Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies

Ania Loomba is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Melissa E. Sanchez is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

'Rethinking Feminism offers an unusually candid and crisp account of the challenges that scholars face when they attempt to take "gender," "race," and "sexuality" seriously as equivalent categories of analysis. Collating first-person accounts of academic politics with examples of divergent ways of doing feminism, this collection argues cogently that a robust feminism must theorize its methods and forcefully make points of disagreement visible.Loomba and Sanchez insist that feminism must be vigilantly self-critical about its methods and practices. One of the book’s main contributions lies, in fact, in making scholarship productively uncomfortable.'Wendy Wall, Northwestern University, USA'This vibrant collection models the commitment to debate and contestation that has been the signature of feminist work on the early modern period since the 1980s. Methodologically self-aware, full of new discoveries, and daring both in its expanded deployment and its critique of intersectional analysis, Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies shows why feminism remains a crucial lens through which to explore both the past and the present.' Jean E. Howard, Columbia University, USA‘Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies is a stellar collection of essays that will reshape the future of feminist work on this period. This book is a must read for everyone who works on this period and for anyone invested in the feminist agenda.’ Dympna C. Callaghan, Syracuse University, USA

• Introduction: Why feminism? Why now?, Ania Loomba and Melissa E. Sanchez. Part I Histories: Feminism and the Burdens of History, Ania Loomba and Melissa E. Sanchez; Family Quarrels: Feminist Criticism, Queer Studies, and Shakespeare in the 21st Century, Coppélia Kahn; Tempestuous Transitions and Double Vision: from Early to Late Modern Gendered Performances in Higher Education, Diana Henderson. Part II Methods: ‘First as tragedy, then as…’: Gender, Genre, History, and Romeo and Juliet, Crystal Bartolovich; Shakespeare's Laundry: Feminist Futures in the archive, Natasha Korda; Constructions of Race and Gender in the Two Texts of Othello, Leah Marcus. Part III Bodies: ‘Travelling bodyes’: Native Women of the Northeast and Northwest Passage Ventures and English Discourses of Empire, Bernadette Andrea; Moral Constitution: Elizabeth Carey’s Tragedy of Mariam and the Color of Blood, Kimberly Anne Coles; Gertrude/Ophelia: Feminist Intermediality, Ekphrasis, and Tenderness in Hamlet, Sujata Iyengar. Part IV Agency: Samson’s Gospel of Sex: Failed Universals in Milton and Freud, Richard Halpern; Chasing Chastity: the Case of Desdemona, Will Stockton; Whose Body?, Kathryn Schwarz. Afterword: Early Modern (Feminist) Methods, Valerie Traub.