HIST 354: Amazons and Viragos: Gender and Power in Early Modern Europe (HC)

This study presents a restoration of the agency and influence of free African-descended women in 17th century Mexico through their traces in archives. It places these women at the nexus of questions about religion, commerce, and the law in colonial Mexico.

What did it mean to be a 'go-between' in the early modern world? How were such figures perceived in 16th and 17th century England? And what effect did their movement between countries - whether enforced or voluntary - have on identity? The 24 case studies of individuals profile 9 women.

This book views evocations of blackness in the contexts of sexual politics, imperialism, and slavery in early modern England. The study reveals the vital link between England's colonial expansion and the highly charged ideas of race and gender which emerged.

Joyce Green MacDonald discusses the links between women's racial, sexual, and civic identities in early modern texts. She examines the scarcity of African women in English plays of the 16th and 17th centuries, the racial identity of the women in the drama and also that of the women who watched and sometimes wrote the plays. Coverage also includes texts from the late 14th to the early18th centuries.