The Birth of Feminism - Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England

An experiment in collective biography and intellectual history, The Birth of Feminism focuses on nineteen learned women from the middle ranks of society who rose to prominence in the world of Italian and English letters between 1400 and 1680. Drawing both on archival material—wills, letters, and manuscript compositions, some presented here for the first time—and on printed writings, Ross gives us an unprecedented sense of educated early modern women’s lives.

French Religious Wars 1562 - 98

The eight French Wars of Religion began in 1562 and lasted for 36 years. Although the wars were fought between Catholics and Protestants, this books draws out in full the equally important struggle for power between the king and the leading nobles, and the rivalry between the nobles themselves as they vied for control of the king. In a time when human life counted for little, the destruction reached its height in the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre when up to 10,000 Protestants lost their lives.

Identity and Agency in English Society 1500 - 1800

This collection of essays is arranged around the central issue raised by this raft of new empirical research--the relationship between social identity, or the "vision of the self," and the ways in which this can explain historical agency. If identities in early modern society were multiple, complex, and dependent on context, rather than homogenous, consistent, or easily determined, then it is difficult to make simple causal links to behavior. This collection aims to make innovative new research on the structures of English society available to the wider scholarly audience.

Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy - The Hospital of Treviso 1400 - 1530

Civic Christianity in Renaissance Italy explores the often subtle and sometimes harsh realities of life on the Venetian mainland. Focusing on the confraternity of Santa Maria dei Battuti and its Ospedale, the book addresses a number of well-established and newly articulated historiographical questions: the governance of territorial states, the civic and religious role of confraternities, the status of women and marginalized groups, and popular religious devotion. Adapting the objectives and methods of microhistory, D'Andrea has written neither a traditional history of political subjugation nor a straightforward survey of poor relief.

Spaces, Objects and Identities in Early Modern Italian Medicine

This collection, by an international team of scholars, presents exciting examples of research currently being undertaken on early modern Italy which question the conventional boundaries of medical history. It brings together historians of medicine and scholars of different backgrounds who are re-visiting the field with new questions and unexplored sources. By exploring crucial areas of intersection between the territory of medicine and that of law, politics, religion, art and material culture, their work highlights the connections between these apparently separate fields and challenges our understanding of what we regard as medical activities, medical identities, spaces and objects.