Introduction

The present issue brings together articles concerning a diversity of women’s experiences, activities, and representations in various early modern sites. The articles reflect as well EMWJ’s ongoing commitment to publishing the work of scholars from different fields and with wide-ranging interests. Thus, we offer here articles written by scholars of education, sport, culture, and art.

We begin with Jennifer Haraguchi’s discussion of the transformation of pedagogical sites from convent to lay conservatories in eighteenth-century Tuscany. Although the shift was accomplished by Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, his method closely followed those that the educator Eleonora Ramirez di Montalvo had pioneered over a century earlier when she successfully established lay conservatories in Florence. Joy Wiltenburg takes up a subject that may, at first, seem difficult to approach historically: laughter. Her work also has pedagogical implications by investigating how societies set “proper” standards for when — or when not — to laugh. Drawing on a variety of sources, but particularly on legal cases and writings by both men and women, she examines what constitutes transgressive laughter. Her deep readings of these cases and texts allow her to tease out the ways in which these texts negotiate gendered social identities and reveal relations of power.

The history of sport in the early modern world is still in its infancy and we are especially pleased to be publishing a path-breaking contribution to the field. Peter Radford’s innovative work investigates the rarely discussed topic of athleticism among early modern women in Britain. An Olympic track medalist himself, as well as a historian of sport, Radford brings unique expertise to his subject. In examining a series of local sporting events, he demonstrates that women ran, boxed, threw, and pioneered at football several years ahead of men. Equally innovative is the project to anchor European images in global contexts by Rebecca Brienen, who re-examines the well-known figure of Joanna in John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Suriname (1796). Reading this representation alongside that in an earlier travel narrative, Brienen discusses the contradictory nature of the iconographic type that at once sexualized and denied the maternity of mulatto women.

Naomi Miller’s essay on the relationship between early modern text and modern performance of plays by Mary Wroth and Margaret Cavendish continues the conversation begun in Volume 9, which featured a cluster of performance and DVD reviews. The five reviews that follow examine classic and recent films on early modern women in England, France, Spain, and Japan for their educational and historical value. Rounding out this issue, three reviews of recent exhibitions — in Berlin, The Hague, and Tokyo — analyze the women presented as rulers, consorts, courtly figures, and artists.

As always, we are very grateful to our reviewers and referees for their time and expertise. Their generosity makes possible for us to bring to our readers an exciting range of articles and an extensive collection of book reviews that demonstrate the present robust state of interdisciplinary scholarship on early modern women.