to send friend requests and tried to reconnect with them, they began to lose their grip on their work, projects, and relationships. But then Cara connects with a therapist who guides them through a long but powerful process of healing. And Cara works to desensitize, reprocess, excavate and relive the old wounds in order to move past them and heal. This episode explores: Cara's path to academia; how she discovered her love of science; how art and writing can help us heal; the work of going to therapy; what radical self-acceptance is; why overwork can be a sign of a trauma response; the risks and rewards of changing; and the importance of writing communities. This episode does not discuss sexual assault. Our guest is: Dr. Cara Gormally (they/them), who is a professor at Gallaudet University, in Washington, D.C. Their interdisciplinary research focuses on questions related to making science relevant and accessible to increase students' belonging in STEM. Their new book is Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder: Confessions of a Former Badass. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Being Well in Academia How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters Tw-Eats: A Little Book with Big Feelings Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection Parenting and Personal Life in Academia What is burnout and how do you recover from it? What Do You Want Out of Life? Make Your Art No Matter What Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You help support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. 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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

How do we compare across languages, media, and histories, all without flattening differences? And what might Hong Kong teach us about doing comparison differently? Alvin K. Wong examines these and other questions in Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone (Duke UP, 2025), a wide-ranging and thought-provoking study of queerness in Hong Kong. Bringing together Sinophone literature, independent and commercial cinema, documentary films, and visual art, the book asks how Hong Kong's queer productions might help us rethink the work of comparison itself. Rather than treating Hong Kong as a marginal or derivative space — a space defined by British colonialism, China-centrism, or global capitalism — this book approaches the city as a site of methodological possibilities. The key concept the book advances, “unruly comparison,” replacing neat equivalences and stable categories with incommensurability and transnational connections and linking Hong Kong to other places, times, and queer spaces across the Sinophone. Theoretically deft, the book is filled with a wide range of fascinating material, including work by filmmakers including Wong Kar-wai, Scud, and Fruit Chan; transnational and transgender visual cultures; documentaries about Southeast Asian domestic workers and queer intimacies; and poetry about language and precarity. This book will appeal to those interested in queer theory, Hong Kong studies, Sinophone studies, and comparative approaches. Listeners should also check out Alvin Wong's co-edited volume Keywords in Queer Sinophone Studies(Routledge, 2020) and the Society of Sinophone Studies webpage (of which Alvin is currently chair!).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

An ever-expanding and panicked Wonder Woman lurches through a city skyline begging Steve to stop her. A twisted queen of sorority row crashes her convertible trying to escape her queer shame. A suave butch emcee introduces the sequined and feathered stars of the era's most celebrated drag revue. For an unsettled and retrenching postwar America, these startling figures betrayed the failure of promised consensus and appeasing conformity. They could also be cruel, painful, and disciplinary jokes. It turns out that an obsession with managing gender and female sexuality after the war would hardly contain them. On the contrary, it spread their campy manifestations throughout mainstream culture. Offering the first major consideration of lesbian camp in American popular culture, Suffering Sappho! traces a larger-than-life lesbian menace across midcentury media forms to propose five prototypical queer icons—the sicko, the monster, the spinster, the Amazon, and the rebel. On the pages of comics and sensational pulp fiction and the dramas of television and drive-in movies, Barbara Jane Brickman discovers evidence not just of campy sexual deviants but of troubling female performers, whose failures could be epic but whose subversive potential could inspire. In this episode Dr. Barbara Jane Brickman (University of Alabama) and Leah Cargin (University of Oklahoma and Journal of Women's History) discuss Suffering Sappho! First, Brickman introduces the listeners to lesbian camp and then we discuss the many storied characters in the monograph. We share the zingers and one liners of actress Tallulah Bankhead and giggle about the camp antics of Superwoman's sidekick, Etta Candy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Self-Declaration in the Legal Recognition of Gender (Routledge, 2023) is a socio-legal study that offers a critique of what it means to self-declare with regard to legal gender. Based on empirical research conducted in Denmark, the book engages in some of the most controversial issues surrounding trans and gender diverse rights. The theoretical analysis draws upon legal consciousness, affect theory, vulnerability and governmentality, to cross jurisdictional boundaries between law and medicine. The book reflects on the limits of progress that legislative reform may make, and the way that increased regulation can actually limit access to rights protections. Broadly transferrable beyond its specific field, this book will be useful to socio-legal scholars, feminist scholars, trans scholars, policy makers and practitioners. Dr Chris Dietz is a Lecturer at the Centre for Law & Social Justice at The University of Leeds.  Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career, Althea Gibson became the most famous black sportswoman of the mid-twentieth century. In her unprecedented athletic career, she was the first African American to win titles at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. In this comprehensive biography, Ashley Brown narrates the public career and private struggles of Althea Gibson (1927-2003). Based on extensive archival work and oral histories, Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson (Oxford UP, 2023) sets Gibson's life and choices against the backdrop of the Great Migration, Jim Crow racism, the integration of American sports, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, and second wave feminism. Throughout her life Gibson continuously negotiated the expectations of her supporters and adversaries, including her patrons in the black-led American Tennis Association, the white-led United States Lawn Tennis Association, and the media, particularly the Black press and community's expectations that she selflessly serve as a representative of her race.  An incredibly talented, ultra-competitive, and not always likeable athlete, Gibson wanted to be treated as an individual first and foremost, not as a member of a specific race or gender. She was reluctant to speak openly about the indignities and prejudices she navigated as an African American woman, though she faced numerous institutional and societal barriers in achieving her goals. She frequently bucked conventional norms of femininity and put her career ahead of romantic relationships, making her personal life the subject of constant scrutiny and rumors. Despite her major wins and international recognition, including a ticker tape parade in New York City and the covers of Sports Illustrated and Time, Gibson endeavored to find commercial sponsorship and permanent economic stability. Committed to self-sufficiency, she pivoted from the elite amateur tennis circuit to State Department-sponsored goodwill tours, attempts to find success as a singer and Hollywood actress, the professional golf circuit, a tour with the Harlem Globetrotters and her own professional tennis tour, coaching, teaching children at tennis clinics, and a stint as New Jersey Athletics Commissioner. As she struggled to support herself in old age, she was left with disappointment, recounting her past achievements decades before female tennis players were able to garner substantial earnings. A compelling life and times portrait, Serving Herself offers a revealing look at the rise and fall of a fiercely independent trailblazer who satisfied her own needs and simultaneously set a pathbreaking course for Black athletes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Queerness remains one of the most stigmatized and overlooked aspects of Holocaust history, often erased due to the lingering homophobia of survivors. People Without History Are Dust: Queer Desire in the Holocaust (U Toronto Press, 2025) challenges this silence, weaving together compelling stories of German, Dutch, Czech, and Polish Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors – including Anne Frank, Molly Applebaum, Margot Heuman, and Gad Beck – whose experiences help illuminate the hidden history of queerness in a time of genocide. Drawing on extensive archival research, this groundbreaking book uncovers the lives of those who were doubly marginalized, not only persecuted as Jews but also as queer individuals. In doing so, it confronts the ways in which history has excluded or minimized their experiences, urging us to question normative accounts of the Holocaust. By shedding light on these long-overlooked stories, People Without History Are Dust deepens our understanding of identity, survival, and memory, reminding us why an inclusive and complex approach to history is essential – not just for the sake of the past, but in service to the present and the future as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Shifting the focus of AIDS history away from the coasts to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, this impressive book uncovers how homonormative political strategies weaponized the AIDS crisis to fuel gentrification. During the height of the epidemic, white gay activists and politicians pursued social acceptance by assimilating to Midwestern cultural values. This approach, Dr. René Esparza argues in From Vice to Nice: Midwestern Politics and the Gentrification of AIDS (UNC Press, 2025), diluted radical facets