BOOK EVENTS

Miranda Steege Works-in-Progress Talk: A Queer Academic Mystery
9:30-11 a.m. Feb. 29, 501 Cathedral of Learning

Miranda Steege, a visiting lecturer in literature, will discuss her new mystery novel, “Or Else,” in which a dysfunctional English department at a fictional Pittsburgh university fractures apart in a messy methodological debate about history, queerness and the right way to do scholarship. Amidst the chaos, a graduate student disappears, another is murdered, and a private detective with his own secrets is called in to investigate. What began as an intellectual schism turns nastily personal, and the cost is the safety of the university’s most vulnerable students. Steege will read from the novel, and discuss some adjacent writing: an academic dissertation and works of fanfiction purportedly written by the novel’s graduate student narrator. Steege holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Riverside. Her research areas include queer theory, fan studies, and 19th-century British literature.

“A Woman's Life is a Human Life”: A Conversation with Felicia Kornbluh
2:30-4 p.m. March 5, 2432 Posvar Hall

Felicia Kornbluh, a history professor at the University of Vermont, will discuss her new book, “A Woman's Life is a Human Life: My Mother, Our Neighbor, and the Journey from Reproductive Rights to Reproductive Justice” (Grove Press, 2023). The book focuses on the untold story of everyday activists who defined reproductive rights and achieved them, in the years immediately before and after Roe v. Wade made abortion legal under federal law. It is the story of two movements: the fight to legalize abortion in New York and the campaign to end forced sterilization in Puerto Rico.

NEW BOOKS

“Out of Hiding: Extremist White Supremacy and How It Can Be Stopped,” by Kathleen Blee, Pitt professor of sociology and former dean of the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, along with Robert Futrell, professor of sociology at University of Nevada–Las Vegas, and Pete Simi, professor of sociology, Chapman University, Orange, Calif. (Routledge, 2023)

“Out of Hiding” explains how white supremacist extremism endures, the varied forms it takes, its relationship with systemic racism, and what to do about it.

The book draws on more than 30 years of extensive data and direct experiences with extremists to describe how white supremacy moved into the spotlight during the first two decades of the 21st century. The argument focuses on three moments between 2008 and today — the election of the first black U.S. president, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and the Jan. 6 insurrection — during which white supremacists took opportunities to move from pockets of underground activism to violent protests across the United States. The authors offer a corrective to observers who mischaracterize today’s racial extremism as a new form of ‘alt-right’ conservatism or ‘white nationalism’ emanating from an isolated, poorly educated, and economically disenfranchised online fringe. These misunderstandings reflect the limited attention given to the varied and persistent forms of racial extremism that have long simmered in America and an inability to acknowledge the appeal white supremacist messages can hold for a broad swath of the U.S. population. 

“Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation,” by Patrick McKelvey, assistant professor, Theatre Arts, Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences (New York University Press, 2024)

In 1967, the U.S. government funded the National Theatre of the Deaf, a groundbreaking rehabilitation initiative employing deaf actors. This project aligned with the postwar belief that transforming bodies, minds, aesthetics and institutions could liberate disabled Americans from economic reliance on the state, and demonstrated the growing optimism that performance could provide job opportunities for people with disabilities.

“Disability Works” offers an original cultural history of disability and performance in modern America, exploring rehabilitation’s competing legacies. The book highlights an unexpected alliance of rehabilitation professionals, deaf teachers, policy makers, disability activists, queer artists, and religious leaders who championed performance’s rehabilitative potential.

At the same time, some disabled artists imagined a different political itinerary for theatrical practice. Rather than acquiescing to the terms of productive citizenship, these artists recuperated rehabilitation as a creative resource for imagining and building a world beyond work. Using previously unexplored archives, “Disability Works” portrays the history of disabled Americans’ performance labor as both a national aspiration and a national problem. The book reveals how disabled artists and activists ingeniously used rehabilitative resources to fuel their performance practices, breaking free from the grasp of rehabilitation and fostering more just institutions.