All Things Women
Find your focus and strengths in times of crisis.
View Rights PortalWhile there is increasing interest in the lives of medieval women, the documentary evidence for their activities remains little known. This book provides a collection of sources for an important and influential group of women in medieval England, and examines changes in their role and activities between 1066 and 1500. For most noble and gentry-women, early marriage led to responsibilities for family and household, and, in the absence of their husbands, for the family estates and retainers. Widowhood enabled them to take control of their affairs and to play an independent part in the local community and sometimes further afield. Although many women's lives followed a conventional pattern, great variety existed within family relationships, and individuality can also be seen in religious practices and patronage. Piety could take a number of different forms, whether a woman became a nun, a vowess or a noted philanthropist and benefactor to religious institutions. This volume provides a broad-ranging and accessible coverage of the role of noble women in medieval society. It highlights the significant role played by these women within their families, households, estates and communities.
Essays in this fascinating and important collection examine the lifestyles and attitudes of the gentry in late medieval England. They consider the emergence of the gentry as a group distinct from the nobility, and explore the various available routes to gentility. Through surveys of the gentry's military background, administrative and political roles, social behaviour, and education, the reader is provided with an overview of how the group's culture evolved, and how it was disseminated. Studies of the gentry's literacy, creation and use of literature, cultural networks, religious activities and their experiences of music and the visual arts more directly address the practice and expression of this culture, exploring the extent to which the gentry's activities were different from those of the wider population. Joining the editors in contributing essays to this collection is an impressive array of eminent scholars, all specialists in their respective fields: Christine Carpenter, Peter Fleming, Maurice Keen, Philippa Maddern, Nicholas Orme, Tim Shaw, Thomas Tolley and Deborah Youngs. As a whole, the book offers a broad view of gentry culture that explores, reassesses, and sometimes even challenges the idea that members of the gentry cultivated their own distinctive cultural identity. It will appeal to students looking for a comprehensive introduction to late medieval gentry culture, as well as to researchers interested in gentry studies more generally. ;
This book provides a detailed analysis of women's involvement in litigation and other legal actions within their local communities in late-medieval England. It draws upon the rich records of three English towns - Nottingham, Chester and Winchester - and their courts to bring to life the experiences of hundreds of women within the systems of local justice. Through comparison of the records of three towns, and of women's roles in different types of legal action, the book reveals the complex ways in which individual women's legal status could vary according to their marital status, different types of plea and the town that they lived in. At this lowest level of medieval law, women's status was malleable, making each woman's experience of justice unique.
Exile, its pain and possibility, is the starting point of this book. Women's experience of exile was often different from that of men, yet it has not received the important attention it deserves. Women in exile in early modern Europe and the Americas addresses that lacuna through a wide-ranging geographical, chronological, social and cultural approach. Whether powerful, well-to-do or impoverished, exiled by force or choice, every woman faced the question of how to reconstruct her life in a new place. These essays focus on women's agency despite the pressures created by political, economic and social dislocation. Collectively, they demonstrate how these women from different countries, continents and status groups not only survived but also in many cases thrived. This analysis of early modern women's experiences not only provides a new vantage point from which to enrich the study of exile but also contributes important new scholarship to the history of women.
