2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

Recently historians have argued that European citizens increasingly strove for rights of equality and liberty after the period of the Black Death (mid-fourteenth century). They often neglect the role of women in these political and social changes because scholars have long considered the medieval city as a man's world in which space and power were gendered. This session focuses on the criminality of women and their acts of verbal aggression to examine the extent to which women were subverting the social order when they perpetrated acts which were considered illegal. This panel investigates the normative framework surrounding women’s speech and delves into two case studies of specific speech acts of urban women to show how the city influenced norms and practices of deviant behaviour. Two regions are under scrutiny here: (1) the medieval Low Countries, in which women had more rights, and (2) early-modern Italy. This comparative approach will demonstrate if differences in the juridical status of women affected practices of unruly speech. Furthermore, the panel combines an experienced literary historian and two young history PhD students whose research into literary sources and criminal records help explain changing perceptions of social inequality among female citizens. The session will thus consider whether there was a wider pattern of female subversion in European towns after the Black Death.