of LGBTQ activism, rejected a politics of sexual dissidence, severed ties with communities of color, and ushered in the destruction of vibrant queer spaces.Drawing from archival research, oral histories, and urban studies from the 1970s through the 1990s, Dr. Esparza illustrates how the onset of the AIDS epidemic provided a pretext for further criminalization of perceived sexual deviance, targeting sex workers, “promiscuous” gay men, and transgender women. More than the criminalization of people and behaviors, this time period also saw increased targeting of urban venues such as bathhouses, adult bookstores, and public parks where casual, anonymous encounters occurred. Cleansing the city of land uses that undermined gentrification became a protective measure against AIDS, and the most marginalized bore the brunt of the ensuing surveillance and displacement. From Vice to Nice illuminates how, despite purporting seemingly progressive values, LGBTQ Midwestern politics of conformity leveraged the AIDS crisis to further instigate racial and sexual exclusion and fundamentally alter the urban landscape. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Timothy Gitzen's Unscripting the Present (SUNY Press, 2025) interrogates contemporary sex panics in the United States, looking especially at popular culture texts to conceptualize queer youth survival strategies. Sex panics saturate contemporary discourse and politics in the United States. While such panics have a long history, they are now infused with rhetoric, logics, and methods of security that turn queer sexuality into an existential crisis. Queer youth bear the brunt of this crisis, with their presumed innocence always in danger of being lost. Unscripting the Present interweaves analysis of laws and lawsuits, news media, sociological studies, and popular culture both to understand contemporary sex panics and to highlight how queer youth find ways to survive in the here and now. Developing a novel technique of "unscripting," Gitzen focuses our attention on those impromptu moments when things go awry in representations of queer youth-moments that disrupt securitization's social "scripts." Foregoing well-worn promises of things getting better, texts such as Netflix's "Sex Education", the film "Love, Simon", and the multimodal show "Skam" upend the anxious hyperfocus on what's to come in favor of a hopeful present. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

“Create A More Positive Rehoboth” was a decades-long goal for progress and inclusiveness in a charming beach town in southern Delaware. Rehoboth, which was established in the 19th century as a Methodist Church meeting camp, has, over time, become a thriving mecca for the LGBTQ+ community. In Queering Rehoboth Beach: Beyond the Boardwalk (Temple UP, 2024), historian and educator Dr. James Sears charts this significant evolution. Dr. Sears draws upon extensive oral history accounts, archival material, and personal narratives to chronicle the "Battle for Rehoboth,” which unfolded in the late 20th century, as conservative town leaders and homeowners opposed progressive entrepreneurs and gay activists. He recounts not just the emergence of the gay and lesbian bars, dance clubs, and organizations that drew the queer community to the region, but also the efforts of local politicians and homeowners, among other groups who fought to develop and protect the traditional identity of this beach town. Moreover, issues of race, class, and gender and sexuality informed opinions as residents and visitors struggled with the AIDS crisis and the legacy of Jim Crow. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose 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. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Archival collections are political spaces: the decisions that govern whose histories are preserved, when, and by whom are not neutral. They reflect the communities that make them. For most of western history queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people were excluded from such communities. Premodern trans experiences went largely unreported and reconstructing such histories relies on the piecing together of ephemeral glimpses. Literary scholars developed tactics and tools to read through the traces, with hugely generative results that highlight the richness of non-normative premodern genders. But how do we move beyond the limits of the trace to uncover a more expansive history of premodern gender non-conformity? In Trans Histories of the Medieval Book: An Experiment in Bibliography (Arc Humanities Press, 2025), J.D. Sargan takes a methodological approach to that question. Sargan explores how experiment in applying trans approaches to the study of the premodern book offers alternatives both for trans histories and for book historical methods. J. D. Sargan is a book historian. He was educated at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Oxford. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Georgia and teaches a course in Queer Bibliographies for California Rare Book School. He researches the social dynamics of book use.  Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba's Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture--drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage. Jacob Bloomfield is a Zukunftskolleg Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Konstanz and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent. His research is situated primarily in the fields of cultural history, the history of sexuality, and gender history. Jacob is the author of Drag: A British History (2023). His second monograph will be about the historical reception to, and cultural impact of, musician Little Richard. Isabel Machado is a cultural historian whose work often crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

