Early Modern Cultural Studies is an interdisciplinary series that examines a wide range of aesthetic works and moments in their original cultural milieu. The series is interested in questions about a rapidly changing world where politics, religion, national identity, and gender roles were all subjects of contestation and redefinition, focusing on a broad definition of the early modern period which encompasses the fifteenth to the eighteenth century.

My First Booke of My Life by Alice Thornton
Edited and with an introduction by Raymond A. Anselment

An early modern domestic and spiritual memoir, My First Booke of My Life depicts the life of Alice Thornton (1626–1707), a complex, contradictory woman caught in the changing fortunes and social realities of the seventeenth century.

Words Like Daggers: Violent Female Speech in Early Modern England by Kirilka Stavreva

“This is an engaging, well-researched, often-original study of violent female speech in early modern English culture.”—Deborah Willis, Renaissance Quarterly

Portrait of an Island: The Architecture and Material Culture of Gorée, Sénégal, 1758–1837 by Mark Hinchman

An examination of the built and natural landscape, Portrait of an Island deciphers the material culture involved in the ever-changing relationships among male, female, rich, poor, free, and slave.

The Other Exchange: Women, Servants, and the Urban Underclass in Early Modern English Literature by Denys Van Renen

“Van Renen’s study is a welcome addition to the existing studies of early modern culture and society and will open new doors into studying the marginal, the silenced and the invisible in culture and in literature.”—Iman Sheeha, Review of English Studies

Separation Scenes: Domestic Drama in Early Modern England by Ann C. Christensen

Separation Scenes demonstrates how domestic drama played an active, dynamic, and critical role in deliberating the costs of commercial travel as it disrupted domestic conduct and prompted realignments within the home.

At the First Table: Food and Social Identity in Early Modern Spain by Jodi Campbell

“This excellent work of scholarship, the fruit of much research in the National Historical Archive of Spain and the Biblioteca Nacional, should be acquired by university libraries, particularly those with strong history collections.”—D. C. Kierdorf, CHOICE

Courage and Grief: Women and Sweden’s Thirty Years’ War by Mary Elizabeth Ailes

Examining women’s wartime experiences in the Thirty Years’ War enhances our understanding of women’s roles in society, the nature of female power and authority, and the opportunities and hardships that warfare brought to women’s lives.

Producing Early Modern London: A Comedy of Urban Space, 1598–1616 by Kelly J. Stage

“Kelly Stage’s excellent and focused close reading of plays is characteristically insightful, compelling, and provocative while simultaneously illustrating her key thesis about the existential ‘dual gaze’ required by this specific genre of comedy.”—Steven Mullaney, professor of English at the University of Michigan and author of The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare

Forthcoming in January 2019:

• Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World Edited and with an introduction by Patricia Akhimie and Bernadette Andrea