Research on women and gender in the early modern world is booming: the field has a scholarly society that is now more than twenty years old; a specialized annual journal; a tri-annual conference; and a book series. How the topic is studied has changed over time: while past scholarship tended to focus on Europe, research is now becoming increasingly global. With this development in mind, this new Routledge collection has a global appeal, with the pre-colonial, as well as colonial Americas, Africa, and the Muslim world, along with Europe, South Asia and East Asia, represented. Users will be...

The study of medieval women has flourished over the last forty years or so, challenging the idea of a universality of experience among women. This new collection of major works from Routledge addresses the different ways in which medieval women have been studied by looking at religious and secular women, women according to their stage in the life cycle, and according to their social status. Important theoretical issues are also tackled, such as the applicability of terms such as misogyny, anti-feminism, and feminism, the cultural construction of the body, and the periodization of women s...