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

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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.