New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Modern Culture: Confluences and Contexts
About the Book Series
This interdisciplinary series publishes manuscripts from a wide range of fields, including but not limited to literature, history, art history, musicology, philosophy, religion and political science, in order to cultivate a truly multifaceted understanding of the early modern period. This series offers innovative scholarship that models interdisciplinary methodologies to emerging scholars and students and publishes books that show how paradigm shifts in knowledge happen when disciplines cross-fertilize and share the fruits of their labor.
Cross-Cultural Encounters in Early Modern Japan: Foreigners within the Samurai Class, c. 1550–1900
1st Edition
Edited
By Samantha Perez, Matthew Paul Smith
August 17, 2026
Recognizing the significance of cross-cultural exchange across newly established frontiers, this edited volume explores the purpose and relevance of non-Japanese individuals who operated with or within the samurai class and their role in constructing and communicating identity in early modern Japan...
Preacher-Poets: Sermons, Literature, and Gender in Early Modern England
1st Edition
By Chelsea McKelvey
July 31, 2026
Preacher-Poets demonstrates that early modern sermons had a larger impact on early modern literary texts and culture than previously assumed, analyzing the role of gender in theological and non-theological texts. This book argues that the sermon genre was a critical force in early modern culture by...
Queer Pregnancy in Shakespeare’s Plays
1st Edition
By Alicia Andrzejewski
April 30, 2026
Queer Pregnancy in Shakespeare’s Plays addresses a conspicuous absence in queer readings of Shakespeare’s work: the pregnant body. Through discussions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titus Andronicus, All’s Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, and The Winter’s Tale, this book dismantles the heteronormative ...
Masquing Blackness in The Tempest: Shakespeare, Caliban, and Jonson
1st Edition
By Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy
November 18, 2025
Combining early modern historiography with critical race and performance studies, Masquing Blackness offers a historically contextualized examination of the mechanics of blackness in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The book places Shakespeare’s representations of race into conversation both with ...
Creatively Expanding the Premodern: Historical and Literary Afterlives
1st Edition
By Carole Levin, Marguerite A. Tassi, Christine Stewart-Nuñez, Julia Griffin
October 27, 2025
This book highlights the stories of women from premodern history and literature through models of adaptations, retellings, and criticism such as poems, plays, and essays. Reviving these voices from the background widens the appeal and accessibility of scholarship in the humanities. Creative ...
The Lieutenant Nun: Annotated Translation of the Play, Historical Accounts and Documents about Antonio/Catalina de Erauso
1st Edition
Edited
By Marta Albalá Pelegrín, Edward McLean Test
May 20, 2025
This volume contains the English translation of the seventeenth-century literary and archival materials about a Basque person who died under the name Antonio de Erauso (b. ~1580, d. 1650), bringing readers closer to an individual who could be considered a trans ancestor. Born into a noble family in...
Race and Beauty: Early Modern Cosmetics and the Mythology of Whiteness
1st Edition
By Josie Schoel
April 29, 2025
This work examines how beauty standards, specifically the ideology of "fairness", contributed to the racialization of bodies in early modern England. Schoel emphasizes the need to dismantle whiteness’s invisibility in historical criticism, noting that it has long been an unexamined norm. By ...
Early Modern Women’s Work: Kinship, Community, and Social Justice
1st Edition
By Patricia Anne Simpson
April 16, 2025
Early Modern Women’s Work examines the contributions of female writers, artists, scientists, religious leaders, and patrons who engaged in entrepreneurial, intellectual, and emotional labor in German-speaking Europe. Through individual and collective authorship, the women analyzed in this study ...
Edinburgh's Unruly Women: Gender, Discipline, and Power, 1560–1660
1st Edition
By Claire McNulty
March 12, 2025
Edinburgh's Unruly Women examines experiences of church discipline across parish communities through Edinburgh and its environs. The book argues that experiences of discipline were not universal, varying according to any number of factors such as age, gender, marital status, and social rank. ...
Elite Women in Early Modern Catholic Europe
1st Edition
Edited
By Cinzia Recca, Francisco Precioso Izquierdo
February 19, 2025
Elite Women in Early Modern Catholic Europe offers a new look at early modern Catholic Europe through the lens of the diverse experiences of elite women, using a historiographical approach to analyze women’s roles through changing political, social, and cultural contexts. Through novel practices ...
The Rivalrous Renaissance: Envy and Jealousy in Early Modern English Literature
1st Edition
By Bradley J. Irish
December 10, 2024
Envy and jealousy are the emotions that fuel interpersonal rivalry, and interpersonal rivalry is a cornerstone of literature. Emerging from growing scholarly interest in the history of emotion, The Rivalrous Renaissance is the first full-length study of envy and jealousy in Renaissance England. The...
Early Modern Improvisations: Essays on History and Literature in Honor of John Watkins
1st Edition
Edited
By Katherine Scheil, Linda Shenk
June 03, 2024
With a panoramic sweep across continents and topics, Early Modern Improvisations is an interdisciplinary collection that analyzes the relationship between early modern literature and history through lenses such as gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and politics. The book engages readers ...