Introduction

In this issue, the notions of agency and mobility go hand-in-hand, with articles focusing on women who through verbal agency and physical mobility influence personal and political situations. First, in "A Communal Affair: Women, Captivity, and Redemption in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean," Erica Heinsen-Roach examines how Dutch and Algerian women were involved in petitioning for the release of their captured and enslaved seafaring male relatives during the 1700s when corsairs roamed the Mediterranean. This form of privateering resulted in the captivity of around three million Christians and Muslims, and the women left behind frequently played crucial roles in the redemption of their loved ones as they petitioned authorities and moved about their communities to raise funds for ransoms. Next, Carrie Klaus analyzes the verbal dexterity and political influence of women's voices in "Eloquence Unchained: Women, Poetry, and Politics during the Fronde." Examining the verse of Charlotte Hénault, Renée de Monterbault Bouju, and Marie Ducosso, Klaus argues that these women engaged in the political upheaval of France by exercising their agency through the spread of their published works, offering eloquent, persuasive verse that illustrates their critical views of current events. In the process, they rallied support for the Fronde, the series of French civil wars occurring between 1648 and 1653. Finally, in "'Meerly My Own Free Agent': Liberty and Civility in Mary Carleton's The Case of Madam Mary Carleton," Kristina Lucenko considers the curious case of Mary Moders, also called Mary Carleton, who impersonated a landed German aristocrat named Maria de Wolway (among others). Lucenko notes that Carleton's self-defense regarding the Wolway episode was "enabled by increased political participation of a range of women during the English Civil War and echoes important claims made by women asserting their rights, despite prescriptive texts and laws that limited the rights and status of English wives." This political mobility for women, in tandem with Carleton's appropriation of aristocratic values, provided her "performativity of status" that allowed her words to circulate throughout coffeehouse society, and to declare herself her own "Free Agent." In all three articles, we gain insights into the impacts of women's collective agency in times of crisis and political upheaval.

Despite perceptions of women's mobility as threatening to the social and gender orders, then, early modern women of all races, classes, and religions did not remain in their prescribed places. This issue's forum contributions examine the intersections of mobility, race, and culture through the experiences of a Cherokee woman's journey into colonial Charleston, a Eurasian woman's attempt to leave her husband in Cochin, and a Polish woman's view of the harems of Constantinople. However, even less dramatic journeys demonstrated the complications of women's mobility. Our authors analyze the ways that poor women moved through English parishes and prostitutes crossed Venice's canals. They consider failed attempts to prevent English Catholic women from visiting their imprisoned husbands and French women dramatists' juxtaposition of agency and mobility. New forms of transportation, such as the stagecoach, heightened social anxiety as they increased women's mobility. As a whole, this forum highlights early modern women's physical dynamism and the complicated reactions to their mobility.

As always, we have a full array of reviews across a wide range of disciplines, covering women scientists, historical women from the highest to lowest levels of society, women writers in a range of genres, and women artists and patrons of the arts. Our geographic range continues to expand, with reviews on Ottoman, Greek, Jewish, and Mesoamerican women during the early modern era, in addition to reviews on English, Italian, and French women. This issue features four performance reviews, with plays by and about early modern women, along with a review of the recently recorded motets of the seventeenth-century composer Bianca Maria Meda. We encourage our readers to contact us with information about performances or exhibitions related to early modern women for review in future issues.