Calls for Book or Chapter Proposals on ‘Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550 – 1700’.

Vernon Press invites book proposals on the theme: ‘Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550 – 1700,’ for our book series in History. All areas of study, with a common goal of representing the creation, exchange, and reception of literature written by women in the early modern period, are encouraged to submit, including disciplines such as Women’s Studies, Art, and Music.

The early modern era can be considered a pivotal period in feminist awareness (Ostovich and Sauer, 2004), due in part to increasing levels of female literacy. Writing, reading, and printing afforded women the freedom to negotiate individual performances and social forms of agency in public, allowing them to start navigating a previously male-dominated sphere.

Although regulated by social and religious codes, women’s practices of devotional reading, writing, and dissemination are considered key to both an understanding of the Reformation and the female condition in the early modern period.  

The scope of the present call is broad. All issues stemming from the transmission and translation of female-authored texts to the self-fashioning of the female self will be considered. Possible topics include (non-comprehensive list):

• The notion of authorship
• The emergence of the female writer and the fashioning of the female self
• The effect of gender on the reception and/ or circulation of texts
• Cross-cultural encounters: the circulation of texts, ideas, and reputations across national and linguistic boundaries
• Physiology of reading: Readerly consumption as an active, transformative process.
• Women as patrons
• The role of mediators, collaborators, and publishers
• Women religious: female writers and religion
• Visual and/ or textual representation of female writers

Deadline for proposals: February 25^th 2019

How to submit your proposal

Please submit one-page monograph proposals at submissions@vernonpress.com or carolina.sanchez@vernonpress.com, including an annotated summary/motivation, a short biographical note and (if applicable) a list of similar titles. Proposals that treat other topics of relevance to the series in History are also welcome. More information on what we look for in a proposal is available on our website.

About the publisher

Vernon Press is an independent publisher of scholarly books in the social sciences and humanities. We work closely with authors, academic associations, distributors, and library information specialists to identify and develop high quality, high impact titles. Recent and forthcoming titles in this series include Cultural Encounters: Cross-disciplinary studies from the Late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment and Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist and European.

More information on  www.vernonpress.com

References

Bourke, E., (2017) ‘Female Involvement, Membership, and Centrality: A Social Network Analysis of the Hartlib Circle’, Literature Compass: The Seventeenth Century, vol.14, no. 4.

Maxwell, F., (2017) ‘Calling for Collaboration: Women and Public Service in Dorothy Moore’s Transnational Protestant Correspondence’, Literature Compass: The Seventeenth Century, vol.14, no. 4.

Ostovich, H., and E. Sauer (eds.), (2004) Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print, 1550-1700, Routledge: London