Indiana University Press blog

Everything you wanted to know about The B Word in two minutes or less

The B Word author Maria San Filippo will take part in a Graduate Consortium of Women's Studies event at MIT from 7 to 9 p.m. May 1. A unique feature of the event is a "speed talk" given by San Filippo and other featured authors. Participants are required to discuss their books in two minutes or less (event organizers are even bringing timers!).

However, if two minutes isn't enough time to learn everything you wanted to know about The B Word, then check out this new review of the book by Next Magazine:

"In The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television, Maria San Filippo turns her razor-sharp intellect on the representation of bisexuality in modern media, where it still remains somewhat unspoken, often overshadowed by the hard-won visibility of gays and lesbians. Placing bisexual desire center stage, San Filippo’s book is a much-needed addition to the field of queer media studies."

San Filippo's next speaking engagement (longer than two minutes this time) will take place at 9 a.m. May 4 during the Media in Transition 8 Conference at MIT. The topic of her talk is "After AfterEllen.com: Online Queer Media Communities as Critical Counterpublics."

Visit Maria San Filippo's website for information about all her events.

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Podcast: Maria San Filippo discusses 'The B Word'

More thinking on bisexuality

Podcast: Maria San Filippo discusses 'The B Word'

Often disguised in public discourse by terms like "gay," "homoerotic," "homosocial," or "queer," bisexuality is strangely absent from queer studies and virtually untreated in film and media criticism. On this episode of the IU Press podcast, Maria San Filippo discusses how her new book The B Word helps fill this gap in the study of bisexuality on screen.

Podcast: Jo Paoletti discusses 'Pink and Blue' (now available in paperback)

Jo Paoletti's book, Pink and Blue, is now available in paperback! Paoletti’s journey through the history of children’s clothing began when she asked, “When did we start dressing girls in pink and boys in blue?” Her book analyzes that question by looking at advertisments, catalogs, and other popular media. 

To learn more about this book and the fascinating discoveries Paoletti made while writing it, listen to this IU Press podcast, originally recorded in 2012 when the hardcover version of Pink and Blue came out:

And for those of you in the Maryland area, don't miss your chance to see Jo Paoletti in person! She will discuss her book at the University of Maryland's Speaking of Books series March 26 from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. in the McKeldin Library of Special Events Room. For more information, visit the University of Maryland Libraries website.

Book review: Playing on the Edge

"Staci Newmahr's exploration of the public SM scene is interesting, thought-provoking, and in some cases, challenging. Her involvement in the field and her willingness to share at least the surface details of her experience are extraordinary. Moreover, her commitment to understanding the community of public SM players with rigor, intellectual honesty, and sensitivity is the hallmark of a great ethnography." —Symbolic Interaction

Three books reviewed in The American Historical Review

Three of our books were reviewed in The American Historical Review:

War of Words, War of Stones

"This book is painstakingly researched, providing a compelling portrait of the intricacies of Zanzibari politics in the post-independence period and the historical legacies that shaped those politics. ... [I]t will stimulate the sorts of discussions about race, nationalism, and memory that can help to reshape and move scholarship forward." 

The Question of Gender

"[The editors] provide fresh analyses of the state of gender studies and the dynamic theories of 'sexual difference' as proposed, tested, and critiqued by Joan Wallach Scott." 

Mercury, Mining, and Empire

"With meticulous research and vivid prose, Nicholas A. Robins examines silver mining's human cost in the royal mercury mines of Huancavelica, Peru, and the silver mines of Potosi."

'Pink and Blue' author Jo Paoletti to give talk on gender and clothing

Author Jo B. Paoletti will give a talk February 21 at 4 p.m. in Grove Hall Forum at Shippensburg University. Paoletti will discuss her book “Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys from the Girls in America,” which relates the history of children's clothing and gender. The paperback edition of Pink and Blue comes out next month. More information is available on the IU Press website.

Book review: Queer Ecologies

"[V]ibrant texts, brimming with possibilities for rethinking, rereading, and reinflecting the links between perception, ontology, epistemology, politics, and ethics. ... [A]llow[s] for the possibility of further reflections on the material conditions of intellectual inquiry, and for what materialities our 'immaterial labors' might creatively enact, change, transform." —Women's Studies Quarterly

Two IUP titles reviewed in fall issue of Feminist Formations

Two IU Press books have been reviewed in the Fall 2012 issue of Feminist Formations:

Women and Social Reform in Modern India

"In order to illuminate the social and cultural contexts obscured by such shortcuts, Sarkar and Sarkar suggest using nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century reform to analyze concurrent shifts in gendered systems of social regulation, especially through religious orthodox and revivalist movements, and gendered engagements with the state, especially through law ...The Sarkars’ project, however, is much larger than creating a more accurate narrative of social reform in late-colonial India."

Wives, Widows, and Concubines

"Sreenivas’s discussion points to the importance for feminist scholarship of exploring the links among conjugality, kinship, and capitalisms both historically and today."

Book review: Queer Ecologies

"Queer Ecologies must guide the development of our sexual politics, the visions of our environmental activisms, the re-viewing of our biosocial histories, the expansion of our environmental justice initiatives, and the engendering of, as contributor Dianne Chisholm writes, 'an ecological future for queer desire.'" —Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Book review: Gender and Jewish History

"'Gender and Jewish History' makes an important contribution to our understanding in three ways. First, it gathers together eminent and emerging scholars in one comprehensive collection. Second, its essays are engaging and wide-ranging in focus, depth and breadth, and accessibly written, without dense academic jargon, so that nonacademics can dig in, as well. Finally, it’s a moving testament to just how much an individual [Paula Hyman] can influence the development and trajectory of an entire scholarly field through persistence, persuasion and extraordinary vision." —The Jewish Daily Forward