Jennifer Topale (Kutztown University)

Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own imagines Shakespeare’s plays being written by Judith, a fabricated sister of Shakespeare, who had escaped an arranged marriage, and turned playwright. Woolf’s text proposes that women need private spaces to write, but this view implies that women during the early modern period were not already prolifically writing, which is not true. Many women during the early modern period were writing and publishing texts across genre, often engaging in political, religious, and social discourse that attempted to revolutionize their societies. Unfortunately, many of these women were excluded from the cannon, thereby limiting access to their writings, because often their writings did not fit the genre definitions of the nineteenth century. Though recent scholarship has worked diligently to add these women back into the cannon, much more work needs to be done to integrate them more fully into academic spaces.

This panel will investigate the lives and writings of early modern women, especially those engaging in reform and resistance across literature, politics, religion, and gender normative expectations. Though research on any early modern woman writer is sought, exploration which considers women more globally, beyond England, is highly encouraged. Some possible topics include, but are not limited to the following: political and religious dissenters, outcasts and exiles, female coteries & writing circles, and multi-genre/hybrid writing.

This panel will investigate the lives and writings of early modern women, especially those engaging in reform and resistance across literature, politics, religion, and gender normative expectations. Though research on any early modern woman writer is sought, exploration which considers women more globally, beyond England, is highly encouraged.