Gender in Early Modern German History: (Past and Present Publications)

Why did parents prosecute their children as witches? Why did a sixteenth-century midwife entice a burgher woman to pretend that she was giving birth to puppies? How did the life of a transsexual woman in early eighteenth-century Hamburg come to its end? This volume presents a range of startling case-studies from German society between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment which make us think in new ways about the meanings of gender and identity in the past and which relates, above all, to the lived experiences of men and women, whose lives and choices mattered. The book argues for approaches to early modern history which point to the complexity of peoples' attitudes, in terms of contemporary experiences of the physical, both emotional and imaginary; of shifting symbolisations of evil, sexual symbolisms, of perceived boundaries between the 'real' and the 'fantastical', family structures and spiritual worlds.

Table of Contents:
Preface; 1. Introduction Ulinka Rublack; Part I. Masculinities: 2. What made a man a man? Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century findings Heide Wunder; 3. Men in witchcraft trials: towards a social anthropology of 'male' understandings of magic and witchcraft Eva Labouvie; Part II. Transgressions: 4. Monstrous deception: midwifery, fraud and gender in early modern Rothenburg ob der Tauber Alison Rowlands; 5. 'Evil imaginings and fantasies': child witches and the end of the witch craze Lyndal Roper; 6. Gender tales: the multiple identities of Maiden Heinrich, Hamburg 1700 Mary Lindemann; 7. Disembodied theory? Discourses of sex in early modern Germany Merry Wiesner; Part III. Politics: 8. Peasant protest and the language of womens' petitions: Christina Vend's supplications of 1629 Renate Blickle; 9. State formation, gender and the experience of governance in early modern Württemberg Ulinka Rublack; Part IV. Religion: 10. Cloistering womens' past: conflicting accounts of enclosure in a seventeenth-century Munich nunnery Ulrike Strasser; 11. Memory, religion and family in the writing of Pietist women Ulrike Gleixner; 12. One body, two confessions: mixed marriages in Germany Dagmar Freist.

About the Author :
Ulinka Rublack is Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St John's College.

Review :
"...[a] multifaceted anthology of solid scholarship, intriguing new historical approaches, and extensive historiography. The editor, together with her ten collaborators, has achieved a scholarly work of wide geographical and chronological scope...This anthology should not only be read by scholars and students of the early modern German period but by early modern Europeanists in general." Renaissance Quarterly "It can only be hoped that this volume will alert those interested in gender and early modern studies to the exciting work being undertaken in the German context." H-GERMAN "Offers a challenging sampling of recent scholarship in German gender history... Recommended." Choice "An extraordinary book that takes monsters and the mundane in stride and is not dry as dust scholarship but infused with life and insight." Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance "Remarkable for uniqueness and depth..." History