Stemming from the “How Not to Be a Misogynist” panel at the 2025 meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, we are soliciting chapters for an edited collection that engages with matters of gender, power, and misogyny. We are particularly interested in interrogations of how—perhaps unwittingly—misogyny is inscribed onto early modern texts and contexts by contemporary scholars and scholarship. Some of the questions we seek to answer in this collection include: 

• How might scholars of the early modern period inadvertently engage in reading and analysis “from the subject position of a man, and a misogynist man at that”?[1] How does internalized misogyny affecting our engagement with the early modern period and what insights may be revealed if we pay closer attention to this internalized misogyny?
• How do such narratives create a false sense of historical transformation that comforts us about the present, while undermining our ability to read beyond or against the "discovery" of men's anxiety and women's disempowerment? 
• What social and political ends are served by the subtly misogynistic narrative of “progress” and how can a more self-aware reading advance different interests and agendas?
• How do we talk about gender and power? How do questions of gender and power affect our pedagogical choices and practices?

Proposals should include:

• Title
• Abstract of paper (up to 500 words)
• Working bibliography
• Author information: CV and brief bio (150 words)

For questions or clarification, please contact the co-editors of the collection: Dr. Lilly Berberyan (BerberyanL@nsula.edu) and Dr. Jess McCall (mccallj81@gmail.com). 

Deadline for submissions of abstracts: July 15, 2025

When authors will be notified: August 1, 2025

The deadline for the final chapter: December 2025

Length of chapter: 5000-6000 words 

Bloomsbury has shown preliminary interest in this collection.

Note: Acceptance of a proposed abstract does not guarantee the acceptance of the full chapter 

[1] Rackin, Phyllis. “Misogyny is Everywhere.” Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, edited by Dympna Callaghan, 2016, 47.