New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work

By: New Books Network
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  • Summary

  • Interviews with researchers on sex-related issues.
    New Books Network
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Art Literary History & Criticism Science Social Sciences World
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Episodes
  • Amrita Narayanan, "Women's Sexuality and Modern India: In a Rapture of Distress" (Oxford UP, 2022)

    Amrita Narayanan, "Women's Sexuality and Modern India: In a Rapture of Distress" (Oxford UP, 2022)
    Jan 18 2025
    Amrita Narayanan is a practicing Clinical Psychologist (Psy.D. 2007) and Psychoanalyst (Indian Psychoanalytic Society, 2019). She is the author of Women's Sexuality and Modern India: In a Rapture of Distress (Oxford University Press, 2023). She was the Editor of and essayist in The Parrots of Desire: 3000 years of Erotica in India (Aleph Books, 2018) a collection of poems, short prose and fiction in translation from Indian languages, linked by an introductory essay on the central themes in Indian erotic literature. She was an essayist for Pha(bu)llus: a cultural history of the Phallus (Harper Collins, 2020). Amrita is currently visiting faculty at Ashoka University where she teaches classes at the undergraduate and masters level. Amrita's research interests are in cultural factors in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, the psychodynamics of women's sexual agency, and how cultural factors shape the aesthetics of women's sexual agency. Her writing has appeared in academic journals such as Psychodynamic Practice and Psychoanalytic Review; newspapers such as The Hindu and The Indian Express; and popular press periodicals such as Outlook, Open Magazine India Today and The Deccan Herald. Amrita has received the Sudhir Kakar Prize for psychoanalytic writing, the Taylor and Francis Prize for Psychoanalytic writing, and the Homi Bhabha Fellowship. The interviewer is Psychoanalyst and Writer, Ashis Roy, New Delhi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    56 mins
  • Eva Payne, "Empire of Purity: The History of Americans' Global War on Prostitution" (Princeton UP, 2024)

    Eva Payne, "Empire of Purity: The History of Americans' Global War on Prostitution" (Princeton UP, 2024)
    Jan 18 2025
    Between the 1870s and 1930s, American social reformers, working closely with the US government, transformed sexual vice into an international political and humanitarian concern. As these activists worked to eradicate prostitution and trafficking, they promoted sexual self-control for both men and women as a cornerstone of civilization and a basis of American exceptionalism. Empire of Purity: The History of Americans' Global War on Prostitution (Princeton University Press, 2024) by Dr. Eva Payne traces the history of these efforts, showing how the policing and penalization of sexuality was used to justify American interventions around the world. Dr. Eva Payne describes how American reformers successfully pushed for international anti-trafficking agreements that mirrored US laws, calling for states to criminalize prostitution and restrict migration, and harming the very women they claimed to protect. She argues that Americans’ ambitions to reshape global sexual morality and law advanced an ideology of racial hierarchy that viewed women of color, immigrants, and sexual minorities as dangerous vectors of disease. Dr. Payne tells the stories of the sex workers themselves, revealing how these women’s experiences defy the dichotomies that have shaped American cultural and legal conceptions of prostitution and trafficking, such as choice and coercion, free and unfree labor, and white sexual innocence and the assumed depravity of nonwhites. Drawing on archives in Europe, the United States, and Latin America, Empire of Purity ties the war on sexual vice to American imperial ambitions and a politicization of sexuality that continues to govern both domestic and international policy today. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Cordelia Fine, "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" (Norton, 2018)

    Cordelia Fine, "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" (Norton, 2018)
    Jan 11 2025
    Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures―women are more cautious and parenting-focused, while men seek status to attract more mates. In each succeeding generation, sex hormones and male and female brains are thought to continue to reinforce these unbreachable distinctions, making for entrenched inequalities in modern society. In Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society (Norton, 2018), psychologist Cordelia Fine wittily explains why past and present sex roles are only serving suggestions for the future, revealing a much more dynamic situation through an entertaining and well-documented exploration of the latest research that draws on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy. She uses stories from daily life, scientific research, and common sense to break through the din of cultural assumptions. Testosterone, for instance, is not the potent hormonal essence of masculinity; the presumed, built-in preferences of each sex, from toys to financial risk taking, are turned on their heads. Moving beyond the old “nature versus nurture” debates, Testosterone Rex disproves ingrained myths and calls for a more equal society based on both sexes’ full, human potential. Cordelia Fine is a Canadian-born British philosopher of science, psychologist, and writer. She is a full professor in the History and Philosophy of Science programme at the University of Melbourne, Australia. 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
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    1 hr and 16 mins

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