Free Daily Podcast Summary
New Books in Women's History: Daily Summaries Delivered
by New Books Network
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.comSubscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 5 days ago53 min
Christina E. Firpo, "Beauty and the Nation: Women, Culture, and the National Image in Interwar Vietnam" (Columbia UP, 2025)
During the interwar years, Vietnamese society witnessed a rapid change in the way women looked. Rejecting the model of a sequestered maiden with blackened teeth and long hair, they embraced a vivid palette of colors—and a colorful lifestyle to match. Before the war, Vietnam would have seemed like an unlikely place for a beauty industry to thrive. Virtuous young women were expected to hide their natural beauty, not manipulate it with makeup or flaunt it at a beauty contest. Yet ordinary women began seeking out the latest fashions—to great public consternation.In Beauty and the Nation: Women, Culture, and the National Image in Interwar Vietnam (Columbia UP, 2025), Christina E. Firpo explores the development of beauty culture in this period, showing how women’s faces and bodies became contested sites for envisioning what it meant to be Vietnamese in the modern world. She considers dress patterns, lip-lining tutorials, hairstyles, physiques, and beauty pageants alongside new technologies of media, transportation, and leisure and the anxieties they provoked. The everyday decisions women made about their appearance, Firpo argues, were ways to stake a claim to the roles they wanted to play in the new society taking shape around them. Drawing on a vast array of sources, Beauty and the Nation: Women, Culture, and the National Image in Interwar Vietnam (Columbia University Press, 2026) offers fresh insight into the tumultuous political, economic, social, and cultural changes that swept across Vietnam during this crucial period.Christina E. Firpo is professor of history at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She is the author of Black Market Business: Selling Sex in Northern Vietnam, 1920–1945 (Cornell University Press, 2020) and The Uprooted: Race, Children, and Imperialism in French Indochina, 1890–1980 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2016).Camellia (Linh) Pham is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Her research focuses on 20th-century Vietnamese literature, socialist realism, and literary translation in Vietnam across French, Vietnamese, Chinese, and English. She can be reached at cpham@g.harvard.edu. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 1 weeks ago53 min
Leda M Perez, "Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)
How can we achieve lasting social and political equality for women? Dr. Leda Pérez tackles this thorny question in Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) by interrogating egalitarianism in Latin America, where nearly 20% of women work in domestic service. She examines how women’s participation in society, labor, and politics continues to be conditioned by their relationship to domestic and care work. Dr. Pérez argues that women’s relationship to these spheres of life is indicative of a nation’s development and democracy. She provides a comparative focus on the socio-cultural valuation of this labor and the experiences of women in Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, among other countries. Pérez asserts that it is only by changing sociocultural views on this “women’s work” that nations can create political change, foster equitable legislation, and ensure implementation of effective policies that benefit women. Searching for Democracy shows why real and lasting equality cannot be achieved without fully enfranchising women in the lowest tiers of employment and closing the equality gap among women. Dr. Pérez’s models for gender equality are relevant for women around the world. 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.
- 1 weeks ago1h 0m
Leda M Perez, "Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)
How can we achieve lasting social and political equality for women? Dr. Leda Pérez tackles this thorny question in Searching for Democracy: Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) by interrogating egalitarianism in Latin America, where nearly 20% of women work in domestic service. She examines how women’s participation in society, labor, and politics continues to be conditioned by their relationship to domestic and care work. Dr. Pérez argues that women’s relationship to these spheres of life is indicative of a nation’s development and democracy. She provides a comparative focus on the socio-cultural valuation of this labor and the experiences of women in Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, among other countries. Pérez asserts that it is only by changing sociocultural views on this “women’s work” that nations can create political change, foster equitable legislation, and ensure implementation of effective policies that benefit women. Searching for Democracy shows why real and lasting equality cannot be achieved without fully enfranchising women in the lowest tiers of employment and closing the equality gap among women. Dr. Pérez’s models for gender equality are relevant for women around the world. 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.Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latin-american-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 1 weeks ago55 min
Erin Maglaquel "Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body" (Astra House, 2026)
Erin Maglaque's new book Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body (Astra House, 2026), is a work of early modern history and an account of what it is like to study the past as an embodied person. Having been trained as to disregard the physical self when writing history, Maglaque's worldview completely shifted following the birth of her child. What might it mean to instead, "find a way to write that flowed from the body?" Presence is her answer. The book draws from a vast array of archival and printed sources to illustrate the realities of women's physical experiences in early modern Europe, from eating, pregnancy, abortion, birth, nursing, sleeping, working, and dying. Maglaque intersperses her historical narrative with personal accounts, demonstrating the ways in which studying the past can impact our lives today. For anyone interested in women's history, the history of labor, early modern health and medicine, or simply the purpose and potential of historical study, Presence is the book to read. Erin Maglaque is a historian of early modern Europe and gender. She teaches at Durham University and writes for publications including the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Book Review. Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women’s intellectual history in early modern Europe. Learn more here
- 2 weeks ago1h 14m
Sara McDougall, "Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor" (Princeton UP, 2026)
In the winter of 1472, the city of Dijon, France, became the stage for a remarkable legal drama. On the mayor’s orders, an investigator named Jaques Borestel went door-to-door questioning his neighbors about an alleged sexual assault—and about the victim’s history and place in the community. At the center of Jaques’s inquiry was a woman named Jehanne, who took the unusual step of making a criminal complaint in an age when victims of sexual violence did so at their own peril. Justice for Jehanne: The Tale of a Medieval Survivor (Princeton UP, 2026) follows Jaques’s investigation as he uncovers one woman’s story of resilience and survival. Applying forensic analysis to witness testimony and Jaques’s case files, Sara McDougall finds in Jehanne a woman of many lives and many secrets. An outsider on her own in Dijon, Jehanne had every reason to distrust the local authorities, who regularly extorted money from the city’s most vulnerable residents. Separating facts from falsehoods, McDougall challenges preconceptions about the experiences of marginalized women in medieval France, showing how neighbors, clergy, and other residents aided Jehanne throughout her legal struggles—and how justice of a sort was exacted from her attackers.Richly detailed and powerfully told, Justice for Jehanne paints an unforgettable portrait of a woman who mounted an extraordinary response to a crime that was so difficult to prosecute at the time, and of a community that gave her shelter, protection, and acceptance as she endeavored to survive on her own terms. Sara McDougall is professor of history at John Jay College of the City University of New York and is on the faculty in Biography and Memoir, French, History, and Medieval Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 and Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne. Her fellowships include the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. 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: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 2 weeks ago36 min
Autumn Lorimer Linford, "Extra! Extra! A History of America's Girl Newsies" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)
American pop culture loves newsies. The children who bawled out headlines and sold newspapers on city streets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been depicted countless times in movies, Broadway shows, books, music, and more, but somehow it’s only ever the stories of newsboys that are told. Scholarly literature too has focused mostly on boy newsies. Yet for nearly as long as there were newspapers in the United States, there were also newsgirls. Girl newsies were photographed, interviewed, studied, argued over, and eventually absorbed into the collective “newsboys” and forgotten. Extra! Extra! A History of America's Girl Newsies (U Nebraska Press, 2026) by Dr. Autumn Lorimer Linford offers a corrective, demonstrating the importance of newsgirls as early news workers and as symbols of child labor and gender reform efforts. Sometimes younger than ten years old and from impoverished families, girl newsies were already vulnerable to exploitation from the newspaper publishing industry, which relied heavily on child labor during the “golden age” of journalism. However, the newsgirls of this period contributed much to news labor, and they were important to the discussions concerning childhood, child labor reform, and women’s changing societal roles. Properly integrating newsgirls into the history of newsies dismantles archetypes and enables a deeper understanding of child news labor. 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
- 3 weeks ago1h 0m
Catherine Reyes-Housholder, "How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America" (Temple UP, 2026)
Between 1990 and 2020, women candidates won only 6% of the world’s presidential races. How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America (Temple University Press, 2026) explains the factors, strategies, and perceptions that help (or hinder) women to democratically access their country’s highest political office. Dr. Catherine Reyes-Housholder introduces a theory of gendered incentives and perceived potential to reveal why a political party would break with tradition and nominate a woman. She also shows how citizens respond when women candidates are running in incumbent parties or competing to displace those in power. Drawing on comparative research on the presidency and gender, How Women Win Presidential Elections in Latin America examines the successful campaigns of Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, as well as why Blanca Ovelar lost her presidential race in Paraguay. Dr. Reyes-Housholder’s findings indicate that voter sexism is not a major factor; however, women do not triumph in these elections in the same ways that men do. Rather, the central unknown factor behind women’s victories is how they become candidates of major parties—and gender profoundly influences who parties nominate. 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
- 3 weeks ago47 min
Shelly Lundberg "How Economics Discovered Women: Bringing Gender Economics into the Twenty-First Century" (U California Press, 2026)
In the 1970s, as women started to enter the labor force in unprecedented numbers, economists began to examine their roles as economic actors. The result was the rise of gender economics, now a major subfield with powerful data and new methods comparing the economic lives of men and women. Yet despite decades of progress, many of the most consequential questions about gender inequality remain unresolved. In How Economics Discovered Women: Bringing Gender Economics into the Twenty-First Century (U California Press, 2026), renowned economist and demographer Dr. Shelly Lundberg argues that the problem is not a lack of evidence but a failure to challenge entrenched economic models and outmoded assumptions about markets and gender that have limited what the field can explain. Why does occupational segregation persist? Why do "women's jobs" pay less? Why are men falling behind in education? And why do policies like paternity leave fail to change behavior? Drawing on more than five decades in the field and integrating insights from other social sciences, Dr. Lundberg explains signs of recent progress and charts a path toward a more realistic, socially grounded economics capable of meeting the challenges of gender inequality today. 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
About New Books in Women's History
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.comSubscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork
Customized Recaps
AI-powered recaps with compact key takeaways, quotes, and insights.
Straight to Your Inbox
Get key takeaways from New Books in Women's History in a 5-minute read.
Save Hours Every Week
Stay current on your favorite podcasts without falling behind.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Podzilla's New Books in Women's History daily summary?
It's a free AI-powered email that summarizes new episodes of New Books in Women's History as soon as they're published. You get the key takeaways, notable quotes, and links & mentions — all in a quick read.
How does the New Books in Women's History podcast summary work?
When a new episode drops, our AI transcribes and analyzes it, then generates a personalized summary tailored to your interests and profession. It's delivered to your inbox every morning.
Is this an official New Books in Women's History product?
No. Podzilla is an independent service that summarizes publicly available podcast content. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by New Books Network.
Can I get summaries of other podcasts too?
Absolutely! The free plan covers up to 3 podcasts. Upgrade to Pro for 15, or Premium for 50. Browse our full catalog at /podcasts.
How often does New Books in Women's History release new episodes?
New Books in Women's History publishes every few days. Our AI generates a summary within hours of each new episode.
What topics does New Books in Women's History cover?
New Books in Women's History covers topics including Science, History, Arts, Books, Social Sciences. Our AI identifies the specific themes in each episode and highlights what matters most to you.
Start getting New Books in Women's History summaries tomorrow morning.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.