Humoral Wombs on the Shakespearean Stage

Amy Kenny is Visiting Assistant Professor at University of California, Riverside, USA. She holds a PhD in Early Modern Literature and Culture from the University of Sussex and has worked as Research Coordinator at Shakespeare’s Globe, where she was chief dramaturg for 15 productions and conducted over 80 interviews with actors and directors as part of an archival resource for future scholarship.  She has published on dramaturgy, performance of laughter, the senses, and disease in Shakespeare.

“Humoral Wombs offers multiple points of entry for those of us interested in pregnancy, the medical humanities, and early modern staging of female bodies. … Humoral Wombs is a labor of love for those of us invested in critical theory and cultural studies because Kenny has offered us a more detailed point of entry into the historical documents available to us. … Those of us interested in pregnancy would do well to read and cite Humoral Wombs … .” (Alicia Andrzejewski, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 75 (1), 2022)

• 1. Introduction: the early modern womb.- 2. The green womb.- 3. The thick womb.- 4. The fertile womb.- 5. The monstrous womb.- 6. The tomb womb.- 7. The male womb.- 8. Coda: The exonerated womb.