Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World
About the Book Series
This series provides a forum for studies that investigate the themes of women and gender in the late medieval and early modern world. The editors invite proposals for book-length studies of an interdisciplinary nature, including but not exclusively, from the fields of history, literature, art and architectural history, and visual and material culture. Consideration will be given to both monographs and collections of essays. Chronologically, we welcome studies that look at the period between 1400 and 1700, with a focus on Britain, Europe and Global transnational histories. We invite proposals including, but not limited to, the following broad themes: methodologies, theories and meanings of gender; gender, power and political culture; monarchs, courts and power; construction of femininity and masculinities; gift-giving, diplomacy and the politics of exchange; gender and the politics of early modern archives and architectural spaces (court, salons, household); consumption and material culture; objects and gendered power; women’s writing; gendered patronage and power; gendered activities, behaviours, rituals and fashions.
Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics, Gender and Reputation in (and beyond) Renaissance Bologna
1st Edition
By Elizabeth Bernhardt
December 01, 2025
Genevra Sforza (ca. 1441-1507) lived her long life near the apex of Italian Renaissance society as wife of two successive de facto rulers of Bologna: Sante Bentivoglio then Giovanni II Bentivoglio. Placed there twice without a dowry by Duke Francesco Sforza as part of a larger Milanese plan, ...
Gifting Translation in Early Modern England: Women Writers and the Politics of Authorship
1st Edition
By Kirsten Inglis
December 01, 2025
Translation was a critical mode of discourse for early modern writers. Gifting Translation in Early Modern England: Women Writers and the Politics of Authorship examines the intersection of translation and the culture of gift-giving in early modern England, arguing that this intersection allowed ...
Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England
1st Edition
By Josephine Billingham
December 01, 2025
Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England explores one of society's darkest crimes using archival sources and discussing its representation in the drama, pamphlets and broadside ballads of the early modern period. It takes the reader on a journey through the streets and taverns where street ...
Men's Sexual Health in Early Modern England
1st Edition
By Jennifer Evans
December 01, 2025
How did men cope with sexual health issues in early modern England? This vivid history investigates how sexual, reproductive, and genitourinary conditions were understood between 1580 and 1740. Drawing on medical sources and personal testimonies, it reveals how men responded to bouts of ill health ...
Negotiating Feminism and Faith in the Lives and Works of Late Medieval and Early Modern Women
1st Edition
Edited
By Holly Faith Nelson, Adrea Johnson
December 01, 2025
This wide-ranging transnational collection theorizes how late medieval and early modern Western women critically and creatively negotiated their faith and feminism, taking into account intersecting factors such as class, culture, confessional stance, institutional affiliation, ethnicity, dis/...
Non-Elite Women's Networks Across the Early Modern World
1st Edition
Edited
By Elizabeth Storr Cohen, Marlee J. Couling
December 01, 2025
Non-elite or marginalized early modern women—among them the poor, migrants, members of religious or ethnic minorities, abused or abandoned wives, servants, and sex workers—have seldom left records of their experiences. Drawing on a variety of sources, including trial records, administrative ...
Petrarch and the Making of Gender in Renaissance Italy
1st Edition
By Shannon McHugh
December 01, 2025
This book is a new history of early modern gender, told through the lyric poetry of Renaissance Italy. In the evolution of Western gender roles, the Italian Renaissance was a watershed moment, when a confluence of cultural developments disrupted centuries of Aristotelian, binary thinking. Men and ...
The Fame of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Posthumous Fashioning in the Early Modern Hispanic World
1st Edition
By Margo Echenberg
December 01, 2025
The Fame of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz traces the meteoric trajectory of the Mexican Tenth Muse’s renown and studies how her worldly celebrity was altered posthumously by elegists in her Fama y obras póstumas [Fame and Posthumous Works] of 1700. In this study of a polyphonic, transatlantic volume, ...
The Female Baroque in Early Modern English Literary Culture: From Mary Sidney to Aphra Behn
1st Edition
By Gary Waller
December 01, 2025
The Female Baroque in Early Modern English Literary Culture is a contribution to the revival of early modern women's writings and cultural production in English that began in the 1980s. Its originality is twofold: it links women's writing in English with the wider context of Baroque culture, and it...
The Reputation of Edward II, 1305-1697: A Literary Transformation of History
1st Edition
By Kit Heyam
December 01, 2025
During his lifetime and the four centuries following his death, King Edward II (1307-1327) acquired a reputation for having engaged in sexual and romantic relationships with his male favourites, and having been murdered by penetration with a red-hot spit. This book provides the first account of how...
Vittoria Colonna: Poetry, Religion, Art, Impact
1st Edition
Edited
By Virginia Cox, Shannon McHugh
December 01, 2025
This edited collection presents fresh and original work on Vittoria Colonna, perhaps the outstanding female figure of the Italian Renaissance, a leading Petrarchist poet, and an important figure in the Italian Reform movement. Until recently best known for her close spiritual friendship with ...
Women Religious and Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform: The Disciples of Teresa de Avila
1st Edition
By Bárbara Mujica
December 01, 2025
The sixteenth century was a period of crisis in the Catholic Church. Monastic reorganization was a major issue, and women were at the forefront of charting new directions in convent policy. The story of the Carmelite Reform has been told before, but never from the perspective of the women on the ...