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In historical records, women appear as widows, sometimes as wives or singlewomen, but one thing they had in common was they all were daughters. Through an examination of the Husting wills, Kate Staples focuses on daughters in the late medieval capital and their chances to own, rent, and manage property. These daughters were provided opportunities to be active economic agents in a world often described as hostile to women. Daughters of London also considers parents’ influence through their bequests to daughters and the visualization of daughters’ household spaces that these bequests allow. By focusing on daughterhood, and particularly urban daughters’ experiences of inheritance, we can refocus the lens through which we see and understand women’s lives in the medieval past
Medieval Work, Worship, and Power: Persuasive and Silenced Voices celebrates Sharon Farmer's significant contributions to the fields of medieval European social, religious, gender, environmental, labor, and interfaith history. This volume explores and builds on Farmer’s influence through 20 chapters organized across five intersecting topics that capture, chronologically, topically, and theoretically, the scope and trajectory of Farmer’s work. These are (1) Saints, Power, and Piety; (2) Gendered Work; (3) Gender and Resource Management; (4) Women’s Agency and Networks; and (5) Interfaith Tensions and Encounters. At the same time, the chapters themselves reflect the ways in which these f...
Provides a completely updated survey of the major issues in gender history from geographical, chronological, and topical perspectives This new edition examines the history of women over thousands of years, studies their interaction with men in a gendered world, and looks at the role of gender in shaping human behavior. It includes thematic essays that offer a broad foundation for key issues such as family, labor, sexuality, race, and material culture, followed by chronological and regional essays stretching from the earliest human societies to the contemporary period. The book offers readers a diverse selection of viewpoints from an authoritative team of international authors and reflects qu...
Contrary to the widespread view that women exercised economic autonomy only in widowhood, Hutton argues that marital status was not the chief determinant of women's economic activities in the mid-fourteenth century and that women managed their own wealth to a far greater extent than previously recognized.
In one of his sermons, the medieval preacher Bernardino of Siena listed seven ’fathers’ to whom one owed obedience: God, one’s natural father, godfather, confessor, benefactor, a government official, and any elderly man. This book seeks to answer the question of why medieval Europeans saw the need for so many ’fathers.’ Why was fatherhood so appealing as a metaphor? Situated at the intersection of social and cultural history, the study draws upon a variety of late-medieval and early-modern sources including witness depositions, personal letters and pedagogical treatises from the city of Basel, Switzerland. It focuses on how people from different walks of life invoked ideas about fa...
Household Goods and Good Households in Late Medieval London looks at how increased consumption in the aftermath of the Black Death reconfigured long-held gender roles and changed the domestic lives of London's merchants and artisans for years to come.
Moving beyond narratives of female suppression, and exploring the critical potential of a diverse, distinguished repertoire, this Companion transforms received understanding of women composers. Organised thematically, and ranging beyond elite, Western genres, it explores the work of diverse female composers from medieval to modern times, besides the familiar headline names. The book's prologue traces the development of scholarship on women composers over the past five decades and the category of 'woman composer' itself. The chapters that follow reveal scenes of flourishing creativity, technical innovation, and (often fleeting) recognition, challenging long-held notions around invisibility and neglect and dismissing clichés about women composers and their work. Leading scholars trace shifting ideas about composers and compositional processes, contributing to a wider understanding of how composers have functioned in history and making this volume essential reading for all students of musical history. In an epilogue, three contemporary composers reflect on their careers and identities.
How dirty were our ancestors, really? Academic history has persuaded us that everyone in the early modern era thought bathing was unhealthy, so they didn't do it. Sweet and Clean? challenges this view, using a range of fascinating evidence to tell a different story about the washing of bodies and scrubbing of clothes in early modern England.
This volume focuses largely on the British Isles, with papers on dress terms in two major works of literature, the Welsh Mabinogion and the Middle English Pearl; a study of a 13th-century royal bride's trousseau.
A detailed study of seventeenth century farming practices and their relevance for today We are today grappling with the consequences of disastrous changes in our farming and food systems. While the problems we face have reached a crisis point, their roots are deep. Even in the seventeenth century, Frances E. Dolan contends, some writers and thinkers voiced their reservations, both moral and environmental, about a philosophy of improvement that rationalized massive changes in land use, farming methods, and food production. Despite these reservations, the seventeenth century was a watershed in the formation of practices that would lead toward the industrialization of agriculture. But it was al...