11 Feb 2022
By Katherine McKenna
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February 2022 – Of Fishwives and Politics, Then and Now

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Carrie F. Klaus for the SSEMWG Blog On February 2, 2021, as she prepared to address France’s National Assembly during a debate over extending the state of emergency declared in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Mathilde Panot, a representative of the Val-de-Marne district just outside Paris, heard the words “folle” (madwoman) and “poissonnière” (fishwife) launched at her by another delegate. In a tweet the next morning, she posted a video of the incident, called out the sexist slurs, and demanded an apology and a sanction. She also sent a formal letter to the President of the Assembly. In the tweeted…
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11 Aug 2021
By Katherine McKenna
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A Discussion with Dr. Wiesner-Hanks

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August 2021 Interviewer: Dr. Katherine McKenna                            Discussant: Dr. Merry Wiesner-Hanks Welcome back to the SSEMWG Blog and the Founding Mothers project page. Founding Mothers is an open-access digital history project dedicated to exploring the Society's origin and evolution. It also aims to illuminate the larger disciplinary history of Renaissance women’s studies in the American academy while forging lasting connections between premodern scholars at all career levels. In this post, Blog Editor Katherine McKenna interviews Merry Wiesner-Hanks about the Society's formation, her seminal contributions to the field of…
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21 Jun 2021
By Katherine McKenna
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A Discussion with Dr. Georgianna Ziegler

Founding Mothers
June 2021 Interviewer: Tanya Schmidt                                            Discussant: Dr. Georgianna Ziegler Welcome to the SSEMWG Blog! In today’s post, Tanya Schmidt, a PhD student in English at New York University, interviews Georgianna Ziegler about the Society’s formation, her work at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and her current scholarship on women book owners. Dr. Ziegler is the Louis B. Thalheimer Associate Librarian and Head of Reference Emerita at the Folger. She is also the recipient of the Society’s 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award.…
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17 Feb 2021
By Katherine McKenna
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Letter from the President: EMWJ Moves to University of Chicago Press

Announcements
Dear Colleagues, I am pleased to share with you some exciting news from the Society for the Study of Women and Gender. On July 1, SSEWMG will become the owner of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal. For several years, we have wanted a more formal relationship with the journal, so this meets an organizational goal. When we take ownership, the journal will move to the University of Chicago Press Journals Division, effective with Volume 16, Issue 1 (Fall 2021). We are delighted that the current editors, Bernadette Andrea (University of California, Santa Barbara), Julie Campbell (Eastern Illinois University) and…
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26 Jan 2021
By Katherine McKenna
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Book Announcement: Convent Networks in Early Modern Italy (ed. Marilyn Dunn and Saundra Weddle)

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Marilyn Dunn and Saundra Weddle, ed., Convent Networks in Early Modern Italy, Europa Sacra (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2020). Although many monastic communities of women had previously separated themselves from the earthly and mundane realms as an aid to spiritual devotion, Pope Boniface VIII famously and definitively declared in his 1298 decretal, Periculoso, that all nuns were to be perpetually cloistered. In keeping with this regulation, the walls of early modern convents came to suggest the existence of absolute conditions, but these seldom existed in reality. While the built enclosure communicated the convent’s supposed isolation from the secular world, connections between…
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15 Dec 2020
By Katherine McKenna
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Book Announcement – Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy, by Sharon Strocchia

Book Announcement – Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy, by Sharon Strocchia

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Sharon T. Strocchia, Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019) One of the most striking features to emerge from recent studies of Renaissance medicine is the sheer diversity of female practitioners who anchored a wider medical economy. Thanks to a growing body of scholarship, we know that women from northern Europe to the Mediterranean basin permeated every aspect of healthcare services between 1400 and 1700. The household remained the primary locus of care well into the eighteenth century, despite the proliferation of hospitals and other charitable institutions. Women from…
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30 Nov 2020
By Katherine McKenna
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November 2020 – Early Modern Women’s Letter Writing and the Desire for In-person Contact

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Adriana (Guarro) Romero for the SSEMWG Blog “In-person contact is like a drug,” I texted my brother after a successful socially distanced dinner with my parents in late April. It was the first time I had seen anyone besides my husband since California instated a stay-at-home order in mid-March to curb the spread of COVID-19. My husband and I brought over a pizza, and in the middle of the long driveway leading up to my parents’ townhouse, we set up chairs ten feet apart from each other, wore masks, and talked for two hours. Although we had previously communicated with…
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