This panel invites papers that examine how early modern women were imagined and represented across genres and cultural contexts. From historical figures to literary characters, how were women positioned in relation to authority, virtue, sexuality, or empire?  How were women written, circulated, obscured, or celebrated in early modern texts? What roles did women play in shaping narratives of gender, race, and power? This panel welcomes work that attends to both the forms of representation and the structures that produced or obscured women’s presence in the early modern world. What kinds of authority or ambivalence did gendered figures carry, and how did race, class, and empire shape their depiction or erasure?

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Representations of women in literature, historiography, or polemic

• Gendered figures as vehicles for moral, political, or cultural meaning

• Racialized and imperial discourses shaping depictions of women

• The aesthetics of femininity and forms of authority in early modern print

• Women’s participation in the book trade: printers, publishers, editors, etc.

• Methodologies for recovering or reimagining women’s labor and presence in the archive

This panel welcomes interdisciplinary approaches grounded in literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, critical race studies, book history, and archival theory.

Prospective speakers are invited to send a paper abstract with title (maximum 250 words total), short biography, and CV to Laura DeLuca (ldeluca@cmu.edu) by August 1, 2025.