Kalamazoo Book Haul - Part 1

These are the books I’m carrying home with me. I’ll blog the ones I had shipped as they arrive. First, books picked up for the Lesbian Historic Motif Project:

Dipiero, Thomas and Pat Gill (eds). 1997. Illicit Sex: Identity Politics in Early Modern Culture. The University of Georgia Press, Athens. ISBN 0-8203-1884-1

• There are only a couple of articles that look relevant, but the book was only $5.

Amtower, Laurel & Dorothea Kehler (eds). 2003. The Single Woman in Medieval and Early Modern England: Her Life and Representation. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe. ISBN 0-86698-306-6

• None of the articles is specifically about same-sex sexuality, but the question of how, when, and where women lived lives outside of heterosexual marriage is always relevant to developing fictional characters with same-sex desires.

Books on women’s lives in history generally:

MacDonald, Joyce Green. 2002. Women and Race in Early Modern Texts. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-81016-7

• Topics relating to the presence and absence of women of color in English drama of the 16-17th century, both in terms of production, representation, and reception.

Erler, Mary C. and Maryanne Kowaleski (eds.) 2003. Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages.

• Studies that look at female power, not as a lesser version of male power, but as acting in different spheres via different mechanisms.

Books picked up for deep background research on everyday life in various historic contexts. (I have a lot of books of this type on my shelves, awaiting their chance to prove their worth.)

Whittle, Jane (ed.). 2017. Servants in Rural Europe 1400-1900. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge. ISBN 978-1-78327-239-6

• Various articles on the titular topic. Mostly studies of systems of employment in particular regions and times.

Swabey, ffiona. 1999. Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Widow’s Household in the Later Middle Ages. Sutton Publishing, Phoenix Mill. ISBN 0-7509-1644-3

• An analysis of the domestic arrangements and economy of one particular English widow of the late 14th and early 15th century. Perhaps an unusual woman in terms of her substantial wealth and properties, but a useful example of a legally independent woman of means in the late medieval era.