Q&A with Lynn Comella, author of Vibrator Nation

lynn_comella_by_krystal_ramirez_smallLynn Comella is Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. An award-winning researcher, she has written extensively about sexuality and culture for numerous academic publications and popular media outlets. She is coeditor of the comprehensive New Views on Pornography: Sexuality, Politics, and the Law, and a frequent media contributor. In Vibrator Nation: How Feminist Sex-Toy Stores Changed the Business of Pleasure—the first book to tell the story of feminist sex-toy stores and the women who pioneered them—she takes a deep dive into the making of the consumer market for sex toys, tracing its emergence from the early 1970s to today. Drawing on more than eighty in-depth interviews with retailers and industry insiders, including a stint working as a vibrator clerk, she brings readers onto the sex-shop floor and into the world of sex-positive capitalism and cultural production. Lynn Comella is on a national tour this fall and winter; check back here next week for a full tour schedule.

art1Why did you decide to research feminist sex-toy businesses and how did you conduct your research?

I’ve long been interested in the politics of sexual representation, from the feminist sex wars of the 1980s to debates over school-based sex education. When I started this project, which began as a seminar paper in graduate school, I was really interested in the various ways in which female sexuality assumed a public presence as opposed to being relegated to the privacy of the home. As luck would have it, a feminist sex-toy shop, Intimacies, had just opened in the college town where I lived. I decided to make the store the focus of a small pilot study in an effort to better understand what made this female-friendly vibrator business different from more conventional adult stores ostensibly geared toward men. I quickly realized that Intimacies was part of a larger network of women-run, educationally oriented vibrator shops located in cities across the country that had all adopted a similar way of selling sex toys and talking about sex. I wanted to know more about what united these businesses together and how they attempted to practice feminist politics through the marketplace. What were the sexual vernaculars, retail strategies, philosophies, challenges and paradoxes that had shaped these businesses?

Researching the history of feminist sex-toy stores sent me down a rabbit hole. It took years and multiple methods of data collection—ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and archival research—to weave together the various historical threads that shaped these businesses and the larger women’s market for sex toys and pornography. Writing the book I wanted to write, one that took a deep dive into the making of a market, required a kind of methodological promiscuity: I worked as a vibrator clerk at Babeland in New York City where I sold my fair share of sex toys, answered customer questions, and crossed my fingers that my cash register balanced at the end of the night. I interviewed more than eighty feminist retailers, employees, and industry insiders. I toured dildo manufacturing companies and lube factories, and attended more than a dozen adult industry trade shows where I sat in on business seminars that discussed marketing sex toys to women, retail-based sex education, and the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon. I poured through dusty boxes filled with corporate documents, internal memos, customer letters, advertisements, news clippings, and more, and amassed a research archive teeming with sex-toy ephemera (which I’m having a lot of fun sharing on the vibrator_nation Instagram account).

What was it like for women to purchase sex toys before the mid-1970s? What were feminist entrepreneurs trying to change?

There weren’t a lot of opportunities for the average woman to comfortably buy vibrators in the early 1970s. Conventional adult stores weren’t designed with female shoppers in mind; reputable mail-order businesses that sold so-called marital aids were few and far between; and women walking into a department store—or any store, really—to buy a vibrating massager risked encountering a male clerk who might say, “Boy, you must really need it bad, sweetie pie.” What made the situation all the more frustrating for many women was that they were being told by feminist sex educators and therapists that they should masturbate and take control of their orgasms. Vibrators were being framed as tools of liberation, but getting one wasn’t easy. Early feminist retailers, such as Dell Williams, who founded Eve’s Garden in 1974, and Joani Blank who opened Good Vibrations several years later, stepped into this breach. They turned the traditional model of an adult store, with its “seamy” aura and X-rated style, on its head in an effort to appeal to female shoppers. What made these early feminist vibrator businesses so revolutionary, and what set them apart from their more conventional counterparts geared toward men, wasn’t just their focus on women, but their entire way of doing business. They led with sex education not titillation, and worked to advance a social mission that included putting a vibrator on the bedside table of every woman, everywhere, because they believed that access to accurate sexual information and quality products had the potential to make everyone’s lives better.

In the book you describe a “sex-positive diaspora” of feminist retailers. What do you mean by that?

