New Books in Gender

In
1901, Lizzie Black Kander put together a cookbook based on the classes
she taught at the Milwaukee Jewish Mission. “I was trying to teach a
group of young foreign girls in a crowded neighborhood how to cook
simple and nutritious food, yet have it attractive and inexpensive as we
prepare it in America,” she recalled. The Settlement Cook Book would go on to be the most successful charitable cookbook in American history, remaining
a best-seller into the 1970s. Despite including nonkosher recipes, it
became a mainstay in Jewish kitchens and an enduring touchstone of
Jewish American culture.

Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book (Columbia University Press, 2026) by Dr. Nora Rubel tells the remarkable story of The Settlement Cook Book,
demonstrating how it shaped Jewish American identity—and was in turn
shaped by generations of Jewish women. Dr. Rubel traces the cookbook’s
evolution across forty editions over several decades, through waves of
immigration, shifting gender roles, upward mobility, suburbanization,
and rapid changes in Jewish life. She argues that the book celebrates
pluralism, allowing it to serve at once as a tool for Americanization, a
repository of tradition, and a platform for culinary innovation.
Ultimately, The Settlement Cook Book
is a record of American Jewish women’s history, told through the food
they made and the lives they led. A cultural biography of an iconic
cookbook, this lively and inviting book shares an inclusive vision of
American cuisine.

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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A creative, body-based guide to healing for queer, trans, and
gender-expansive readers—somatic tools and expressive arts to feel safer
in your body, rewrite your story, and sustain connection. Queer Expressions: Expressive Art and Somatic Therapy Practices for Healing Body Trauma (North Atlantic Books, 2026) is
a practical, consent-centered guide to healing body trauma through
embodiment and creativity. Drawing on somatic therapy—grounding, breath,
orientation, gentle movement—and expressive arts—collage, drawing,
clay, movement, music, voice—within a harm-reduction frame of pacing,
choice, and safety plans, Wednesdae Reim Ifrach (REAT, ATR-BC, LPC)
shares grounded practices, case vignettes, and simple rituals to help
you move from shut down or on high alert into steadier, more connected
living. The book follows a simple arc: first, feel and steady your
nervous system; next, turn those sensations into art and story; and
finally, build rituals and relationships that help the changes
last—whether you’re navigating dysphoria, ED recovery, chronic stress,
or nervous system dysregulation. Inside you’ll find: Body check-ins
(quick prompts to name sensations and needs), short breath &
movement practices (1–10 minutes), and sensory prompts
(sight/sound/touch/smell/taste) Art invitations (collage, drawing,
movement, sound/voice) with step-by-step guidance and safety notes
Consent & harm-reduction tools (opt-in/out menus, pacing, crisis
planning) to keep the work manageable Community practices & rituals
(altar-making, release-writing, witness circles) to anchor change in
daily lif A queer-centered lens on healing, embodiment, and creativity
Warm, inclusive, and usable on your own or with a therapist, Queer
Expressions helps you build a more livable relationship with your
body—and a story big enough to hold who you are becoming.

Wednesdae Reim Ifrach
is a trans/non-binary art therapist and counselor dedicated to
providing gender-affirming, trauma-informed care that emphasizes
healing-centered engagement, body justice, intersectional social
justice, and equitable access to eating disorder treatment. They co-own
and operate Rainbow Recovery,
offering clinical supervision, consultations, trainings, workshops,
counseling, and art therapy services to clients in Connecticut and
Pennsylvania. As a full-time professor at Moravian University, Wednesdae
teaches mental health counseling, social work, and expressive art
courses, inspiring future professionals. Over the past decade, they have
led trainings and workshops for organizations such as the American Art
Therapy Association, National Alliance for Eating Disorders, and Yale
University, among others. Previously, Wednesdae founded the country’s
first 2sLGBTQIA+ Eating Disorder Program, served on Project HEAL’s
Board, and presided over the Connecticut Art Therapy Association. They
currently co-chair the Health Professionals in Training Program on the
GLMA Board. Their expertise addresses LGBTQ+ concerns and trauma,
honoring each client’s identity.

Helena Vissing,
PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California
and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She
can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).
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For
more than 10,000 years, cats have prowled at the edges of human life.
But, starting only a few decades ago, hundreds of millions of them
became pets. In Cats: A History
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Professor Rod Phillips shares a
sweeping cultural and social history of felines, tracing their shifting
place across societies and centuries, from ancient Egypt's revered
hunters to Europe's suspected familiars of witches and from shipboard
rodent controllers to cherished internet icons.

Professor
Phillips illustrates how cats have always occupied spaces both familiar
and mysterious and how their perceived independence and disruptive
nature—and their associations with women, the supernatural, and
outsiders—have shaped humans' attitudes toward these fascinating
creatures. Cats have been lauded as companions and vermin-killers,
reviled as threats to moral and ecological order, and cherished for the
very qualities that make them hard to control. This richly textured
portrait of cats explores their significance in religion, politics,
gender, literature, warfare, and pop culture. It also provides profound
insights into our relationships with other animals, especially dogs and
rodents.

The many roles that cats have played throughout history
illuminate a variety of contradictions in humans' perceptions of them:
as affectionate yet aloof, adorable
and evil, ordinary and exceptional. This book is the definitive story
of the feline presence in human history—an elegant study of how we live
with animals whom we see as living by their own rules.

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. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Diana Cucuz about her book, Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds: Selling Cold War Culture in the US and the USSR (University of Toronto Press, 2023) and also asks her for advice to beginner scholars studying gender and the Cold War. A bit about Dr. Cucuz’s book: throughout the Cold War, Soviet citizens had limited access to US life and culture. Amerika, a glossy Russian-language magazine similar to Life, provided a rare exception. Produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA), America’s first peacetime propaganda organization, Amerika was used to influence the Soviet public and convince women in particular that an American-style consumer culture and conservative gender norms could better their lives. Winning Women’s Hearts and Minds relies on USIA archives, issues of Amerika, and American women’s magazines such as the Ladies’ Home Journal to show how, during the postwar period, USIA officials deployed idealized images of American women as happy, fulfilled, and feminine wives, mothers, and homemakers.
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In BDSM Practices in Poland: Barbed Wire Floggings, Rope Orgasms, and the Problem with Desire
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), cultural anthropologist and cultural
studies scholar Jay Szpilka analyzes the way that BDSM is practiced in
contemporary Poland. Based on extensive field research, she asks what
social, cultural, and political conditions are necessary for BDSM to be possible to practice
in the first place. Through a nuanced analysis of the way that
practitioners navigate conflicting understandings and politics of kink,
this book provides an alternative to Western-centric narratives of BDSM
communities and challenges a number of long-standing notions about the
status kink which circulate in sexuality and queer studies.

Jay Szpilka is a visiting fellow at Edinburgh Napier University and
an assistant professor at SWPS University in Poland. She is the author
of BDSM Practices in Contemporary Poland, and her work has been published in the Feminist Review, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Teksty Drugie, and the Australian Feminist Studies.

Atalia Israeli-Nevo is an anthropology PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.
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