Publications

Structures and Subjectivities: Attending to Early Modern Women

Joan E. Hartman and Adele Seeff, eds. Newark: University of Delaware Press; 2007. 377 pages, index.

This book can be obtained through The University of Delaware Press or Amazon.com.

The volume grows out of the 2003 symposium, Structures and Subjectivities, and collects all plenary papers presented at the symposium as well as brief workshop summaries.  As with the four previous volumes in the Attending to Early Modern Women series, this volume addresses issues influencing scholarly discourse and pedagogy in the field of early modern women's studies.  Its title calls attention to what we can and probably cannot know about women in the early modern period.  The first section, "Geographies and Polities," considers the geographical boundaries---regions, nations, cities, and country---and the institutions---political, economic, and religious---that framed women's lives. In the second section, "Degree, Priority, and Place," scholars address the gendering of hierarchies and the power of place in constructing women's lives. The third plenary, "The Built Environment," discusses, literally, the spaces in the early modern period that women constructed, inhabited, traveled, and worked in, and, by extension, such things as literary, artistic, and musical conventions that both enabled and constrained their artistic production.  Finally, in the fourth and last section, "Pedagogies," scholars deal with the structures in which teachers and students pursue the study of early modern women: institutions, departments, and classrooms.

Contents:

  • Joan E. Hartman, Introduction
  • Adrian W. B. Randolph, "Renaissance Genderscapes"
  • Alison Weber, "Locating Holiness in Early Modern Spain: Convents, Caves, and Houses
  • Joanne M. Ferraro, "Representing Women in Early Modern Italian Economic History"
  • Craig A. Monson, "The Perilous, Enchanting Allure of Convent Singing"
  • Dorothy Ko, "Shoes and Fashion: The Cosmology of Female Desires in China"
  • Susan S. Lanser, "The Political Economy of Same-Sex Desire"
  • Margaret R. Hunt, "Women in Ottoman and Western European Law Courts: Were Western Women Really the Luckiest Women in the World?"
  • Elizabeth V. Chew, "Inhabiting the Great Man's House: Women and Space at Monticello"
  • Carole Collier Frick, "Picture Perfect: Female Performance and Social Liminality in the Florentine Renaissance City"
  • Naomi J. Miller, "A Womb of One's Own: Constructing Maternal Space in Early Modern England and Beyond"
  • Julia Marciari Alexander, "The Early Modern Woman in the Twenty-First Century Museum"
  • Susanne Woods, "But Is It Any Good? The Value of Teaching Early Modern Writers"
  • Allyson M. Poska, "Managing Stress: Connecting Research and Pedagogy"