One of the things that I found so interesting during the early stages of my research was the degree to which feminist business owners tipped their hats to Good Vibrations. Many of them credited the company’s founder, Joani Blank, a sex therapist with a master’s degree in public health, with helping them start their businesses. Blank had a very non-competitive approach to running a company and strongly believed that the more businesses that were doing what Good Vibrations was doing—selling vibrators and talking openly about sex—the better. Blank freely shared information and vendor lists with aspiring entrepreneurs, and in the early 1990s she started a short-lived internship program to train people how to run a business like Good Vibrations. The first, and only, two people to complete the internship program were Claire Cavanah, who along with Rachel Venning would go on to found Babeland in 1993, and Kim Airs who started Grand Opening in Boston that same year. Blank’s communitarian, non-competitive ethos created a ripple effect and by the early 1990s, Good Vibrations’ DNA had begun to spread to cities across the country. In time, people who worked at Babeland and Grand Opening branched out and started their own feminist vibrator shops and Good Vibrations’ sex-positive mission continued to replicate. I wanted a phrase that captured this movement and dispersal, and the description “sex-positive diaspora” seemed to do that.

What role have lesbians and queer-identified retailers and people of color played in the history of feminist sex-toy business?

Lesbians and queer-identified retailers, along with queer and transgender employees, have played a major role in shaping the history of feminist sex-toy businesses. They opened stores, worked on the sales floor, started sex-toy manufacturing companies, wrote “how to” guides, and made pornography. In these different ways they’ve been important nodes of transmission and sources of queer sexual knowledge, including for straight people. In fact, I’d argue that the history of feminist sex-toy stores is also, and very much so, a story about queer entrepreneurship and cultural production. For many of the businesses that I write about in Vibrator Nation, their identities as queer and trans-inclusive companies are as important, if not more so, than their feminist identities. And yet, it’s also the case that these businesses have historically been very white. If you look at photos of Good Vibrations staff from the 1980s, for example, everyone is white and female. So it’s perhaps not surprising that some customers got the impression that Good Vibrations was a white women’s store—even as the company worked hard to change that perception and diversity its staff. This was certainly how Oakland-based retailer Nenna Joiner, the founder of Feelmore, experienced Good Vibrations when she first discovered the company in the late 1990s. Although she loved what the store offered, she didn’t see any images that represented her. She realized there was a need in the African American community for more diverse sexual images and resources, and decided to start a business that could deliver what she felt was missing from other women-run sex-toy stores.

How have feminist sex toy stores remained true to their mission while also turning a profit?

The ongoing tension between profitability and social change is a thread that runs throughout Vibrator Nation. Many of the retailers I write about started their businesses because they saw their stores as a feminist way to empower women (and eventually everyone). They led with a mission of social change rather than capitalist aspirations. Good Vibrations’ Joani Blank once told me that profits were secondary to everything that was important to her about running a successful business. And if you read the mission statements of many of the businesses that followed in Good Vibrations’ footsteps, they’re all about promoting sex education and personal transformation and creating a more passionate world. There’s almost no mention of making money. As one of my interviewees pointed out, if you don’t put profitability in your mission statement, it’s easy to forget about it. In some cases, it took a severe financial crisis for retailers to realize they needed to cultivate new forms of business expertise and foster attitudes in which money was seen as friend instead of foe, something that not only greased the wheels of social change but kept those wheels spinning.

How did feminists end up changing the adult industry?

Perhaps the most dramatic shift over the past forty years is the acknowledgment on the part of mainstream adult retailers, manufacturers, and porn producers that the sex industry is no longer a world of men. In a post Sex and the City and Fifty Shades of Grey era, this statement might seem glaringly obvious, but it wasn’t that long ago that women found themselves marginalized in an industry largely dominated by men and steeped in sexism. I heard stories during my research of female product buyers with budgets of upwards of $3,000,000 annually who couldn’t get the time of day at adult novelty trade shows. Men would look right past them. And that was in the early 2000s. Feminists played an absolutely central role in creating a market that is now widely regarded as one of the hottest growth segments of the adult industry. Today, women are trusted authorities who routinely hold the microphone in seminar rooms filled with wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and content producers eager to mine their expertise. There have been other important changes, too, most notably in regard to sex-toy manufacturing and marketing. By the early 1990s women were placing new demands on the adult novelty sector. Good Vibrations began offering warranties and started sending defective merchandise back to manufacturers, letting them know they weren’t going to settle for cheaply made products that conked out after one use. Manufacturers started making products that looked prettier, had better motors, and used non-toxic and body safe materials. Sex-toy packaging with images of sultry porn starlets has been replaced with softer, more colorful, and sanitized imagery. Messages about sexual health and education, rather than titillation, are regularly used as marketing platforms. Art school grads and mechanical engineers are bringing elements of sleek design and quality manufacturing to an industry that used to revolve around the idea of planned obsolescence where nothing was made to last. It’s a far cry from what the adult industry looked like in the early 1970s when Dell Williams and Joani Blank took a bold leap of faith and started their small, women-friendly vibrator businesses.