At the center of 1970s New York's most iconic clubs—from the celebrity-studded Studio 54 to the premiere lesbian discotheque Sahara—stood a queer Black woman on the turntables: Sharon White. With a sound she describes as "edgy, deep, aggressive, tech, synthy, percussive and lush," White became the first woman resident DJ at the Saint and the only woman to ever play Paradise Garage, breaking barriers in spaces where women were told they didn't belong. Her five-decade career didn't just challenge disco's male-dominated DJ culture; it redefined it, paving the way for future generations of women behind the decks. In this season finale, we explore how one visionary artist carved out space in disco's inner sanctum and what her trailblazing journey reveals about women—especially queer Black women—who shaped the sound and culture of an era from behind the booth. In the Season 2 Finale, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares talk with legendary DJ Sharon White. Born in West Babylon, New York, White studied music at the New York School of Music before becoming a radio disc jockey. In 1975, she transitioned to club DJing, finding near-instant success at legendary venues including Studio 54, the Saint, Paradise Garage, Sahara, Limelight, and the Warehouse. She has been credited by several other women DJs, including Lizzz Krizer and Wendy Hunt, for helping them break onto the scene. White is still DJing today, and you can find her mixes on SoundCloud and Mixcloud. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

A transcript of this interview is available [here] A queer disabled love song to trees and beavers, tremors and dreams, Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming (Duke UP, 2025) explores the pulsing core and porous edges of survival, sorrow, and dreaming. Blending poetry and creative nonfiction, emotion and activist thinking, Eli Clare invites us to unfurl ourselves into the lovely multitude of genders beyond the binary of woman and man, the fierceness of street protest, and the long slow time of granite. He sings to aquifers. Wrestles with the aftermath of child abuse and his family's legacy as white settlers occupying Dakota homelands. He leans into history. Calls the names of the living and the dead. Connects his own tremoring body to a world full of tremors—earthquakes, jackhammers, quaking aspens. Unfurl reveals deep queer kinships between human and more-than-human, sentient and nonsentient. At every juncture, these poems and essays embrace porousness and the power of dreaming. Ultimately, Unfurl is an invitation to rebellion and joy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

“We know what we want, and one day, our prince will come,” says Toby, the bicycle-shorts-wearing, double ententre-making, unacknowledgely-gay neighbor in RTE's Upwardly Mobile. Though the first queer characters in Irish entertainment television were tropes and stereotypes, they represented an important shift in LGBTQ visibility in Irish media. The road to early representations in entertainment media was a hard road paved by gay rights activists, AIDS stigma, and production teams looking for sensationalism. In LGBTQ Visibility, Media, and Sexuality in Ireland, Páraic Kerrigan explores the dynamics of queer visibility and sexuality in Ireland through televised media between 1974 and 2008. Tune in for our chat about Gay Byrne and the Late Late Show, queer soap stars, the AIDS crisis and globalization of Ireland, and the LGBTQ rights tug-of-war that played out in turn-of-the-century television. Avrill 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/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In the penultimate episode of season 2 of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares sit down with acclaimed historian Alice Echols, author of Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. Echols—who holds the Barbra Streisand Chair of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California—unpacks how disco not only mirrored but actively shaped the social, racial, and sexual revolutions of 1970s New York City. Echols is the author of several books that have framed the way we understand the history of the 1960s and 1970s, and particularly the way music has shaped society at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and race. The conversation begins with Echols' newest research, drawn from her forthcoming book Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic, which reexamines interracial activism and allyship during the Black Freedom Movement. From the Angela Davis trial to the alliances formed within SNCC and the Black Panther Party, Echols traces how solidarity both flourished and fractured