New Books in Women's History

Today we are joined by Dr. Lindsay Krasnoff, who is an historian, specializing in global sport, communications and diplomacy. She is also the Director of FranceandUS, and she lectures on sports diplomacy at New York University Tisch Institute of Global Sport. We met to talk about her most recent book: Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA (Bloomsbury, 2023). In our conversation, we discussed the rise of basketball in France, the differences between French and American basketball, and the way that French basketball stars such as Boris Diaw exemplify the new global “empire” of basketball that incorporates Africa, France and its overseas departments, and the USA.
Krasnoff divides Basketball Empire into three parts that together investigate how French basketball developed from a low point in the middle of the 20th century to a global powerhouse contributing players to the NBA and the WNBA almost every year. Krasnoff argues that French basketball’s success hinges on their ability make use of their connections both with the United States and with their former empire. In examining the growth of basketball in France, Krasnoff traces a sporting genealogy that links together players, coaches, and even commentators from around the globe who compete together in France and help produce a distinctive French style of basketball that nevertheless has appeal outside of the hexagon.
In Basketball Empire, Krasnoff’s first section takes off from her previous work on French association football, which looked at the development of Les Bleus. In the 1950s and 1960s, French basketball too was in crisis. In response, the French government, the Fédération française de basket-ball (FFBB), and even some sporting associations sought out new ways to improve the quality of play in France. Paris University Club brought in Americans who had played basketball in the NCAA but were now living in France to teach American approaches to the game. Individual players, including one of the earliest female French basketball stars Elisabeth Riffiod, watched film of American professionals like Bill Russell. The government redeveloped a national training centre: the National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance (INSEP.) The French League professionalized in 1987. Since the 1990s, French basketball has enjoyed a rising number of successful EuroBasket and Olympic campaigns, including a men’s silver and a women’s bronze in 2020/21.
Basketball Empire’s second section uses micro-biographies to explore the ways that contemporary French players developed their skills, how they made their moves into the NCAA, the NBA or the WNBA, and the challenges and opportunities that these moves provided them as players. In this section in particular, Krasnoff’s ability land and conduct interviews shines. She shows how diverse players, including Boris Diaw, Sandrine Gruda, Nicolas Batum, Marine Johannès, Diandra Tchatchouang, Evan Fournier, Mickaël Gelabale, and Rudy Gobert have become not only basketball stars but also informal diplomats that help build connections and translate between Africa, France and the United States.
In the final section, Krasnoff considers why the French have been so successful at producing high quality men’s and women’s basketball players. She credits la formation à la française: the specific French training system that includes a national sports training center (the INSEP) as well as local and regional basketball academies (pôles espoirs). The future looks bright for French basketball and in our interview Krasnoff predicts French and US success in the upcoming Paris 2024 Olympiad.
Keith Rathbone is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history.
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Susannah Wilson joins Jana Byars to talk about A Most Quiet Murder: Maternity, Affliction, and Violence in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Cornell UP, 2025). The monograph examines the death of a five-year-old girl in late nineteenth-century France, unfolding the mystery through judicial investigations, psychiatric medical evaluations, and ultimately, a trial for murder. The investigators quickly learned that the child, Henriette, had been abducted by Marie-Françoise Fiquet, an employee at the city tobacco factory and known troublemaker. Fiquet had taken the child back to her home and kept her there all day. But what actually happened between the abduction at midday and the discovery of the child's body at five o'clock in the morning remained a mystery. Susannah Wilson uses archival records, press coverage, and psychiatric reports to reveal how the troubled history and reputation of Marie-Françoise Fiquet, marked by suspicions of sexual debauchery, infanticide, abortions, poisoning, theft, and extortion, was a case study in an emerging medical paradigm. Her signs of trauma, psychological disturbance, and medical morphine abuse provide insight into factitious disorders—or simulated illnesses—that would be more commonly observed in the following century. A Most Quiet Murder provides a new view of nineteenth-century France, where the law and public authorities intervened in the lives of the working classes and their children during moments of crisis to exercise the law of the land. The murder of a child reveals the connections between the psychology of female violence, the emergent understanding of factitious disorders, and the psychologically complex motives that extend beyond simple altruism.
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Gaining mass popularity in the mid-1990s with the True Love Waits rally on the Washington Mall, purity culture began as an urge from evangelical conservatives for Christian adolescents to publicly commit to practicing abstinence until marriage. Throughout this decade and the next, millions of evangelical teenagers performed their commitment to sexual purity by signing pledges and wearing purity rings.