Based on the original and authoritative Revels texts, Plays on women brings together four plays which dramatise the lives of women in Shakespeare's England The only available anthology focusing on women and including the four plays most often discussed. . . . ;
How has it happened that from being politely ignored or marginalized just half a century ago, women writers in Italy are now at the centre of literary activity? To what extent does writing by women reflect the successes and failures of Italy in the post-war period? What form did the feminist movement in Italy take, and how did this affect what - and how - women wrote? And how are women who write responding to a more fragmented post-modern age? These are just some of the questions asked of the relationship between women and fiction in post-war Italy in this anthology. It includes stories by Cialente, Ginzburg, Ortese, Morante, Romano, Maraini and Duranti as well as Bompiani, Sanvitale, Mizzau, Scaramuzzino, Capriolo and Petrignani. The thirteen stories presented offer a range of style and content indicative of the wealth and diversity of writing by women, and their reading is supported by critical notes and an extensive vocabulary. This is a clear and challenging introduction to the rich field of women and fiction in Italy. ;
Iraqi women in Denmark is an ethnographic study of ritual performance and place-making among Shi'a Muslim Iraqi women in Copenhagen. The book explores how Iraqi women construct a sense of belonging to Danish society through ritual performances, and investigates how this process is interrelated with their experiences of inclusion and exclusion in Denmark. The findings refute the all too simplistic assumptions of general debates on Islam and immigration in Europe that tend to frame religious practice as an obstacle to integration in the host society. In sharp contrast to the fact that the Iraqi women's religious activities in many ways contribute to categorising them as outsiders to Danish society, their participation in religious events also localises them in the city. Written in an accessible, narrative style, this book addresses both an academic audience and the general reader interested in Islam in Europe and immigration to Scandinavia. ;
Popular Victorian women writers considers a diverse group of women writers within the Victorian literary marketplace. It looks at authors such as Ellen Wood, Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton and Charlotte Yonge as well as less well-known writers including Jessie Fothergill and Eliza Meteyard. Each essay sets the individual author within her biographical and literary context and provides refreshing insights into their work. Together they bring the work of largely unknown authors and new perspectives on known authors to critical and public attention. Accessible and informative, the book is ideal for students of Victorian literature and culture as well as tutors and scholars of the period. ;
This is the first book to consider the difference women MPs make for women constituents in Britain by comparing women parliamentarians' activities, priorities and perceptions to those of their male colleagues. It uncovers complicated gender dynamics that have been neglected in other works because of an exclusive focus on the activities of women MPs, and mounts a systematic challenge to the idea that a critical mass of women is necessary for women's presence to matter. By comparing the representation received by women from a parliament with few women to that received from a parliament with many women, Anna Dionne leads the reader to understand why numbers are not magic. Her empirical research includes interviews with over eighty parliamentarians in London, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the amassing of an unprecedented and comprehensive database of representatives' legislative activities. She compares how men and women and different political parties introduce and support bills and motions, ask parliamentary questions, participate in committee and floor debates, and work behind the scenes for cross-party consensus and on constituency casework. The analysis considers gender similarities and differences throughout the policy process and explains the gender dynamics with a new sensitivity to their fluctuation. ;
This volume examines the films of Hispanic and Lusophone women filmmakers from the 1930s to the present day. It establishes productive connections between film practices across these geographical areas by identifying common areas of concern on the part of these female filmmakers. Focusing on aesthetic, theoretical and socio-historical analyses, it questions the manifest or latent gender and sexual politics that inform and structure the emerging cinematic productions by women filmmakers in Portugal, Spain, Latin America and the US. With a combination of scholars from the UK, the US, Spain and Latin America, the volume documents and interprets a fascinating corpus of films made by Hispanic and Lusophone women and proposes research strategies and methodologies that can expand our understanding of socio-cultural and psychic constructions of gender and sexual politics. An essential resource to rethink notions of gender identity and subjectivity, it is a unique contribution to Spanish and Latin American Film Studies and Film Studies. ;
This volume examines the films of Hispanic and Lusophone women filmmakers from the 1930s to the present day. It establishes productive connections between film practices across these geographical areas by identifying common areas of concern on the part of these female filmmakers. Focusing on aesthetic, theoretical and socio-historical analyses, it questions the manifest or latent gender and sexual politics that inform and structure the emerging cinematic productions by women filmmakers in Portugal, Spain, Latin America and the US. With a combination of scholars from the UK, the US, Spain and Latin America, the volume documents and interprets a fascinating corpus of films made by Hispanic and Lusophone women and proposes research strategies and methodologies that can expand our understanding of socio-cultural and psychic constructions of gender and sexual politics. An essential resource to rethink notions of gender identity and subjectivity, it is a unique contribution to Spanish and Latin American Film Studies and Film Studies.