What are some of the challenges of doing scholarly work on the sex industry?

What it means to do scholarly work on the sex industry has changed quite a bit over the past 15 years. When I was completing my Ph.D. in the early 2000s, academic research on the adult industry was hardly typical and it wasn’t unusual for someone to raise an eyebrow when I told them that I was researching feminist sex-toy stores. They were intrigued but often skeptical about the scholarly merits of such research. Although academic research on the adult industry is still not the norm, there’s a growing, international network of sexuality scholars—historians, sociologists, media studies practitioners, and others—who study pornography and other facets of the adult entertainment industry in an effort to better understand this extremely profitable yet under-examined segment of popular culture. This scholarship is increasingly finding institutional support not only in the form of tenure-track academic appointments, but in academic journals and professional organizations, too. Additionally, more and more academic presses are realizing that there’s a market for well-researched books about pornography and the sex industry, and are building their lists according. As for the nitty-gritty of researching the sex industry, it’s really no different than studying any other cultural phenomenon: you approach it ethically, rigorously, and systematically. The less we exoticize sexuality research, and the more we treat it with the seriousness that we might approach other scholarly topics, the better this research will be.

You can order Vibrator Nation from your favorite local or online bookstore (print and e-editions available) or order directly from Duke University Press. Use coupon code E17COMEL to save 30%.

 

Letters to the Press

We have created a five part blog series covering interns at Duke University Press. Today’s post delves into the most important parts of the internship application process — cover letters and resumes. If a cover letter or resume does not reflect a candidate well, the candidate will most likely not be interviewed or considered for the job. Interns at Duke University Press confirmed that their personalized cover letters helped them secure their internship positions. 

A cover letter creates a first impression of a candidate for the organization to which they are applying. One of the main purposes of a cover letter is to allow the employer to understand who the candidates are beyond the bullet points of resumes. This is the perfect opportunity to explain how you as a candidate are the right person for the position open. You are able to go into detail about parts of your resume and describe how you are qualified because of other areas of experience.

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When writing a cover letter and resume, your experience listed and discussed should directly relate to the job you’reapplying for. All submitted material should be unique to each company. A canned cover letter and resume could reflect poorly on you because it’s not personalized. Many of the interns at Duke University Press credit their unique cover letters that accompanied their resumes for securing their internship position at the press.

If applying for a job you are under-qualified for, the cover letter allows you to express what experience you have had without reaching the amount of years required or lacking a certain skill. You’re able to explain how you excel at the more important skills for the job and are willing to learn the skills the employer is looking for.

To gain more experience for a future position without having much prior experience, the Duke University Press interns emphasized the importance of volunteering. “Volunteering is number one. Being in the work environment, although you’re not getting paid, you’re still doing work. This makes your time more valuable and your ideas more valuable,” Charlecia Walton, a front desk intern, said. Sharing volunteer experience represents a passion for the work  you are doing to a hiring manager. Volunteer experience is sometimes easier to earn than paid positions. If you are having a hard time getting an internship or job, you might want to consider volunteering your time for experience that you can feature on your resume or cover letter.

New Books in September

It’s September and many of our readers are getting re-settled on campus after summer break. It’s time to stock your shelves with great new fall titles. Check out the terrific new books coming out this month.

Lending PowerLending Power by Howard E. Covington Jr. tells the compelling story of the nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help, a community-oriented and civil rights-based financial institution that has helped provide loans to those who lacked access to traditional financing while fighting for consumer protection for all Americans.

Chinese Visions of World Order, edited by Ben Wang, examines the evolution of the Confucian doctrine of tianxia (all under heaven), which aspires to a unitary worldview that cherishes global justice and transcends social divides, the contributors show how it has shaped China’s political organization, foreign policy, and worldview from the Han dynasty to the present.

Fabio Lanza, in The End of Concern, traces the history of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, a group of politically engaged academics who critiqued the field of Asian studies while looking to Maoist China as an example of alternative politics and the transformation of the meaning of labor and the production of knowledge.

