Monday, February 6, 2017: Hidden Figures

Women's Magazine kicks off Black History month by celebrating unsung Black women sheroes. We listen to an interview with Margot Lee Shetterly, author of the book HIDDEN FIGURES, the basis for the hit movie about Black women mathematicians who worked in the space program.

You've heard the names John Glenn, Alan Shepard and Neil Armstrong. What about Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith or Barbara Holley? Most Americans have no idea that from the 1940s through the 1960s, a cadre of African-American women formed part of the country’s space work force, or that this group—mathematical ground troops in the Cold War—helped provide NASA with the raw computing power it needed to dominate the heavens.

HIDDEN FIGURES: THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE BLACK WOMEN MATHEMATICIANS WHO HELPED WIN THE SPACE RACE recovers the history of these pioneering women and situates it in the intersection of the defining movements of the American century: the Cold War, the Space Race, the Civil Rights movement and the quest for gender equality.

Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min


Also on today's show:
Pauli Murray
When Abortion Was Illegal

Monday, January 11, 2016: The Rise of Neo Feminist Film

Order from your local bookstore or online

Lisa Dettmer talks to feminist film scholar Professor Hilary Radner,  author of "Neo-Feminist Cinema; Girly Films, Chick Flicks and Consumer Culture" and co-editor of "Feminism at the Movies, Understanding Gender in Contemporary Popular Cinema " about the rise of what she calls the neo feminist film.   Beginning with the release of "Pretty Woman" in 1990 Radner argues  a new trope developed reflecting the rise of consumerism and the cultivation of the body and exploited the idea of how to be a woman for the purpose of supporting neoliberal consumer industry.  Radner argues these films present a belief that  control and ownership of a woman's body is  accomplished through the right acquisition and that her  value was her appearance,  all the while evoking choice and individual agency as the defining tenet of feminine identity and liberal feminism.

Listen now. 59:50 min.