across the era. Turning to disco, she considers disco's uneasy place in Black and queer cultural history. She notes how disco was created by and for Black audiences, while also being rejected by many in the Black music industry, like James Brown, for being “politically empty.” Through figures like Nile Rodgers, Grace Jones, and Sylvester, Echols argues that disco's lush orchestration and sensual performances reflected radical redefinitions of gender, sexuality, and Black masculinity. With musical excerpts woven throughout, Purcell and Soares guide listeners through the sonic textures of disco—its roots in funk and soul, its resistance to genre boundaries, and its capacity to move bodies and politics alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In the wake of Disco Demolition Night in 1979—a cultural bonfire that seemed to signal the end of disco—something unexpected began to rise from Chicago's underground. This episode traces the story of Frankie Knuckles, the Bronx-born DJ who became known as the “Godfather of House.” After the backlash against disco pushed the genre out of the mainstream, Knuckles found refuge in Chicago's Black, Latinx, and queer nightlife scenes, most famously at a club called the Warehouse. There, he pioneered a new sound: blending disco's heartbeat with gospel, soul, electronic drum machines, and experimental edits. What emerged was “house music,” named after the Warehouse itself, a genre that spoke directly to marginalized communities while later exploding into a global phenomenon. We'll explore how Knuckles's artistry and innovation not only kept dance floors alive after disco's so-called death but also transformed music history. By tracing the arc from the ruins of Disco Demolition to the rise of house, this episode reveals how moments of cultural rejection can spark radical creativity. Frankie Knuckles didn't just keep the party going—he built a new world of sound that would change the way the world dances. In this eighth episode of season two of Soundscapes NYC, hosts Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares discuss the life and work of Frankie Knuckles with Micah Salkind, author of Do You Remember House?: Chicago's Queer of Color Undergrounds (Oxford University Press, 2018). Micah Salkind is the Director of Civic and Cultural Life at the Rhode Island Foundation. Prior, in his roles as Deputy Director and Special Projects Manager at the City of Providence Department of Art, Culture and Tourism, he managed large grants and strategic artist initiatives for the City, collaborating with non-profit cultural institutions as well as its emerging artists, designers, and creative entrepreneurs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

In the first major biography of Baldwin in more than a decade, James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press, 2019), Bill V. Mullen celebrates the personal and political life of the great African-American writer who changed the face of Western politics and culture. As a lifelong anti-imperialist, black queer advocate, and feminist, Baldwin (1924-1987) was a passionate chronicler of the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. war against Vietnam, Palestinian liberation struggle, and the rise of LGBTQ rights. Mullen explores how Baldwin's life and work channel the long history of African-American freedom struggles, and explains how Baldwin both predicted and has become a symbol of the global Black Lives Matter movement. Bill V. Mullen is Professor of English and American Studies at Purdue University. His specializations are American Literature and Studies, African American Studies, Cultural Studies, Working-Class Studies, Critical Race Theory and Marxist Theory. 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 Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Democratic backsliding, culture wars and partisan politics in the past two decades has seen the regression of human rights protections in the courts and across societies. However, having made incremental gains in constitutional courts, LGBTQ+ rights operate as somewhat of a paradox. In this pivotal work, Professor Rehan Abeyratne makes an argument that the progress made in LGBTQ+ rights protection obscures an increased shift towards authoritarian legality in the courts and beyond. Case studies of three apex courts - the U.S. Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of India, and the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal - provide insight into the erosion of democracy and the rule of law across these jurisdictions. Courts and  LGBTQ+ Rights in an Age of Judicial Retrenchment (Oxford UP, 2025) is an important work and should serve as a warning sign to constitutional lawyers, human rights scholars and anybody interested in the values that underpin liberal democracy as to the the limited ability of constitutional courts to protect rights in the current climate.   