This book is about the lives of refugee women in Britain and France. Who are they? Where do they come from? What happens to them when they arrive, while they wait for a decision on their claim for asylum, and after the decision, whether positive or negative? It shows how laws and processes designed to meet the needs of men fleeing political persecution often fail to protect women from persecution in their home countries and fail to meet their needs during and after the decision-making process. It portrays refugee women as resilient, resourceful and potentially active participants in British and French social, political and cultural life. It exposes the obstacles that make active participation difficult. The book is an authoritative and thorough synthesis of all available material on refugee women in Britain and France. The style is accessible and highly readable, making this an ideal book for academics, students and interested readers. ;
In Germany, 132 women were murdered by their (ex-)partners over the past year, according to police statistics. An attempted murder happened every other day – the real figure is in all probability much higher. Julia Cruschwitz and Carolin Haentjes unveil their book on femicides in Germany with research from interviews with academics, criminologists, police officers, social workers, lawyers, survivors, witnesses and relatives and their analysis of scientific reports. Their work highlights how the issue of femicides affects the whole of society, but there are sensible ways to protect women more effectively from male violence. All we must do is take steps to follow these.
At once pervasive and marginal, appealing and repellent, exemplary and atypical, the women of the Bible provoke an assortment of readings across early modern literature. Biblical women in early modern literary culture, 1550-1700 draws attention to the complex ways in which biblical women's narratives could be reimagined for a variety of rhetorical and religious purposes. Considering a confessionally diverse range of writers, working across a variety of genres, this volume reveals how women from the Old and New Testaments exhibit an ideological power that frequently exceeds, both in scope and substance, their associated scriptural records. The essays explore how the Bible's women are fluidly negotiated and diversely redeployed to offer (conflicting) comment on issues including female authority, speech and sexuality, and in discussions of doctrine, confessional politics, exploration and grief. As it explores the rich ideological currency of the Bible's women in early modern culture, this volume demonstrates that the Bible's women are persistently difficult to evade. ;
This extensively illustrated book discusses the representation of women in the art of the late Middle Ages in Northern Europe. Drawing on a wide range of different media, but making particular use of the rich plethora of woodcuts, the author charts how the images of women changed during the period and proposes two basic categories - the Virgin and Eve, good and evil. Within these, however, we discover attitudes to sinful, foolish, married and unmarried women and the style and use of these images exposes the full extent of the misogyny entrenched in medieval society. ;
Women before the court offers an innovative, comparative approach to the study of women's legal rights during a formative period of Anglo-American history. It traces how colonists transplanted English legal institutions to America, examines the remarkable depth of women's legal knowledge and shows how the law increasingly undermined patriarchal relationships between parents and children, masters and servants, husbands and wives. The book will be of interest to scholars of Britain and colonial America, and to laypeople interested in how women in the past navigated and negotiated the structures of authority that governed them. It is packed with fascinating stories that women related to the courts in cases ranging from murder and abuse to debt and estate litigation. Ultimately, it makes a remarkable contribution to our understandings of law, power and gender in the early modern world.
Women, the arts and globalization: Eccentric experience is the first anthology to bring transnational feminist theory and criticism together with women's art practices to discuss the connections between aesthetics, gender and identity in a global world. The essays in Women, the Arts and Globalization demonstrate that women in the arts are rarely positioned at the centre of the art market, and the movement of women globally (as travelers or migrants, empowered artists/scholars or exiled practitioners), rarely corresponds with the dominant models of global exchange. Rather, contemporary women's art practices provide a fascinating instance of women's eccentric experiences of the myriad effects of globalization. Bringing scholarly essays on gender, art and globalization together with interviews and autobiographical accounts of personal experiences, the diversity of the book is relevant to artists, art historians, feminist theorists and humanities scholars interested in the impact of globalization on culture in the broadest sense. ;
Starting with a critique of existing methodologies and histories of the period, this book examines the production of women artists, looking at different areas and aspects of their activities, and particularly contrasting the lives of different generations of women artists. Many of these women's names or their works are not familiar in art histories of the twentieth century. The book analyses how women artists' presence which was consistently one third of the artists in many major exhibiting groups became less than 10% of the museum purchases and in art historical texts for this period. Comparisons are made between the opportunities presented to women artists and those of their male peers in the light of considerable change and restructuring within the art world in Britain during this period, principally due to the growing influence of modernism in the art market. ;