In Louise Thompson Patterson, Keith Gilyard tells the story of Louise Thompson 978-0-8223-6992-9Patterson—a leading and transformative figure in the radical African American politics of the twentieth century. Library Journal gave this title a starred review, calling it “an important book in helping to understand the persistent racism faced by African Americans in this country and what individuals can do to help fight against the injustice.”

Didier Debaise, in Nature as Event, brings Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophies of nature to bear on the Anthropocene, creating a new theory of nature that does not recognize a divide between the human and nonhuman, a theory in which all organisms have the power to unleash potential into the world.

In The End of Japanese Cinema, Alexander Zahlten traces the evolution of a new form of holistic media studies—media ecology—through historical overview and analysis of Japanese film and industry from the 1960s to the 2000s.

978-0-8223-7005-5In Why the Vote Wasn’t Enough for Selma, Karlyn Forner rewrites the heralded story of Selma to show why gaining the right to vote did not lead to economic justice for African Americans in the Alabama Black Belt. Publishers Weekly praised this book with a starred review, saying, “this lucid, detailed book is often dispiriting to read, but it’s an important reminder of the still-unfulfilled promise of the black freedom movement.”

In A Theory of Regret, Brian Price theorizes regret as an important political emotion that allows us to understand our convictions as habits of perception rather than as the signs of moral courage, teaches us to give up our expectations of what might appear, and prepares us to realize the steps toward changing institutions.

William Schaefer, in Shadow Modernism,  traces how early twentieth century photographic practices in Shanghai provided artists, writers, and intellectuals a forum within which to debate culture, ethnicity, history, and the very nature of images, thereby showing how artists and writers used such practices to make visible the shadows of modernity in Shanghai.

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Author Events in September

As we head into fall, our authors are back on the road with some great talks and readings around the country. Hope you can make it to one of these events.

The Look of a WomanSeptember 5: The Look of a Woman author Eric Plemons will talk about his book at Duke University’s East Duke Parlors.
5:00 pm, 1304 Campus Drive, Durham, NC 27708

September 15: Lynn Comella, author of Vibrator Nation, gives the keynote address at CatalystCon in Los Angeles, as well as speaking on a panel about her book.

September 18: Israel⁄Palestine and the Queer International author Sarah Schulman will be at Verso Books to participate in a Writer’s Talk hosted by Adalah-NY.
7:00 pm, 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, New York 11201

art1September 22: Lynn Comella discusses her book Vibrator Nation at Self Serve Toys in Albuquerque.
8:30 pm, 3904B Central Avenue, SE, Albuquerque, NM 87108

September 23: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will host a talk with Kellie Jones on her book South of Pico.
2:00pm, 128 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102

September 26: See South of Pico author Kellie Jones again, in conversation with Farah Jasmine Griffin at Columbia University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts.
12:00 pm, 615 W. 129 Street, New York, NY 10027 The Lanternsouth-of-pico

September 26: Jane Lazarre will be at Book Culture to discuss her latest memoir The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter. The event is co-sponsored by Harper’s Magazine.
7:00 pm, 450 Columbus Avenue, New York, NY 10024

September 28: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will host a lecture with Kellie Jones on her book South of Pico.
6:00 pm, 600 Main Street, Hartford, CT 06103

September 28: Lynn Comella will read from and discuss her book Vibrator Nation at The Writer’s Block in Las Vegas. Check back here at the blog later this month for a post on Comella’s nationwide tour.
7:00 pm, 1020 Fremont St #100, Las Vegas, NV 89101

Finding the Perfect Internship 101

This post is a part of a five part blog series covering interning at Duke University Press. Today’s post offers tips on searching for and deciding on an internship that is perfect for you.

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The Press advertises internship positions at all colleges and universities in the Triangle. Three current interns found the internship listings using their universities’ career websites created for students to search jobs and internships within their fields. Many others said they’ve found their university’s career website helpful for internship searches. Other suggested sites to find internship opportunities include indeed.com, glassdoor.com, and internships.com.

To easily compare internships you would potentially enjoy, you should research all the ways the job could potentially benefit you and make note of your needs and wants from an internship. This will help the process of researching the company with a direct goal of discovering how you would fit into the position you’re applying for. For students, it would be beneficial to search for internships that would be relevant to your coursework and future success. You can use the information found to your advantage in your resume, cover letter, and interview. Many interns said they appreciate their internships at Duke University Press because they experience being student workers while being treated as equal employees and are able to learn from the rewarding work they are given. Social Medicine Reader Intern, Emily Chilton, shared that the learning opportunities and professional experiences she’s had at Duke University Press will help her future career in academic publishing.

