Bullet bras, bazookas, bombshells, bikinis. In Atomic Bombshells: How Plastics Shaped Postwar Bodies (Duke UP, 2026), Dr. Isabelle Held challenges the usual narratives of how war technologies enter domestic use by following plastics on their journey into women’s bodies. Dr. Held explores the effects of military-industrial science and the emergence of nylon, ... Show More
Yesterday
Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello, "Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State" (Cornell UP, 2017)
The book, Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State (Cornell UP, 2017) is Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello’s efforts to account for the origins and strategies of the women's suffrage movement in the New York State. The book dwelled on evolution of the women’s suffrag ... Show More
42m 53s
Apr 2
The Club: Where American Artists Found Refuge in Belle Epoque Paris
In Belle Époque Paris, the Eiffel Tower was newly built, France was experiencing remarkable political stability, and American women were painting the town and gathering at a female-only Residence known as The American Girls' Club in Paris. Opened in 1893, The Club was the center ... Show More
51m 20s
Apr 1
Lee Ann S. Wang, "The Violence of Protection: Policing, Immigration Law, and Asian American Women" (Duke UP, 2026)
The Violence of Protection: Policing, Immigration Law, and Asian American Women (Duke UP, 2026) examines U.S. laws designed to rescue immigrant survivors from gender and sexual violence only if they agree to cooperate with policing. Drawing upon ethnographic stories with legal an ... Show More
1h 10m
Feb 2025
Inside Europe's Biggest Red Light District
<p>Between 1860 and 1925, tens of thousands of women worked in Dublin's Monto, the largest red light district in Europe.</p><br><p>It was a world of narrow alleyways full of brothels busy with sex workers, at a time when the Catholic church was trying to establish ideas around wh ... Show More
51m 47s
Oct 2025
Inside Imperial Japan's Brothels
After the first licensed brothel opened in the 17th century, how was sex work thought of in Japan throughout the following centuries?From the brothels in the pleasure quarters, to the rise and popularity of male sex workers and where geishas fit into the picture, Kate is joined b ... Show More
50m 34s
May 2018
Roadmap to Hell: Sex, Drugs and Guns on the Mafia Coast, with Barbie Latza Nadeau
Rome-based journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau tells the horrifying story of the thousands of Nigerian women and girls duped into being trafficked to Italy, where they are forced to become sex slaves, drug mules, or weapons smugglers. How can this be stopped? The Nigerian government t ... Show More
23m 4s
Nov 2024
Caroline Séquin, "Desiring Whiteness: A Racial History of Prostitution in France and Colonial Senegal, 1848-1950" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Since the French Revolution of 1789, the absence of laws banning interracial marriages has served to reinforce two myths about modern France--first, that it is a sexual democracy and second, it is a color-blind nation where all French citizens can freely marry whomever they wish ... Show More
1h 37m
Jan 2025
Inside the Brothel of Pompeii
<p>Sex work was everywhere in the ancient world, but a known dedicated space for it (a brothel), is an extremely rare and important thing.</p><br><p>Pompeii offers exactly that, with details such as graffiti and drawings immaculately preserved in the only known brothel from this ... Show More
46m 45s
May 2024
Matilda Bickers, "Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex" (PM Press, 2023)
Fiercely intelligent, fantastically transgressive, Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex (PM Press, 2023) is an intimate portrait of the lives of sex workers. A polyphonic story of triumph, survival, and solidarity, this collection showcases the vastly different experiences ... Show More
38m 6s
May 2024
Matilda Bickers, "Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex" (PM Press, 2023)
Fiercely intelligent, fantastically transgressive, Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex (PM Press, 2023) is an intimate portrait of the lives of sex workers. A polyphonic story of triumph, survival, and solidarity, this collection showcases the vastly different experiences ... Show More
38m 6s