New Books in Gender & Women’s Studies Collection

The Gender & Women’s Studies Collection at College Library will soon feature over a dozen new titles. These books’ topics range from studies of gender identities to memoirs of LGBT women to feminism and gaming culture.

One of the titles recently purchased is No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy by the four authors Chayanika Shah, Raj Merchant, Shals Mahajan, and Smriti Nevatia. Published by Zubaan, an independent publishing house dedicated to publishing books about, for, and by women in South Asia, this book addresses questions of so called “natural” genders and heteronormativity. The authors detail a research study about queer people and how gender and binary gender roles are addressed in public, family, work, and daily situations. As Zubaan’s summary states, “This book illustrates the multiplicity of ways in which people live gender and testifies that even if there are gender laws, in a just world there can be no gender outlaws.”

Another new book written by assistant professor of sociology at Georgia State University, Katie L. Acosta, Amigas y Amantes: Sexually Nonconforming Latinas Negotiate Family captures (from a sociological perspective) the experiences of lesbian, bisexual and queer latina women. Acosta began this research in 2007 when she noticed that most of the data being collected on LBQ women was predominantly on white women. As Acosta describes, this book “provides a gendered analysis of how sexually nonconforming Latinas negotiate cultural expectations, combat heterosexuality and reconcile tensions with their families.”

Interested in video games and gamer culture? Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture by Adrienne Shaw discusses issues of representation of minority groups such as women, people of color, and LGBT people in a culture stereotypically dominated by white, heterosexual men. Gaming at the Edge explores how representation is experienced while playing video games, how players identify with characters, and qualitative audience research. This book was the winner of the 2016 International Communication Association’s Popular Communications Division’s Book Award, and made it onto the American Library Association’s Over the Rainbow Books list.

The Gender & Women’s Study Collection is located on the 3rd floor of College Library. It provides books emphasizing current gender and women’s studies issues of interest to undergraduates. The recent additions were selected Kira Cronin-Hennessy and part of her ISIP internship. The library also welcomes suggestions for purchase.