-how to be a full-stack developer- (1)It is possible that you may find an internship you are very interested in, but your experience may not meet all of the requirements listed in the job posting. Several interns emphasized the importance of applying even if a person does not meet all of the requirements. According to Forbes writer Nancy F. Clark, men are confident in applying for positions if they meet 60% of the qualifications in a job description, while women only apply if they meet 100% of the qualifications. In a later article, Forbes Magazine described the benefits to hiring under-qualified employees. These benefits include: less established employees have more room for growth, they don’t have bad habits to break, only good habits to learn, they have the right attitude, and you can build lifelong relationships. Both men and women should apply for jobs they may not think they’re qualified because it’s difficult to know exactly where the employer places emphasis on experience. Though someone may meet all the requirements, they may not have as much experience as another person in a particular area that the employer wants.

Journals Marketing Manager Jocelyn Dawson confirmed that experience is not everything when being considered for an internship position at the Press. “We’ve found that our best interns are not necessarily those with prior experience in publishing, or even in marketing,” said Dawson. “We expect that interns will learn about those things from us, and are instead prioritizing qualities like enthusiasm for learning and for our mission, attention to detail, a proactive approach, and, because not all intern tasks are glamorous, a positive attitude.”

Internships are learning experiences. If you’re serious about the position, inform the interviewer or hiring manager how the company can benefit from the experience you do have and how they will help you grow professionally with everything you can learn from the internship position.

David Garcia’s Listening for Africa Playlist

978-0-8223-6370-5DSC04996Today, David F. Garcia offers a playlist to accompany his new book Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins. You can save 30% on the paperback with coupon code E17LISTN.

Taking on a topic like the discourse of a music’s origins entails following multiple artistic, disciplinary, and political directions. Of course, setting boundaries helps make such an endeavor feasible but no less massive. In Listening for Africa I look at a group of fascinating individuals, some well known and others not so well known, who from varying perspectives engaged the idea and nature of black music and dance’s African origins. Their reasons for engaging this idea were not merely didactical but rather to change their world. From the Great Depression, Jim Crow, and the rise of Nazism to World War II, the Cold War, and African decolonization, citizens of the modern world invested their place in it drawing from modernity’s promises of freedom through knowledge, art, and work. Only, the realization of freedom for many would be deferred by modernity’s discursive defaults.

The following audio recordings and films are explored in depth in the book. Listen and watch as you read about the individuals depicted in them and their journeys living in their shared modern world, turbulent though it was.

Chapter 1. Analyzing the African Origins of Negro Music and Dance in a Time of Racism, Fascism, and War

“Ag’ya,” Jamaica & Martinique Fieldwork, 1936, video clip #19, filmed by Katherine Dunham. Music Division, Library of Congress.

L’ag’ya, scene 3, the Katherine Dunham Company, Studebaker Theater, Chicago, 1947, filmed by Ann Barzel.

Chapter 2. Listening to Africa in the City, in the Laboratory, and on Record

“Tambó,” Gilberto Valdés y su Orquesta, recorded with Victor (V83315), Havana, 1940.

“Sangre Africana,” Gilberto Valdés y su Orquesta, recorded with Victor (V 83315), Havana, 1940

“Toitica la Negra,” Katherine Dunham and Ensemble, recorded with Decca (40028), New York, 1945.

“Abakuá song,” Harold Courland: Cuba, Eastern and central regions, Afro-Cubans (253.4), Guanabacoa, 1940.

“Elube Chango,” Harold Courland: Cuba, Eastern and central regions, Afro-Cubans (252.4), Havana, 1940.

“Elube Chango,” Casino de la Playa with Miguelito Valdés, recorded with Victor (V 82770), Havana, 1939.

Chapter 3. Embodying Africa against Racial Oppression, Ignorance, and Colonialism

Sanders of the River (London Film Productions, 1935) featuring Paul Robeson as Bozambo. Boat-rowing scene occurs at 1:07:00.

Nabonga (PRC Pictures, 1944). Modupe Paris appears at 14:23 and 15:45.

Chapter 4. Disalienating Movement and Sound from the Pathologies of Freedom and Time

Liberian Suite, Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, New York, 1947.

Film No. 4, Harry Smith, ca. 1950.

“Manteca,” Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra, recorded with RCA Victor (47-2860), New York, 1947.

“Guarachi guaro,” Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra, recorded with RCA Victor (20-3370), New York, 1948.

Chapter 5. Desiring Africa, or Western Civilization’s Discontents

“Rareza del siglo,” Julio Cueva y su Orquesta, recorded with Victor (23-0677), Havana, 1946.

