New Books in Women's History

Beyond Brutality: Reclaiming Female Presence in Bavli Sotah (Brandeis University Press, 2025) draws
on feminist analysis and gender studies to examine tractate Sotah of
the Babylonian Talmud as a literary unit. By interrogating how, why, and
where women are invisible within Bavli Sotah, Jane Kanarek brings to
light a ubiquitous female presence throughout the text. Despite the
brutality of the sotah ritual—in which the woman accused of adultery is
put through a divine ordeal intended to reveal her innocence or her
guilt—this book demonstrates that Bavli Sotah is not primarily concerned
with describing the sotah ritual or establishing male control over
women. Instead, Bavli Sotah becomes a pedagogical text in which the
sotah is secondary to moral and sinning men. As the sotah herself fades
into the background, the sotah ritual nevertheless overflows its
boundaries and weaves its way through a range of other topics within the
tractate. In the process, Bavli Sotah teaches its audience who
transmits and how one transmits rabbinic culture.

Dr. Rabbi Jane Kanarek is Professor of Rabbinics at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, Newton, MA.

Dr. Rabbi Rachel Adelman, Professor of Bible at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, Newton, MA.
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More than 40 years after her death, the legend of Maria Callas, "La Divina Assoluta," remains unsurpassed. Much has been written about her sensational opera career and fraught private life, from her definitive mastery of iconic opera roles to her love affairs and tantrums. The prototype for the 20th century celebrity diva, Callas emblematizes the cliche of tormented talent - genius in the ring with catastrophe.

Her extraordinary voice, in particular, has become an object of cult-like adoration and cultural significance almost with a life of its own: as fetish object, as sophisticated sonic signifier, and most recently, as the lifeblood for a Callas hologram. Such adoration is not without consequences. When Callas is transformed into a vessel for such transcendent magic, it overshadows what is perhaps her most superhuman ability - the masterful technique she deployed to shape and craft her astounding instrument. Singing bodies are working bodies, enacting an intimate and complex form of artistic labor and cultural signification.

Using one of Callas's first recital recordings from 1954, Maria Callas's Lyric and Coloratura Arias (Bloomsbury, 2021) envisions each aria as a lens to examine various aspects of vocalization and cultural reception of the feminized voice in both classical and pop culture, from Homer's Sirens to Star Trek. With references to works by Marina Abramovic, Charles Baudelaire, Michel Chion, Wayne Koestenbaum, Greil Marcus, and Farah Jasmine Griffin, as well as films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jonathan Demme, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, each chapter explores phenomena unique to the singing voice, including the operatic screaming point, the politics of listening, and the singing simulacrum.

Ginger Dellenbaugh is a musician and historian who has written and lectured on music and politics, vernacular notation systems, and the cultural history of the voice. A trained opera singer, she performed for over a decade in Europe and the United States. Ginger is currently a lecturer at The New School in New York, USA and completing a PhD in musicology at Yale University, USA. She lives in New York City and Vienna, Austria.

Ginger Dellenbaugh’s website.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.
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Prior to the American Revolution, the urban centers of colonial North America had little direct experience of war. With the outbreak of
violence, British forces occupied every major city, invading the most
private of spaces: the home. By closely considering the dynamics of the
household—how people moved within it, thought about it, and wielded
power over it—The Home Front reveals the ways in which occupation
fundamentally upended the structures of colonial society and created
opportunities for unprecedented economic and social mobility. In
occupied cities, British officers usurped male authority to quarter
themselves with families, patriot wives governed households in their
husbands' absence, daughters flirted with officers, domestic servants
disappeared with soldiers, and enslaved kin absconded to British lines
in pursuit of freedom. As Lauren Duval shows, the unique conditions of
occupation produced an aggrieved American population bound by shared
emotional distress and domestic disorder. In the wake of this deeply
disorienting experience, elite Americans deliberately reconsecrated the
private home as a national symbol that epitomized masculine authority.
Building on a stunning wealth of primary sources, Duval vividly captures daily life during the Revolution through the eyes and ears of those who intimately experienced it, showing how men and women of all races, statuses, and states of freedom understood its implications for their
lives, families, and the nascent American Republic.

In this episode Dr. Lauren Duval (University of Oklahoma) and Leah Cargin (University of Oklahoma and Journal of Women’s History) discuss The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2025). We begin the episode by discussing what the home meant to men and women in the revolutionary era. Next, we discuss revisionist histories and how violence has often been obscured from the revolutionary narrative. I commend Duval for her extensive archival research and she shares about the satisfying feeling of finding sources that speak to one another from across the Atlantic. Last, Duval gives us a sneak peek at her next project!
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A Praxis of Persistence: Central American Feminist Testimony and Sustainable Activism (SUNY Press, 2026) by Dr. Kenna Neitch establishes persistence as a framework for understanding methods of feminist activism in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Blending literary and ethnographic approaches, Dr. Neitch analyzes texts produced by activist movements from the 1980s to 2020—from collective testimonio to institutional publications (encuentros) to social media—and connects them to the movements' cultural impact and organizing practices, such as generative conflict, horizontal cross-border networks, and what she terms strategic adaptability. What these texts and practices have in common, Dr. Neitch argues, is feminist persistence—a balance of action, preservation, and creation adaptable across contexts.

A Praxis of Persistence provides one of the first scholarly accounts of #MeToo in Central America while remaining grounded in the region's lineage of activism against sexual violence. Through the framework of persistence, this book highlights the vitality of Central American women's activism and offers a repertoire of methods for reckoning with the realities of uneven progress in feminist struggle.

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.
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The end of the fourteenth century was a time of upheaval and contested authority among the traditional institutions of medieval Europe. In response to these conditions, a number of people began to claim their own authority, as prophets speaking the word of God. They came from outside of the clerical elite and were mostly women and reformers.

Prophecy and the Battle for Spiritual Authority, 1360–1400: Outsiders, Women, and Reformers (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Dr. Frances Kneupper examines the battle over authority which ensued. Prophetic women and other non-elites successfully used prophecy to exert influence and to enter the corridors of power, while educated male clerics insinuated that prophecy was the product of demonic influence and therefore a hazard to the public. Surprisingly, a third faction also emerged—an international network of clerical men who wrote in support of female prophecy. This volume traces the arguments made by these three groups, the clashes that erupted, and the long-term impacts of this battle on ideas of spiritual authority.

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.
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