Professor Rehan Abeyratne is is Professor and Associate Dean (Higher Degree Research) at Western Sydney University School of Law, where he teaches Government and Public Law, Legal Research and Methodology, and Comparative Law: Legal Systems of the World. He also coordinates the School of Law's Honours Program. Professor Abeyratne holds a PhD from Monash University, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a BA (Hons.) in Political Science from Brown University. He researches comparative constitutional law and has published several books and articles in world leading journals. Most of Prof. Abeyratne's research can be freely accessed on SSRN, Academia, and Google Scholar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) explores Christian discourses of sex and sexuality in Singapore to argue that metanoia, the theological concept of spiritual transformation, can be read as a form of neo-homophobia that coaxes change in the queer individual. In Singapore, Christian discourses of sex and sexuality have materialised in the form of testimonials that detail the pain and suffering of homosexuality, and how Christianity has been a salve for the tribulations experienced by the storytellers. This book freshly engages with Michel Foucault's posthumous and final volume of The History of Sexuality by revitalising his work on biblical metanoia to understand it as a form of neo-homophobia. Drawing on Foucauldian critical theory and approaches in discourse studies, it shows how language is at the centre of this particular iteration of neo-homophobia, one that no longer finds value in overt expressions of hate and disdain for those with non-normative sexualities, but relies extensively on seemingly neutral calls for change and transformation in personal lives.Queer Correctives takes Singapore as a case study to examine neo-homophobic phenomena, but its themes of change and transformation embedded in discourse will be relevant for scholars interested in contemporary iterations of Foucault's concepts of discipline and technologies of the self. Together with interview data from religious sexual minorities in Singapore, it captures a burgeoning form of homophobic discursive practices that eludes mainstream criticism to harm through change and transformation. About Vincent Pak: Vincent Pak is Assistant Lecturer at The University of Hong Kong. His work is located in the fields of sociocultural linguistics and linguistic anthropology, where he's interested in matters of gender, sexuality, and race. His monograph, Queer Correctives, considers the emergence of neo-homophobia in Singapore. About Pavan Mano: Pavan Mano is Lecturer in Global Cultures in the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities at King's College London. He works at the intersections of critical & literary theory, politics and culture. His first monograph, Straight Nation (Manchester UP, 2025), interrogates postcolonial nationalism and the governance of sexuality in Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

On July 12, 1979, Chicago's Comiskey Park erupted into chaos during what was supposed to be a quirky baseball promotion. Shock radio jock Steve Dahl's “Disco Demolition Night” incentivized listeners to bring disco records to a White Socks doubleheader, where, between games Dahl promised to blow them up in center field. Instead, the event descended into a riot, forcing the team to forfeit. On the surface, the incendiary event looked like a wild publicity stunt gone wrong — but in hindsight, it was tantamount to a book burning. In retrospect, the destruction of thousands of disco records was a symbolic rejection of the social meanings the sounds held, particularly for queer communities of color. The night marked not just the literal destruction of vinyl but a cultural turning point when disco's dazzling reign collapsed under backlash. Or did it? In this episode, we explore how a stadium stunt revealed the deeper racial, sexual, and generational tensions shaping American music at the dawn of the 1980s. In episode seven, host Ryan Purcell and Kristie Soares talk with Gillian Frank is a historian of gender, sexuality, religion, and politics in the twentieth-century United States at Trinity College, Dublin. He is a managing editor of NOTCHES: (re)marks on the history of sexuality and co-host of the podcast Sexing History, which explores how the past shapes contemporary debates about sex. Frank's scholarship has appeared in leading academic journals and edited volumes, and he has held research fellowships at Princeton and other institutions. His current book project examines the history of child adoption and foster care in the U.S., tracing how religion, race, and politics shaped family formation in modern America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Edited by Todd A. Henry, Queer Korea (Duke UP, 2020) offers a vital and long-overdue examination of this subject. More than an academic text, it is a powerful collection that brings to light the hidden histories of non-normative sexuality and gender expression on the Korean Peninsula. The book challenges the notion that queerness is a recent, Western import. Instead, it uncovers a rich and complex history of same-sex unions and diverse identities—stories that have too often been silenced or strategically used to reinforce nationalistic and patriarchal ideals. It also explores how media and society, from the colonial era to the present day, have deployed discourses of deviance as a means of control and assimilation. What makes Queer Korea especially compelling is that it is not the work of one voice alone, but a union effort