“José” as performed by Pérez Prado in the film Al son del mambo (Filmadora Chapultepec, 1950).

“Kon-Toma,” Pérez Prado y su Orquesta, recorded with Victor (23-1344), Havana, 1949.

“Qué te pasa, José” as performed by Amalia Aguilar and Silvestre Méndez in Ritmos del Caribe (Compañía Cinematográfica Mexicana, 1950).

Del can can al mambo (Producciones Calderón S.A., 1951). Mambo dancing displaying symptoms of el mal de San Vito occurs at 1:21:53.

Women’s Equality Day Reads

Saturday is Women’s Equality Day, and we couldn’t be more glad for an occasion both to commemorate strides in women’s rights and to renew the call for further progress. Today we’re contributing to the cause by sharing some of our most recent scholarship in women’s studies.

In the 1970s a group of pioneering feminist entrepreneurs launched a movement that ultimately changed the way sex was talked about, had, and enjoyed. Boldly reimagining who sex shops were for and the kinds of spaces they could be, these entrepreneurs opened sex-toy stores like Eve’s Garden, Good Vibrations, and Babeland not just as commercial enterprises, but to provide educational and community resources as well. In Vibrator Nation Lynn Comella tells the fascinating history of how these stores raised sexual consciousness, redefined the adult industry, and changed women’s lives.

While news of the Rwandan genocide reached all corners of the globe, the nation’s recovery and the key role of women are less well known. In Rwandan Women Rising Swanee Hunt shares the stories of some seventy women—heralded activists and unsung heroes alike—who overcame unfathomable brutality, unrecoverable loss, and unending challenges to rebuild Rwandan society.

Developed in the United States in the 1980s, facial feminization surgery (FFS) is a set of reconstructive surgical procedures intended to feminize the faces of trans- women. In The Look of a Woman Eric Plemons foregrounds the narratives of FFS patients and their surgeons as they move from consultation and the operating room to postsurgery recovery. Plemons demonstrates how FFS is changing the project of surgical sex reassignment by reconfiguring the kind of sex that surgery aims to change.

In Politics with Beauvoir Lori Jo Marso treats Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist theory and practice as part of her political theory, arguing that freedom is Beauvoir’s central concern and that this is best apprehended through Marso’s notion of the encounter. Beauvoir’s encounters, Marso shows, exemplify freedom as a shared, relational, collective practice.

In The Labor of Faith Judith Casselberry examines the material and spiritual labor of the women of one of the oldest and largest historically Black Pentecostal churches in the United States. This male-headed church only functions through the work of the church’s women, who, despite making up three-quarters of its adult membership, hold no formal positions of power. Focusing on the circumstances of producing a holy black female personhood, Casselberry reveals the ways twenty-first-century women’s spiritual power operates and resonates with meaning in Pentecostal, female-majority, male-led churches.

wpj33_4_23_frontcover_fppIn “Interrupted,” a special issue of World Policy Journal penned entirely by female foreign policy experts and journalists, contributors imagine a world where the majority of foreign policy experts quoted, bylined, and miked are not men. The issue challenges the perception that women are not policymakers by showcasing the voices of female experts and leaders. Contributors to this issue address topics such as feminism in China, abortion laws across the Americas, combating violent extremism by working with religious leaders, and women in media. The issue also features a conversation with Dr. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, President of Mauritus.

In The Economization of Life Michelle Murphy provocatively describes the twentieth-century rise of infrastructures of calculation and experiment aimed at governing population for the sake of national economy. Murphy traces the methods and imaginaries through which family planning calculated lives not worth living, lives not worth saving, and lives not worth being born. The resulting archive of thick data transmuted into financialized “Invest in a Girl” campaigns that reframed survival as a question of human capital. The book challenges readers to reject the economy as our collective container and to refuse population as a term of reproductive justice.

Lori Merish, in Archives of Labor, establishes working-class women as significant actors within literary culture, dramatically redrawing the map of nineteenth-century US literary and cultural history. Delving into previously unexplored archives of working-class women’s literature, Merish recovers working-class women’s vital presence as writers and readers in the antebellum era. She restores the tradition of working women’s class protest and dissent, shows how race and gender are central to class identity, and traces the ways working women understood themselves and were understood as workers and class subjects.

