New Books in Gender

Professor Karl Figlio has accomplished a remarkable feat: Under the heading "seminal masculinity", he has named and described a seemingly new dimension of masculinity that heretofore has been hiding in plain sight. Listen to this interview discussing Rethinking the Psychoanalysis of Masculinity: From Toxic to Seminal (Routledge, 2023)
In true psychoanalytic fashion he started his exploration by wondering about a surface phenomenon, namely the widespread use of the term "toxic" in reference to "masculinity" in the culture and teased out its connections to unconscious phantasy in which toxic masculinity is only the destructive underbelly of seminal masculinity, the latter being a internal position of collaboration and reparation. He links the pair of seminal versus toxic masculinity to a primal seminal ambivalence that has the subject torn between hope for renewal, creativity and collaboration and the desolation of the seeds of reparation failing and turning toxic, destroying what they hoped to enliven. This ambivalence is akin to the Kleinian depressive position and is defended against by loud and shrill phallic posturing. Figlio offers a richness of clinical and cultural material to show how we have tended to miss the seminal dimension of masculinity by falling for and analysing phallic masculinity in order to escape the dread inherent in the unconscious phantasy of semen giving out, becoming toxic and erasing the very foundation of life. Just as in an analysis, the insight gained by the acknowledgement of such a fundamental phantasy in unconscious life is accompanied by anxiety as well as creativity. Take it from me: Once you have opened your third ear to seminal masculinity, you will not be able to unhear it in your own or your analysands' material.
In the interview, we discuss, among many ofter things, "seminal masculinity" and "seminal ambivalence", its develomental roots in primary narcissism, and its connection to the 2008 financial crisis in its toxic guise. The interview will therefore not only be of great interest to psychoanalytic clinical practitioners, but also to a lay audience looking for a deeper understanding of masculinity.

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Since the arrival of Columbus, thousands of perpetrators have gotten away with murder, burying evidence of their crimes in police reports and court testimony. How Settlers Get Away with Murder: The Killing of Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit People in the Americas (Beacon, 2026) unearths that hidden evidence to expose the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people (MMIW2S).

Historian and citizen of Cherokee Nation Liza Black examines five cases in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, from 1908 to 2017. Rejecting narratives that blame victims’ poverty or trauma, Dr. Black dissects police files, coroners’ reports, and court records to uncover a harsh historical reality: The evidence of settler violence has been hiding in plain sight.

This landmark work delivers a damning verdict: The same systems of law and policing that have targeted Native people for centuries have also shielded their killers. Through meticulous archival interrogation, Dr. Black demonstrates how police, courts, and coroners have functioned not as instruments of justice but as pillars of a system designed to protect settler violence.
Guest: Dr. Liza Black is a historian who employs forensic archival methods within 19th and 20th century North America. As a 2024–25 Racial Justice Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights, she excavated institutional and state-sanctioned archives to trace asymmetrical sovereignty. Her research there resulted in How Settlers Get Away with Murder: The Killing of Indigenous Women and Two-Spirit People in the Americas (Beacon, 2026).
Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an experienced writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the creator, producer and host of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore the stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.
Playlist for listeners:
Whiskey Tender
A Calm and Normal Heart
The Lost Journals of Sacajewea
Night of the Living Rez
The Diné Reader
Living Resistance
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In this episode of discussing Cleansing the Nation: India, the Hindu Modern, and Mediations of Gender with Raka Shome (Duke UP, 2025), Raka Shome explores the logics of governmentality of contemporary Hindu nationalism in India by advancing the concept of the “Hindu modern.” Analyzing a national cleanliness program and other development projects, Shome shows how the Hindu modern—a form of national governmentality that disciplines and regulates individual subjects to create desirable “clean” citizens—inscribes Hindu nationalism in India. Focused on security, progress, and development while celebrating and protecting the figure of the upper-caste Hindu woman, the Hindu modern works toward a religious and casteist cleansing of the nation that rewrites Indian modernity as a purified and cleansed Hindu modernity. It shores up caste and religious inequalities around who is authentically Indian, reproducing historical violence against and exclusions of caste, gender, and religion, especially toward Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis.

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A glass slipper, a fairy godmother, a transformed pumpkin, lizard footmen and seamstress mice: these familiar images evoke a very particular story, one where hopes and dreams for a new life might come true. Adaptations of Cinderella branch out through history and across the world, from early illustrated books to modern children’s and young adult novels, and contemporary films. Cinderella: A Cultural History (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2026) by Dr. Michelle Anya Anjirbag aims to answer the question, why does Cinderella still inspire so many of us with her story?
Beginning with the literary versions of the tale that were popularized by collectors and writers such as Basile, Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, this book looks back at the folktales that informed them, out to the various countries and cultures that share similar stories, and then forwards to what writers, illustrators, filmmakers and other storytellers continue to do with the Cinderella narrative. Instead of taking a strictly historical approach, it explores the ways heroes, villains, helpers and symbols appear in different interpretations, illustrations and adaptations. It draws connections between the historical and contemporary preoccupations, concerns and hopes that the Cinderella story still addresses in the 21st century, and celebrates our enduring desire for enchantment and transformation.
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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From the preeminent scholar on Black masculinity in America, Save a Seat for Me: Notes on American Fatherhood (Simon & Schuster, 2026) is Mark Anthony Neal’s attempt to bring his scholarship on fatherhood to a broader audience. Save a Seat for Me embraces the nuances of how contemporary frameworks of masculinity informed by unprecedented advances in women and LGBTQ communities have necessitated a reimagining of the societal expectations a father plays in the public and private sectors of their homes. The soul of this book centers on Neal’s confrontation of the various political, cultural, historical narratives and messages that inform the role of Black fatherhood, and fatherhood at large, which has put him at odds with the way he fathers his own children. Raised by a working class father, during a time when American society conceived of the role of father as protector, provider, and disciplinarian, Neal struggles with these expectations as his education (a doctorate's degree), profession (tenured professor at one of the best colleges in the country), and financial position (making more money than his father ever did) are drastically different than that of his father. Linking his father to his own fathering of his two daughters, Neal grounds his intellectual arguments about Black fatherhood in experience and emotion makes for a vulnerable read, as well as a transformative one. In our culture, the public performance of fatherhood keeps us from wondering what the practice of being a father looks like in private. Neal is opening a long overdue door to the interiority that Black men particularly—and men living in a patriarchal society generally—have only learned existed in the last twenty years.

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