Deborah Simonton

Challenging current perspectives of urbanisation, The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience explores how our towns and cities have shaped and been shaped by cultural, spatial and gendered influences. This volume discusses gender in an urban context in European, North American and colonial towns from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, casting new light on the development of medieval and modern settlements across the globe. Organised into six thematic parts covering economy, space, civic identity, material culture, emotions and the colonial world, this book comprises 36 chapters by key scholars in the field. It covers a wide range of topics, from women and citizenship in medieval York to gender and tradition in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South African cities, reframing our understanding of the role of gender in constructing the spaces and places that form our urban environment. Interdisciplinary and transnational in scope, this volume analyses the individual dynamics of each case study while also examining the complex relationships and exchanges between urban cultures. It is a valuable resource for all researchers and students interested in gender, urban history and their intersection and interaction throughout the past five centuries.

The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience

Katie Barclay

Elaine Chalus

The Routledge History of Loneliness takes a multidisciplinary approach to the history of a modern emotion, exploring its form and development across cultures from the seventeenth century to the present. Bringing together thirty scholars from various disciplines, including history, anthropology, philosophy, literature and art history, the volume considers how loneliness was represented in art and literature, conceptualised by philosophers and writers and described by people in their personal narratives. It considers loneliness as a feeling so often defined in contrast to sociability and affective connections, particularly attending to loneliness in relation to the family, household and community. Acknowledging that loneliness is a relatively novel term in English, the book explores its precedents in ideas about solitude, melancholy and nostalgia, as well as how it might be considered in cross-cultural perspectives. With wide appeal to students and researchers in a variety of subjects, including the history of emotions, social sciences and literature, this volume brings a critical historical perspective to an emotion with contemporary significance.

The Routledge History of Loneliness

The work patterns of European women from 1700 onwards fluctuate in relation to ideological, demographic, economic and familial changes. In A History of European Women's Work, Deborah Simonton draws together recent research and methodological developments to take an overview of trends in women's work across Europe from the so-called pre-industrial period to the present. Taking the role of gender and class in defining women's labour as a central theme, Deborah Simonton compares and contrasts the pace of change between European countries, distinguishing between Europe-wide issues and local developments.

1700 to the Present

A History of European Women's Work

Anne Montenach

This innovative new book is overtly and explicitly about female agency in eighteenth-century European towns. However, it positions female activity and decisions unequivocally in an urban world of institutions, laws, regulations, customs and ideologies. Gender politics complicated and shaped the day-to-day experiences of working women. Town rules and customs, as well as police and guilds’ regulations, affected women’s participation in the urban economy: most of the time, the formally recognized and legally accepted power of women – which is an essential component of female agency – was very limited. Yet these chapters draw attention to how women navigated these gendered terrains. As the book demonstrates, "exclusion" is too strong a word for the realities and pragmatism of women’s everyday lives. Frequently guild and corporate regulations were more about situating women and regulating their activities, rather than preventing them from operating in the urban economy. Similarly corporate structures, which were under stress, found flexible strategies to incorporate women who through their own initiative and activities put pressure on the systems. Women could benefit from the contradictions between moral and social unwritten norms and economic regulations, and could take advantage of the tolerance or complicity of urban authorities towards illicit practices. Women with a grasp of their rights and privileges could defend themselves and exploit legal systems with its loopholes and contradictions to achieve economic independence and power.

Gender in European Towns, 1640-1830

Female Agency in the Urban Economy

Hannu Salmi

As Enlightenment notions of predictability, progress and the sense that humans could control and shape their environments informed European thought, catastrophes shook many towns to the core, challenging the new world view with dramatic impact. This book concentrates on a period marked by passage from a society of scarcity to one of expenditure and accumulation, from ranks and orders to greater social mobility, from traditional village life to new bourgeois and even individualistic urbanism. The volume employs a broad definition of catastrophe, as it examines how urban communities conceived, adapted to, and were transformed by catastrophes, both natural and human-made. Competing views of gender figure in the telling and retelling of these analyses: women as scapegoats, as vulnerable, as victims, even as cannibals or conversely as defenders, organizers of assistance, inspirers of men; and men in varied guises as protectors, governors and police, heroes, leaders, negotiators and honorable men. Gender is also deployed linguistically to feminize activities or even countries. Inevitably, however, these tragedies are mediated by myth and memory. They are not neutral events whose retelling is a simple narrative. Through a varied array of urban catastrophes, this book is a nuanced account that physically and metaphorically maps men and women into the urban landscape and the worlds of catastrophe.

Catastrophe, Gender and Urban Experience, 1648–1920

The eighteenth century looms large in the Scottish imagination. It is a century that saw the doubling of the population, rapid urbanisation, industrial growth, the political Union of 1707, the Jacobite Rebellions and the Enlightenment - events that were intrinsic to the creation of the modern nation and to putting Scotland on the international map. The impact of the era on modern Scotland can be seen in the numerous buildings named after the luminaries of the period - Adam Smith, David Hume, William Robertson - the endorsement of Robert Burns as the national poet/hero, the preservation of the Culloden battlefield as a tourist attraction, and the physical geographies of its major towns. Yet, while it is a century that remains central to modern constructions of national identity, it is a period associated with men. Until recently, the history of women in eighteenth-century Scotland, with perhaps the honourable exception of Flora McDonald, remained unwritten. Over the last decade however, research on women and gender in Scotland has flourished and we have an increasingly full picture of women's lives at all social levels across the century. As a result, this is an appropriate moment to reflect on what we know about Scottish women during the eighteenth century, to ask how their history affects the traditional narratives of the period, and to reflect on the implications for a national history of Scotland and Scottish identity. Divided into three sections, covering women's intimate, intellectual and public lives, this interdisciplinary volume offers articles on women's work, criminal activity, clothing, family, education, writing, travel and more. Applying tools from history, art anthropology, cultural studies, and English literature, it draws on a wide-range of sources, from the written to the visual, to highlight the diversity of women's experiences and to challenge current male-centric historiographies.

Intimate, Intellectual and Public Lives

Women in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

The Routledge History of Women in Europe since 1700 is a landmark publication that provides the most coherent overview of woman’s role and place in western Europe, spanning the era from the beginning of the eighteenth century until the twentieth century. In this collection of essays, leading women's historians counter the notion of ‘national’ histories and provide the insight and perspective of a European approach. Important intellectual, political and economic developments have not respected national boundaries, nor has the story of women’s past, or the interplay of gender and culture. The interaction between women, ideology and female agency, the way women engaged with patriarchal and gendered structures and systems, and the way women carved out their identities and spaces within these, informs the writing in this book. For any student of women’s studies or European history, The Routledge History of Women in Europe since 1700 will prove an informative addition to their studies.

Deborah Simonton

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