Women and Epistolary Agency in Early Modern Culture, 1450-1690 is the first collection to examine the gendered nature of womena€?s letter-writing in England and Ireland from the late-Elizabethan perio
Ten contributions from art historians deal with the interesting subject of how women who were marginalized or made invisible because of the cultural and economic milieu, or who chose to be invisible f
Even though women had been historically underrepresented in official histories and literary and artistic traditions, their voices and writings can be found in abundance in the many archives of the wor
Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron, composed in the 1540s and first published posthumously in 1558 and 1559, has long been an interpretive puzzle.De Navarre (1492-1549), sister of King Francis I of Fr
Examining innovations in Mary Magdalene imagery in northern art 1430 to 1550, Penny Jolly explores how the saint’s widespread popularity drew upon her ability to embody oppositions and embrace a range
Focusing on representations of beards in English Renaissance culture, this study elucidates how fetish objects validate ideological systems of power by materializing complex value in multiple register
The egregious dearth of writings about female friendships--sexual and otherwise--extends from antiquity to the modern era, from Aristotle to Nietsche, explains Legault (critical studies, U. of British
Drawing from early modern plays and treatises on the precepts and practices of the acting process, this study shows how the early modern Spanish actress subscribed to various somatic practices in an e
Addressing a key challenge facing feminist scholars today, this volume explores the tensions between shared gender identity and the myriad social differences structuring women's lives. By examining hi
Lehfeldt (history, Cleveland State U., Ohio) identifies and analyzes the place of convents in the religious geography and social landscape of early modern Spain. Convents were by definition institutio
Examining the interactions of early modern male and female writers within the context of literary circles, Campbell (English, Eastern Illinois U.) investigates the ways the querelle des femmes as a di
Chronicling the history of the Daughters of Charity through the seventeenth century, this study examines how the community's existence outside of convents helped to change the nature of women's religi
McTavish (visual culture, U. of New Brunswick, Canada) explains that throughout the early modern period in France, men surgeons would only be called to assist at a birth after days of unsuccessful lab
Focusing on the figures of Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart, and Mary's niece Arbella, Mazzola (English, City U. of New York) explores what women's writing reveals about women's wealth, conceived of bot
Those who maintain that women spent this portion of their history powerless and stupid should read the letters of the involved, forceful, authoritative and extremely capable women described in these 1
Exploring the correlation between identity and social space, Pohl (English, U. College Northampton, Britain) examines women's utopian spatial imagination in the 17th and 18th centuries. She discusses
In her innovative and fruitful approach to Renaissance portraiture, Levy (art history, Wheaton College) argues that these paintings were generated within a discourse of male anxiety and pre-mortuary m
The Medici Women is a study of the women of the famous Medici family of Florence in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Natalie Tomas examines critically the changing contribution of the wome
With this original study, Melissa Mowry makes a strong contribution to a provocative interdisciplinary conversation about an important and influential sub genre: seventeenth-century political pornogra
