The editors of the volume in progress, _Mary Astell: Gender, Reason,
Faith_, propose to move the study of Astell to a mature phase, and to
accommodate a variety of disciplinary perspectives so that the broad
span of Astell's work can be understood in its manifold contexts. The
editors of the volume are soliciting essays not only on Astell's
already canonized works, but on the full range of her political,
theological, philosophical, and poetic writings. The volume, however,
will not eschew the more traditional scholarly interest in Astell's
concerns about gender; rather, it aspires to reveal how Astell's
reflections on gender were always mediated through her diverse set of
convictions. The variety of her commitments, as well as the intricacies
and contradictions of her work, once seen as merely an indication of her
distance from contemporary feminist perspectives, now attests to a
corpus which requires attention not merely for its role in the
development of early modern feminism, but also for its interventions on
subjects ranging from political authority to individual agency, from
political eros to divine service, from civil war historiography to
Lockean epistemology. _Mary Astell: Gender, Reason, Faith_ aims to
continue the project initiated by Ruth Perry: that is, to bestow upon
Astell the attention which she deserves--not merely as a
proto-feminist, but as a major figure of the early modern period.

500 word abstracts to the editors, William Kolbrener and Michelle
Michelson, by October 5 to maryastell_at_hotmail.com; submissions by summer
2004.

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Received on Wed Aug 06 2003 - 20:19:31 EDT