of many dedicated scholars who have each contributed their expertise to the field. Together, they create a multidimensional picture of queer life in Korea, bridging personal narratives, historical analysis, and cultural critique. Queer Korea is essential reading for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Korean history. It highlights struggles for visibility, the quiet resilience of “under-the-radar” communities, and the surprising ways queer lives have helped shape the nation's cultural and social landscape. Above all, it reminds us that queer history is not separate, but deeply woven into the very fabric of a country's past. A Personal Journey Behind the Book The project grew not only out of academic curiosity, but also from Henry's personal encounters and experiences in South Korea. These moments became the spark that inspired him to unearth stories too often overlooked. The journey of bringing the book to life was not without challenges, yet his determination to make these histories visible remained a powerful driving force. That personal investment—combined with the collective commitment of the contributing scholars—infuses the work with a depth and authenticity that makes Queer Korea resonate even more strongly. Dr Todd A. Henry (PhD, UCLA, 2006; Assistant/Associate Professor, UCSD, 2009-Present) is a specialist of modern Korea with an interest in the period of Japanese rule (1910-1945) and its postcolonial afterlives (1945-). A social and cultural historian attuned to global forces that (re) produce lived spaces, he studies cross-border processes linking South Korea, North Korea, Japan, and the US in the creation of “Hot War” militarisms, the transpacific practice of medical sciences, and the lived experiences of heteropatriarchal capitalism. Also a historian of gender, sex, and sexuality, Dr. Henry seeks to expand Euro-American-centric approaches to queerness, transgenderism, and intersexuality through a sustained focus on Asian forms of embodiment that center the geopolitics of imperialism/colonialism, military occupation, and diasporic mobility. Bing Wang receives her PhD at the University of Leeds in 2020. Her research interests include the exploration of overseas Chinese cultural identity and critical heritage studies. She is also a freelance translator. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

How is it possible to be a subject when faced with oppression? The revolutionary thought and work of French novelist and lesbian thinker Monique Wittig are today in dialogue with feminist and LGBTQIA+ analyses and politics. Her materialist theorization of lesbianism subfuses contemporary feminism and queer political and social movements. By proposing a detailed analysis of heterosexuality as a total political regime, Wittig as a theorist, writer, and activist opens up the possibility of a world beyond the categories of sex and gender, founded on a new definition of the human. This book acts as a roadmap to help us reach such a horizon. Sara Garbagnoli and her co-author Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz situate Wittig within array of feminist movements of the 20th century and explain why her theories are so pertinent in today's political landscape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) explores the experiences of women porters, called kayayei, in Accra, Ghana. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork, anthropologist Laurian R. Bowles shows how kayayei navigate precarity, bringing into sharp relief how racialization, rooted in histories of colonialism and enslavement, undergirds capital accumulation in Ghana. Bowles's ethnographic storytelling follows these women through their work as human transporters at Ghanaian markets. In creatively reappropriating public spaces as private sanctuaries, and in reimagining expected social relations through the cultivation of liberatory same-sex intimacies, kayayei develop ways to cope with the demands of their arduous labor while refusing narratives of victimhood projected on African women. Bowles's analysis of the emotional labor of the gig economy in Africa shows how the infrastructure anxieties of a modernizing city intersect with the complexities of blackness in a racially homogeneous nation, uncovering how antiblackness emerges in everyday public discourse, development agendas, and privately expressed anxieties about labor, gender, and sexual politics in Accra. Illustrating how race, sexuality, and gender manifest in daily life, Bowles centers kayayei, often perceived to be obstacles to progress and modernity, at the forefront for understanding urban Ghana's aspirations and anxieties about what it means to be a modern African country. Grounded in African feminist theory and Black feminist ethnography, Headstrong uses women's narratives as the central analytic for understanding the look and feel of modernity in Accra, challenging long-standing notions of gender, race, and desire in Africa. Laurian Bowles is the Vann Professor of Racial Justice and Associate Professor & Chair of the Anthropology Department at Davidson College. Jessie Cohen earned her Ph.D. in African History from Columbia University and is Assistant Editor at the New Books Network Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies