
New Books in Women's History
Discussions with scholars of women's history about their new books
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Nneka D. Dennie, "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth Century Black Radical Feminist" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In 1849, the Mary Ann Shadd Cary had not yet become one of the first Black woman newspaper editors in North America. She was decades away from being admitted to Howard University’s Law School and becoming the first Black woman to so enroll in the United States. She had not yet begun to lobby for women’s right to vote,

Jane Elizabeth Dougherty, "Narrating Irish Female Development, 1916-2018" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)
Narrating Irish Female Development, 1916-2018 (Edinburgh UP, 2024) studies narratives of Irish female and feminized development, arguing that these postmodern narratives present Irish female maturation as disordered and often deliberately disorderly. The first full-length study of the Irish female coming of age story

Hannah Jeans, "Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England" (U London Press, 2025)
In Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England (University of London Press, 2025), Hannah Jeans explores the reading habits of early modern women and the ways in which their reading became a site of identity formation and promotion. Jeans studies both contemporary prescriptions around women's reading, p
Political theorist Lori Marso has been intrigued by filmmaker Chantal Ackerman for many years and has integrated Ackerman’s work into her courses at Union College and into her writings and scholarship as well. So it is no surprise that Feminism and the Cinema of Experience (Duke UP, 2024) is both an academic and a pers

Emily Colbert Cairns and Nieves Romero-Diaz, "Early Modern Maternities in the Iberian Atlantic" (Amsterdam UP, 2024)
Emily Colbert Cairns of Salve Regina University and Nieves Romero-Díaz of Mount Holyoke join Jana Byars to talk about Early Modern Maternities in the Iberian Atlantic (Amsterdam University Press, 2024). It is the first volume to emphasize women's personal experiences and their life trajectories as mothers within the Pe

Carrie Helms Tippen, "Unpalatable: Stories of Pain and Pleasure in Southern Cookbooks" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)
The cookbook genre is highly conventional with an orientation toward celebration and success. From glossy photographs to heartwarming stories and adjective-rich ingredient lists, the cookbook tradition primes readers for pleasure. Yet the overarching narrative of the region is often one of pain, loss, privation, exploi