Growing Up Pure: White Girls, Queer Teens, and the Racial Foundations of Purity Culture (NYU Press, 2025) by Dr. Lauren D. Sawyer examines the shaping of purity culture in the United States, looking specifically at the experiences of white youth. It shows that white girls and white queer youth were vulnerable to the purity movement, but that they were also complicit in its white supremacist oppressive structure. It makes the case that purity culture follows in the footsteps of other purity movements in the United States, and is very much tied to centuries of anti-Black racism and xenophobia in US social history, seeing white youth as in need of protection, usually from a racialized, sexualized other.While other works have focused on the ways in which purity culture has victimized young people, Dr. Sawyer argues that their perceived status as victims lets them too easily off the hook. White youth have been afforded the privilege of participating in purity culture’s harmful behaviors without being called to account. Closely reading adolescents’ stories of growing up in purity culture, she uncovers youth as agents, participants, and beneficiaries of its white supremacist framing, even as they were still vulnerable to its harmful teachings.

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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Overturning Roe unleashed a wave of urgent threats to abortion and bodily autonomy, fueled by overt white supremacy, racial and anti-immigrant hatred, and support for traditional gender roles and sexual identities. But the resistance is fierce, led by a new generation of activists of color dedicated to building an inclusive movement. In Abortion and Reproductive Justice: An Essential Guide for Resistance, widely recognized movement leaders Marlene Gerber Fried and Loretta J. Ross provide a history of abortion politics through a reproductive justice framework that centers those most vulnerable.The book emphasizes that the right to have and raise children is as important for reproductive choice as the right not to. This critical approach—originating in Black feminism—provides grounding for radical abortion advocacy. Calling on us to join in, the book highlights abortion stories from individuals and organizations who are putting this analysis into action on the front lines, in the United States and beyond. By linking abortion rights to broader social justice initiatives, including Black Lives Matter, immigrant and refugee rights, disability justice, and LGBTQ+ rights, the authors expand the conversation at a critical moment.

Our guest is: Dr. Marlene Gerber Fried, who is professor emerita at Hampshire College. Her scholarship and teaching focuses on abortion rights and access, reproductive and sexual rights and health, and legal theory. Her honors include the Felicia Stewart Advocacy Award, and the Warrior Women Award from SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective.

Our guest is: Dr. Loretta J. Ross, who is an activist, public intellectual, and Associate Professor of the Study of Women & Gender at Smith College. Her co-authored books include Calling In, Abortion and Reproductive Justice, and Women Who Change the World. She has also published numerous articles and book chapters. Find more here: Loretta Ross Papers.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast, and writes the show’s newsletter at ChristinaGessler.Substack.com.

Playlist for listeners:

The Turnaway Study

You're Doing It Wrong

Womanist Bioethics

How to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences

How We Show Up

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Alison Rowlands, professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Essex, joins Jana Byars to talk about her classic book, Witchcraft Narratives in Germany, Rothenberg, 1561- 1652, out Manchester UP 2003. This conversation took place on the occasion of a new edition, this time a paperback release, in January 2026 Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg, 1561-1652 (Manchester UP, 2026). This meticulously-researched book relies on copious, detailed archival documents concerning people accused of witchcraft in  the German city of Rothenburg ob der Tauber between 1561 and 1652. This city experienced a very restrained pattern of witch-trials and just one execution for witchcraft during that time, unlike some other places in German lands and Europe more broadly. This book explores the social and psychological conflicts that lay behind the making of accusations and confessions of witchcraft and offers insights into other areas of early modern life, such as experiences of and beliefs about communal conflict, magic, motherhood, childhood and illness. It also includes analysis on the role of gender. Find the open source of the original edition here.
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