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.
Women and Geography on the Early Modern English Stage
1st Edition
By Katja Pilhuj
December 01, 2025
In a late 1590s atlas proof from cartographer John Speed, Queen Elizabeth appears, crowned and brandishing a ruler as the map's scale-of-miles. Not just a map key, the queen's depiction here presents her as a powerful arbiter of measurement in her kingdom. For Speed, the queen was a formidable ...
Women at the Early Modern Swedish Court: Power, Risk, and Opportunity
1st Edition
By Fabian Persson
December 01, 2025
What was possible for a woman to achieve at an early modern court? By analysing the experiences of a wide range of women at the court of Sweden, this book demonstrates the opportunities open to women who served at, and interacted with, the court; the complexities of women's agency in a court ...
Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe
1st Edition
Edited
By Lisa Hopkins, Aidan Norrie
December 01, 2025
Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe examines the lives of women whose gender impeded the exercise of their personal, political, and religious agency, with an emphasis on the conflict that occurred when they crossed the edges society placed on their gender. Many of the women featured in this ...
Women’s Stories in Le Mercure Galant (1672-1710): Feminine Fictions in an Early French Periodical
1st Edition
By Deborah Steinberger
December 01, 2025
What do women want to read? Jean Donneau de Visé, the founder and editor in chief of Le Mercure Galant, one of France’s first newspapers, was arguably the first journalist to ask this question and to recognize and capitalize upon the influence of female readers and their social networks. By ...
Performing Girls and Women: Medieval to Early Modern and Beyond
1st Edition
Edited
By Deanne Williams
July 23, 2025
This book charts the broad cultural impact of the medieval and early modern female performer: how she engages with her historical origins in classical drama, works within contemporary cultural and professional networks, and sets the terms for female performance in subsequent historical periods. ...
Gender and Family Networks in Early Modern Italy
1st Edition
By Megan Moran
December 09, 2024
Women from the Ricasoli and Spinelli families formed a wide variety of social networks within and beyond Florence through their letters as they negotiated interpersonal relationships and lineage concerns to actively contribute to their families in early modern Italy. Women were located at the ...