Susan Broomhall – författare

Analysing a series of narratives that described women who transformed the worlds they lived in, this book introduces students and scholars to the lives of the women of Joseon Korea 1550-1700. Exploring their interactions both at home and abroad, this book shows how the agency of these women reached far across the globe.

The narratives explored here appeared in a wide range of written, visual and material forms, from woodcuts and printed texts, letters, journals, and chronicles to inscriptions on monuments, and were produced by Joseon’s elite officials, grieving families, Japanese civic administrators, Jesuit missionaries, local historians of the Japanese ceramic industry, and men of the Dutch East India Company. The women whose voices, lives, and actions were presented in these texts lived during a time when Joseon Korea was undergoing substantial social, political, and cultural changes. Their works described women’s capacity to transform, in ways large and small, themselves, their families, and society around them. Interest in such women was not limited to a readership within the kingdom alone in this period but was reported across transnational networks to a global audience, from Japan to Europe, carrying messages about Korean women’s agency far and wide.

Encounter, Transformation, and Agency in a Connected World: Narratives of Korean Women, 1550-1700 is essential reading for students and scholars interested in the history of Joseon Korea and Asia and the history of women in the early modern period more broadly.

Analysing a series of narratives that described women who transformed the worlds they lived in, this book introduces students and scholars to the lives of the women of Joseon Korea 1550-1700. Exploring their interactions both at home and abroad, this book shows how the agency of these women reached far across the globe.

The narratives explored here appeared in a wide range of written, visual and material forms, from woodcuts and printed texts, letters, journals, and chronicles to inscriptions on monuments, and were produced by Joseon’s elite officials, grieving families, Japanese civic administrators, Jesuit missionaries, local historians of the Japanese ceramic industry, and men of the Dutch East India Company. The women whose voices, lives, and actions were presented in these texts lived during a time when Joseon Korea was undergoing substantial social, political, and cultural changes. Their works described women’s capacity to transform, in ways large and small, themselves, their families, and society around them. Interest in such women was not limited to a readership within the kingdom alone in this period but was reported across transnational networks to a global audience, from Japan to Europe, carrying messages about Korean women’s agency far and wide.

Encounter, Transformation, and Agency in a Connected World: Narratives of Korean Women, 1550-1700 is essential reading for students and scholars interested in the history of Joseon Korea and Asia and the history of women in the early modern period more broadly.

This innovative collection examines how European queens participated in the conceptualisation, mobilisation, and transformation of ‘natural resources’ from the fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century.

Early modern queens interacted with human and nonhuman worlds through natural resource management activities that have rarely been the focus of sustained historical analysis. This volume engages with the wide range of nonhuman materials, living and inanimate, that premodern queens had the power to direct and dispose of, to utilise, enjoy, and commercialise, to visualise and commemorate, and even to destroy, on and in their lands, forests, waterways, and oceans. Both queenship and natural resource management were configured by contemporary gender ideologies, which structured a dynamic relationship between queenship and the more-than-human world. The case studies in this collection explore how queens’ natural resource management was impacted by their cultural and personal contexts, particularly their changing status as queens regnant, consort, dowager, or regent. The contributors draw on diverse materials and employ a variety of historical approaches—including political, economic, cultural, literary, legal, and animal studies—to demonstrate how queens interacted with the nonhuman world and how their engagements were embedded in premodern gender rules.

This collection will be of great value for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and scholars, in gender and women’s history, environmental history, queenship studies, and early modern studies.

This innovative collection examines how European queens participated in the conceptualisation, mobilisation, and transformation of ‘natural resources’ from the fifteenth to the end of the eighteenth century.

Early modern queens interacted with human and nonhuman worlds through natural resource management activities that have rarely been the focus of sustained historical analysis. This volume engages with the wide range of nonhuman materials, living and inanimate, that premodern queens had the power to direct and dispose of, to utilise, enjoy, and commercialise, to visualise and commemorate, and even to destroy, on and in their lands, forests, waterways, and oceans. Both queenship and natural resource management were configured by contemporary gender ideologies, which structured a dynamic relationship between queenship and the more-than-human world. The case studies in this collection explore how queens’ natural resource management was impacted by their cultural and personal contexts, particularly their changing status as queens regnant, consort, dowager, or regent. The contributors draw on diverse materials and employ a variety of historical approaches—including political, economic, cultural, literary, legal, and animal studies—to demonstrate how queens interacted with the nonhuman world and how their engagements were embedded in premodern gender rules.

This collection will be of great value for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and scholars, in gender and women’s history, environmental history, queenship studies, and early modern studies.