Among Arab countries, Egypt has witnessed the largest production of feminist writings as Egyptian women begin to write in the mainstream. A themed section on Egyptian women writers and feminism from the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies features three articles about Egyptian women writers and their novels, which investigate the role of gender assignation in late twentieth-century Egyptian society. These literary works interrogate assumptions about the ways in which men and women are seen and are expected to behave.

For more books and journal articles on women’s issues, check out our Read to Respond post on feminism and women’s rights. These articles are freely available until December 15, 2017.

Meet the Duke University Press Interns

This post is a part of a five part blog series covering interning at Duke University Press. Today’s post highlights the summer student workers, their positions, and their fields of study. 

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Emily Chilton

Emily Chilton is the Social Medicine Reader intern at Duke University Press. She is a senior at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. She is majoring in English and history. She is considering graduate school to study English and plans to have a career in academic publishing.

Zachary Farmer started as a front desk intern at Duke University Press in May of 2017. He is studying sports management at Winston Salem University in Winston Salem, NC and will graduate in 2020.

Joshua Gay is a senior at North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC, studying English with a minor of mass communication. After he graduates, he plans to be a writer. Currently Josh is the Books Acquisitions intern at Duke University Press.

Sarah George-Waterfield is currently earning her doctorate degree in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sarah earned her bachelor’s degree at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee.

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O’landra Goodwin

O’landra Goodwin is graduating in December with a bachelor’s degree in mass communication with a concentration of Public Relations and Broadcast Media from North Carolina Central University. She is the DUP communications intern.

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Tiffani Jones

Tiffani Jones is studying accounting at North Carolina Central University and is expected to graduate in December of 2018. At Duke University Press, Tiffani is the accounting intern. After she graduates, she plans to start a small accounting firm.

Ithiopia Lemons recently graduated from North Carolina Central University with a bachelor’s degree in mass communication. She will be attending NCCU in the fall for graduate school where she will study educational technology. Ithiopia is a communications intern at DUP. Ithiopia plans to teach and eventually own a public relations firm.

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Rachel Mosher

Rachel Mosher is a graduate student at North Carolina State University studying English literature. She is currently a front desk intern at Duke University Press. She holds undergraduate degrees in history and German studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Henry Nooney is a senior at Elon University studying creative writing and literature. He plans to attend grad school after earning his bachelor’s degree before going into the publishing field. Henry is the Digital Strategy & Systems intern.

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Alex Sanchez-Bressler

Alex Sanchez-Bressler is a Duke University senior studying gender, sexuality and feminist studies. Alex is the Books Editorial intern at the Press.

Charlescia Walton is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, studying international business. She plans to help businesses with their productivity abroad. She started interning at the front desk of DUP in May and completed her internship program in July.

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Sarah Watson

Sarah Watson is beginning her junior year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has a double major of journalism and political science and a minor in education. She has been working at the Press as the Library Relations intern since September of 2016. After graduation, Sarah plans to work as an in house advertising employee for a large company.

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Camille Wright

Camille Wright has been at Duke University Press as the Journals Marketing intern since May. She will be graduating from North Carolina Central University in December with a bachelor’s degree in mass communication with a concentration of public relations. Camille plans to attend graduate school to study strategic public relations.

 

 

An Excerpt from The Look of a Woman by Eric Plemons

The Look of a WomanIn The Look of a Woman: Facial Feminization Surgery and the Aims of Trans- Medicine, Eric Plemons explores the ways in which facial feminization surgery is changing the ways in which trans- women are not only perceived of as women, but in the ways it is altering the project of surgical sex reassignment and the understandings of what sex means. In this excerpt he describes attending the annual Celebrate! conference.

Celebrate! is an annual conference for cross-dressers and trans-women that has been held in the same rural town  since 1990. There are only a small handful of these conferences in the United States each year, and many people attended as many of them as they could. In addition to informative presentations, conferences were important places for folks to build community, to feel accepted and seen as they were.

Throughout the weekend as I attended workshops, talks, and social events, shopping excursions and fashion shows, I chatted with people about FFS and surgical interventions more generally. With the exception of Rene, who was attending her first trans-conference and was generally blown away by everything she saw, everyone I spoke with had an opinion about facial feminization surgery.

I met Molly before the “Cross-Dressing 101” workshop. When I asked her about FFS she responded quickly, “I like everything I’ve got, just how it is.” Molly was consistently recognized as male, but that didn’t bother her. Cross-dressing was an occasional practice that she really enjoyed, but she had no interest in transitioning or changing her body in any permanent way. She compromised with her wife about little changes: Molly shaved her chest and body hair during the winter months and let it grow out for the summer swimsuit season.

