Women's & gender studies
More general subjects:
On the steps of the throne
The King’s family and its political and cultural role in the Spanish monarchy (16th-18th centuries)
The aim of this book is to forge a new critical perspective on the Spanish Habsburgs’ family networks by studying the roles performed by princes and princesses of the blood of different ranks and status in the service of the Spanish monarchs. The chapters included draw on a range of case studies in order to rethink the dynastic and political role assigned to the king’s relatives. They also analyse the problematic issues generated by the court ceremonial diplomatic dynastic and governmental duties undertaken by these political actors. In doing so these studies forge a deeper understanding of the conflicts prompted by the administration of the extensive transnational community of Spanish Habsburg interests and allegiances. The innovative and insightful studies included in this volume are drawn from both unpublished doctoral theses as well as ongoing research projects. In this sense it seeks to contribute to the evolving historiographical debate on the role played by a range of agents who have not been studied in depth by historians above all with a focus on the construction of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy in the early modern period. The approach we have adopted has been to prioritize little-known and less-studied agents contexts and periods from the Spanish Habsburg sphere which are nonetheless highly relevant for developing a deeper knowledge of the potential and expectations assigned to the king’s extended family whether legitimate or illegitimate. Furthermore this book addresses the problematic issues and conflicts that were prompted by these political agents in undertaking various diplomatic dynastic and governmental roles.
Women of the Past, Issues for the Present
The roles played by women in history and even the very idea of what it is to be female have always been in flux changing over centuries between cultures and in response to diverse social and economic parameters. Even today women’s roles and women’s rights continue to face changes and pressures. In establishing the series Women of the Past: Testimonies from Archaeology and History the ambition is to build on the profound theoretical and empirical developments that have taken place over the last fifty years of gender-focused research and to explore them in a contemporary context.
The aim of this series is to shed light on not just the outstanding and extraordinary women who were trendsetters of their time but also the not quite so outstanding women often overshadowed by outstanding men and the ordinary women those who simply went about their everyday life and kept their world turning in their own quiet way. This edited volume Women of the Past Issues for the Present is the inaugural volume of the series and shows the wide span of the series chronologically geographically and socially in terms of the research presented. From Roman slaves to Viking women and from medieval wet-nurses to the nineteenth-century wives who supported their archaeologist husbands on excavation this groundbreaking volume opens a new vista in our understanding of the past.
Maternal Materialities
Objects, Rituals and Material Evidence of Medieval and Early Modern Childbirth
Although little is known of the process surrounding early modern childbirth the lack of written testimonials and technical descriptions does not preclude the possibility of reconstructing the reality of this elusive space: drawing on the evidence of clothing food rites and customs this collection of essays seeks to give tangible form to the experience of childbirth through the analysis of physical objects and rituals.
An important addition to the literature of material culture and ‘wordly goods’ this collection of twenty-three essays from international scholars offers a novel approach to the study of pre- and early modern birth by extending its reach beyond the birthing event to include issues concerning the management of pregnancy and post-partum healing.
Grouped into five broad areas the essays explore the material advantages and disadvantages of motherhood the food and objects present in the birthing room the evidence and memorialization of death in childbirth attitudes towards the pregnant body the material culture of healing and the ritual items used during childbirth.
Masculinités sacerdotales
Ce volume fruit d’un colloque tenu à Louvain-la-Neuve en mars 2018 est le premier à rassembler des études de chercheurs venu d’horizons historiographiques différents (histoire religieuse histoire du genre histoire de l’art histoire culturelle) pour traiter de l’histoire des masculinités sacerdotales et cléricales du Moyen-Âge à l’époque contemporaine. À l’intersection de l’histoire religieuse et de l’histoire du genre ces études manifestent l’importance de la prise en compte de l’outil du genre pour l’histoire des clergés mais mettent ausssi en lumière la manière dont tant les approches historiques que la prise en compte du religieux interrogent en retour les catégories par lesquelles les études de genre ont interrogé les masculinités contemporaines.
The Nun’s Cell as Mirror, Memoir, and Metaphor in Convent Life
Study of the Models of Nuns’ Cells from the Collection of the Trésors de Ferveur
In the eighteenth through the early twentieth century French nuns from various orders created miniature simulacra of the cells in which they slept studied and performed their devotions. Each diorama contains an effigy of the nun a prie-Dieu devotional objects such as a crucifix handiwork and artifacts to foster study and contemplation. This book examines the lives of the brides of Christ as depicted in these dioramas proposing that the material objects found in the chambers trace the contours of the collective and individual identities of the nuns who created these cells. Viewed as a type of memoir the cells furnish the sisters a stage upon which to rehearse the meaning of their lives. The dioramas create a tension between the private and public presentations of the self between verisimilitude and self-fashioning and between reality and representation. The book contextualizes the miniature cells within the larger discourse of gender identity self-representation monastic devotion and the power wielded by the aesthetics of scale.
