‘Women Traders of Parnassus: Knowledge Practices in the 1600s’, at the Institute of Advanced Studies Forum (G17, South Wing, UCL) and online via Zoom

My doctoral thesis charts the rise and consolidation of women's authority, chiefly as authors, within the Respublica litteraria across the Luso-Hispanic world, taking as point of departure the extant, fifteenth-century  Portuguese translation of the sequel to Pizan's La Cité des dames.

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It locates the implications of print publication on the construction of public authorship, male and female, during the first four decades of the seventeenth century, when the process of commercialization was profoundly felt across borders.

It considers the role of gender in early (c. 1447-1518) constructions of public authorship by examining notable cases in three different vernacular languages, in manuscript and print, with a focus on Christine de Pizan, Teresa de Cartagena, and Isabel de Villena.

It examines the position of women as professional authors in the seventeenth century via the case of the once Morisco-slave, Ana Caro de Mallén, in connection with Lope de Vega, the most famous, commercially-driven author within the Luso-Hispanic world.

Drawing on my doctoral thesis, this edited anthology showcases premodern published verse by notable learned women during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Spanish translation -- namely, by Vittoria Colonna, Louise Labé, Luisa Sigea, Gaspara Stampa, Bernarda Ferreira de Lacerda, Sóror Violante do Céu, Aphra Behn, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

The print production of María de Zayas represents an absolute achievement within the seventeenth-century Respublica litteraria, in its most commercial side: the business of prose fiction, one of the most lucrative ones of the age. This essay, therefore, aims to provoke a more ample and nuanced study of her work within this great scholarly community, namely through an analysis of authorial and editorial strategies, rooted in comparative book history.

This essay aims to provoke a more critical analysis of women's scholarly contributions by identifying and explaining continuities and discontinuities in publishing strategies over time across borders. More specifically, it locates the publications of two notable cases, Luisa Sigea and Margaret Cavendish, within the larger context of premodern knowledge communities.