Maternal Measures

Prize: Collaborative Projects Award Recipient 2001 for the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women This is an excellent example of the ways in which contemporary women's studies, particularly that of the early modern period, "complicates categories" (to use the title of a recent Berkshire Women's History Convention). Not content simply with what might be termed "conventional" interdisciplinarity--though that is amply present with authors who are specialists in several European literatures, as well as art and music history--the editors have chosen to define their subject in ways that will encourage readers to think across many different types of lines. The essays themselves often draw from a range of written and visual texts, and range from analyses of women's physical experiences in giving or assisting in birth and caring or refusing to care for others, to explorations of the cultural meaning the caregivers and others assigned to such activities. The collection has a large number of artistic and musical images--many of them rarely reproduced--and is a fine initial volume in a welcome new series. Merry Wiesner, Chair, Dept.of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Editor, Sixteenth Century Journal; Author of Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. ’These intelligent, sensitive essays expand our knowledge of mothering both as a social role and as a bodily event. Scrupulously researched, and often elegantly written, they ask us to rethink an identity central to the lives of all early modern women, whether themselves mothers or not. This book should be read by all those working on women in earlier times, and by all those interested in the often awkward, equivocal place of the maternal body in culture.’ Diane Purkiss, Fellow and Tutor in English at Keble College, and University lecturer at Oxford University 'This book is an excellent addition to the work being done on motherhood and on the family in the early modern period.' The Journal for Ear