Women in Arts, Architecture and Literature: Heritage, Legacy and Digital Perspectives
Proceedings of the First Annual International Women in the Arts Conference Rome, 20–22 October 2021
In the last few decades the study of women in the arts has largely increased in terms of scholars involved in research and investigation with the reception of the outcomes especially acknowledged by museums which are dedicating part of their mission to organizing exhibitions and/or acquiring the works of women. The Annual International Women in Arts Conference seeks to advance contemporary discussions on how female creativity has helped shape European culture in its heterogeneity since the Middle Ages. This volume collects the proceedings of the first conference organised in Rome in October 2021. It focuses on the role of women in literature art and architecture. Throughout history these domains were often seen as very masculine. Yet there have been many women who have made their mark as writers illuminators artists and architects or have played a decisive role as patrons and supporters in these arts. This collection of essays aims to bring these women to the fore and sheds a new light on the heritage and legacy of women in the creative arts and architecture from the Middle Ages until the 20th century.
Scotland’s Royal Women and European Literary Culture, 1424–1587
Scotland’s Royal Women and European Literary Culture 1424–1587 seeks to fill a significant gap in the rich and ever-growing body of scholarly work on royal and aristocratic women’s literary culture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There has to date been no book-length study of the literary activities of the female members of any one family across time and little study of Scotland’s royal women in comparison to their European and English counterparts. This book adopts the missing diachronic perspective and examines the wives and daughters of Scotland’s Stewart dynasty and their many and various associations with contemporary Scottish English and European literary culture over a period of just over 150 years. It also adopts a timely cross-border and cross-period perspective by taking a trans-national approach to the study of literary history and examining a range of texts and individuals from across the traditional medieval/early modern divide. In exploring the inter-related lives and letters of the women who married into the Scottish royal family from England and Europe — and those daughters who married outwith Scotland into Europe’s royal families — the resultant study consistently looks beyond Scotland’s land and sea borders. In so doing it moves Scottish literary culture from the periphery to the centre of Europe and demonstrates the constitutive role that Scotland’s royal women played in an essentially shared literary and artistic culture.
Gender and Status Competition in Pre-Modern Societies
This innovative volume of cultural history offers a unique exploration of how gender and status competition have intersected across different periods and places. The contributions collected here focus on the role of women and the practice of masculinity in settings as varied as ancient Rome China Iran and Arabia medieval and early modern England and early modern Italy France and Scandinavia as well as exploring issues that affected people of all social rank from raillery and pranks to shaming male boasting about sexual conquests court rituals violence and the use and display of wealth. Particular attention is paid to the performance of such issues with chapters examining status and gender through cultural practices especially specific (re)presentations of women. These include Roman priestesses early Christian virgin martyrs flirtation in seventh-century Arabia and the attempt by an early modern French woman to take her place among the immortals. Together this wide-ranging and fascinating array of studies from renowned scholars offers new insights into how and why different cultures responded to the drive for status and the complications of gender within that drive.
Women and Credit in Pre-Industrial Europe
This collection of essays compares and discusses women’s participation and experiences in credit markets in early modern Europe and highlights the characteristics common mechanisms similarities discrepancies and differences across various regions in Europe in different time periods and at all levels of society. The essays focus on the role of women as creditors and debtors (a topic largely ignored in traditional historiography) but also and above all on the development of their roles across time. Were women able to enter the credit market and if so how and in what proportion? What was then the meaning of their involvement in this market? What did their involvement mean for the community and for their household? Was credit a vector of female emancipation and empowerment? What were the changes that occurred for them in the transition to capitalism? These essays offer a variety of perspectives on women’s roles in the credit markets of early modern Europe in order to outline and answer these questions as well as analysing and exploring the nature of women money credit and debt in a pre-industrial Europe.
Women and Petitioning in the Seventeenth-Century English Revolution
Deference, Difference, and Dissent
During the English Civil Wars and Revolution (1640-60) the affairs of Church and State came under a crucial new form of comment and critique in the form of public petitions. Petitioning was a readily available mode of communication for women and this study explores the ways in which petitioning in seventeenth-century England was adapted out of and differed from pre-Revolutionary modes whilst also highlighting gendered conventions and innovations of petitioning in that period.
Male petitioning in the seventeenth century did not have to negotiate the cultural assumptions about intellectual inferiority and legal incapacity that constrained women. Yet just because women did not claim separate (and modern) women’s rights does not mean that they were passive quiescent or had no political agency. On the contrary as this study shows women in the Revolution could use petitioning as a powerful way to address those in power precisely because it was done from an assumed position of weakness. The petition is not simply a text authored by a single pen but a series of social transactions performed in multiple social and political settings frequently involving people previously excluded from participation in political discussion or action. To the extent that women participated in collective petitioning or turned their individual addresses into printed artefacts for public scrutiny they also participated in the public sphere of political opinion and debate.