Just because people knew about FFS did not necessarily mean they were interested in undergoing the procedure. During the second night of the conference I joined the official evening event at a town bar hosting a locally famous cover band that specialized in pop songs from the 1980s and 1990s. Their big conference draw, though, was that all the band members were cross-dressers. The small bar was packed with an amiable mix of town
residents and conference attendees, making it a people-watching event for all tastes. In between beers and sweaty dances I struck up conversations with trans-women who were leaning against the wall or seated at the bar, watching the scene. “Yeah, sure, faces are a big deal,” Gina told me, shouting against the thrum of the music. “But the real tell is the hairline. You can have a beautiful face, but if you’re bald, no one is buying you as a woman.” I heard these kinds of rejoinders a lot. Another person told me the voice is the real key. What good is a pretty face with a baritone voice? Another said hands were most important. Another said shoulders. For these trans-women FFS might have been desirable, but facial surgery alone would not have made the difference between being recognized as women or not. For them that line was located somewhere else on the body. Even beautiful faces would not have been enough.

Sophia knew two people who had had FFS. She said “they really do look much more feminine” and that her friends considered FFS to be the most important thing they’d done in their entire lives. While she acknowledged the transformative power of ffs, there were two reasons she was not interested in it for herself. “I’m six foot three,” she said, “and there is nothing I can do about that.” Like the women I met at the bar, Sophia understood other characteristics of her body — in her case, her height — were more determinative of her perceived sex than was her face. Changing her face on top of her tall frame would have been ineffectual. “More important,” she said, “I have this.” She picked up the silver walker she used to help her get around. “Once people see the walker, they really don’t look at anything else about me.” Dressed in a skirt and blouse, wearing a shag-cut gray wig, and leaning against a walker, Sophia was recognized as a woman most of the time. In part, she explained, because people don’t look so closely at old women or disabled women. These characteristics of her body already deflected the scrutinizing and sexualizing gaze that subject many other women to viewers’ judgment. Other folks sharing our conversation considered Sophia’s walker to be an ingenious strategy. They joked that she had a great prop and that a walker was far cheaper than an operation. Sophia played along. “Oh yeah, I’ve got it all worked out,” she said with a smile.

Femininity is an ongoing achievement. For some people facial surgery was the first and most important thing to do in order to achieve the femininity they desired. For others it was learning to move differently, or returning over and over again for electrolysis to remove beard and chest hair, or finding an elusive strappy sandal in the right size. Some other challenge comes next for everyone and becomes the thing that is standing in the way of the embodiment they desire. This is the way of sex and gender.

For many folks at the conference the first necessary step in pursuing femininity was learning to see it. Ousterhout and Beck offered two among many forms of expertise on that subject as they explained to attendees what made their face masculine and what must be done in order to achieve the femininity they desired. The surgeons’ talks were well attended by hopeful viewers who wanted the characteristics of their face explained as plainly as the presenter for “Cross-Dressing 101” had explained how to hold a handbag. And while some audience members listened intently, scribbled in their notebooks, and booked individual consultations for later in the day, other rooms at the conference were teeming with people whose future would not include FFS. Elese said she was too old. Mona was happy just as she was, thank you very much. Jackie couldn’t afford it. Shana just didn’t have the stomach for it. These folks wanted something else from medicine or wanted nothing at all.

Eric Plemons is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Save 30% on The Look of a Woman now with coupon code E17LOOK.

After #Ferguson, After #Baltimore: The Challenge of Black Death and Black Life for Black Political Thought

ddsaq_116_3The most recent issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, “After #Ferguson, After #Baltimore: The Challenge of Black Death and Black Life for Black Political Thought,” edited by Barnor Hesse and Juliet Hooker, is now available.

Drawing primarily on the US #blacklivesmatter movement, contributors to this issue come to terms with the crisis in the meaning of black politics during the post–civil rights era as evidenced in the unknown trajectories of black protests. The authors’ timely essays frame black protests and the implications of contemporary police killings of black people as symptomatic of a crisis in black politics within the white limits of liberal democracy.

Topics in this issue include the contemporary politics of black rage; the significance of the Ferguson and Baltimore black protests in circumventing formal electoral politics; the ways in which centering the dead black male body draws attention away from other daily forms of racial and gender violence that particularly affect black women; the problem of white nationalisms motivated by a sense of white grievance; the international and decolonial dimensions of black politics; and the relation between white sovereignty and black life politics.

Read the introduction, made freely available.