Le Legs des pères et le lait des mères
ou comment se raconte le genre dans la parenté du Moyen Âge au XXIe siècle
Être homme et être femme constituent deux manières d’être au monde deux statuts complexes et distincts dans le cadre des activités sociales et des représentations collectives; et si celles-ci sont prises dans les cadres de la normalisation de genre elles n’en demeurent pas moins réelles et structurantes quelles que soient les variations historiques et culturelles dont les chroniques les romans les films les bandes dessinées nous apportent le témoignage. Même si l’habitude et l’éducation semblent reconduire l’évidence des places de chaque sexe dans son groupe social et dans une conception binaire associée à l’ordre du monde une telle vision de la dualité est une création culturelle transmise reproduite et nuancée au fil des générations : étudier les fausses évidences dévoiler les singularités oubliées défricher les formes artistiques les plus récentes tels sont les objectifs que ce sont fixés les participants au colloque nîmois en prenant comme supports de réflexion des récits allant du Moyen Âge au XXIe siècle. Ils interrogent les modalités de transmission des codes de représentation au sein de la parenté quand elle se développe dans des formes narratives où la réalité se conjugue à la fiction à des fins d’exemplarité.
Practices of Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
This collection argues that gender must be considered as both an approach to history and as a reflection of the deep workings of the lived historical past. The sixteen original essays explore social and cultural expressions of gender in Europe from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. They examine theories and practices of gender in domestic religious and political contexts including the Reformation the convent the workplace witchcraft the household literacy the arts intellectual spheres and cultures of violence and memory. The volume exposes the myriad ways in which gender was actually experienced together with the strategies used by individual men and women to negotiate resilient patriarchal structures. Overall the collection opens up new synergies for thinking about gender as a category of historical analysis and as a set of experiences central to late medieval and early modern Europe.
The Censorship and Fortuna of Platina's 'Lives of the Popes' in the Sixteenth Century
When Bartolomeo Sacchi ('Platina' 1421-1481) wrote his Vitae pontificum (Lives of the Popes) and presented it to Pope Sixtus IV in 1475 he surely could not have imagined how influential it would become over the centuries. His was the first papal history composed as a humanist Latin narrative and as such marked a distinct breakthrough in relation to the Liber pontificalis the standard medieval chronicle of the papacy. Whatever Platina's intentions for the book it soon came to be regarded as the official history of the Roman pontiffs. After the editio princeps of Venice 1479 updated and extended editions continued to be produced until late in the eighteenth century.
The largely untold story of Platina's Lives of the Popes and its fortuna is the focus of this book. The Lives were particularly popular because of Platina's frank criticisms of papal behaviour which did not live up to his humanist moral values. He reminded the popes that they were mere human beings and urged them not to indulge in luxury and nepotism. Catholics whether or not they agreed with such indictments read the Lives eagerly while Protestants naturally appreciated Platina's fault-finding approach towards the papacy. The role which censorship played in the reception of the Lives was previously unknown. This book examines the censorship process (1587-1592) in detail including a critical edition of the assessments and corrections by English and Italian censors newly uncovered in the Vatican and in Milan.
Giulia Gonzaga and the Religious Controversies of Sixteenth-Century Italy
Giulia Gonzaga (1513-66) was renowned throughout sixteenth-century Italy as a model of pious widowhood and of female beauty. Yet over three decades she sustained a risky friendship and personal correspondence with Pietro Carnesecchi (1508-67) the one-time papal favourite who became infamous for his heretical religious beliefs and associations. Indeed Carnesecchi was condemned to death by the Tribunal of the Roman Inquisition implicated in part by evidence of his correspondence with donna Giulia.
This major new study traces the evolution of donna Giulia’s unorthodox religious ideas and networks. Considered alongside inquisitorial trial records and contemporary religious treatises donna Giulia’s written dialogue with Carnesecchi and others vividly reflects the religious tensions of mid-sixteenth-century Italy.
Giulia Gonzaga and the Religious Controversies of Sixteenth-Century Italy details donna Giulia’s important contribution to the exchange and currency of reformist ideas amongst an intellectual elite of women and men clergy and laity that extended through the Italian peninsula and beyond.
The Ghost of Boccaccio
Writings on Famous Women in Renaissance Italy
This major study looks at the heritage and literary transformation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris in late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth-century Italy.The monograph is the first full-length study of the new elaborations of women’s role and potential that were being developed in the north Italian courts in this period. The Ghost of Boccaccio presents a sustained textual analysis of a selection of male-authored texts. It treats these texts as highly specific events in the development of the querelle des femmes or ‘the woman question’ providing an important and often neglected Italian context for this question. By analysing these texts together in one volume this study places them firmly on the scholarly map. They represent an extraordinary variety of voices seeking to be heard about the status of women in Renaissance Italy ranging from the most conservative to the truly radical. They provide vital perspectives on constructions of women in the Renaissance. A number of these texts also represent a crucial moment in the development of intellectual strategies to challenge the dominant gender ideologies of Renaissance and early modern Europe. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of Renaissance history and culture Italian studies neo-Latin studies and gender studies.