This innovative collection brings together essays on women's religious experiences in both Europe and the Americas during the colonial era.

Bringing the study of early modern Christianity into dialogue with Atlantic history, this collection provides a longue durée investigation of women and religion within a transatlantic context. Taking as its starting point the work of Natalie Zemon Davis on the effects of confessional difference among women in the age of religious reformations, the volume expands the focus to broader temporal and geographic boundaries. The result is a series of essays examining the effects of religious reform and revival among women in the wider Atlantic world of Europe, the Americas, and West Africa from 1550 to 1850. Taken collectively, the essays in this volume chart the extended impact of confessional divergence on women over time and space, and uncover a web of transatlantic religious interaction that significantly enriches our understanding of the unfolding of the Atlantic World. Divided into three sections, the volume begins with an exploration of ’Old World Reforms’ looking afresh at the impact of confessional change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries upon the lives of European women. Part two takes this forward, tracing the adaptation of European religious forms within Africa and the Americas. The third and final section explores the multifarious faces of the revival that inspired the nineteenth century missionary movement on both sides of the Atlantic. Collectively the essays underline the extent to which the development of the Atlantic World created a space within which an unprecedented series of juxtapositions, collisions, and collusions among religious traditions and practitioners took place. These demonstrate how the religious history of Europe, the Americas, and Africa became intertwined earlier and more deeply than much scholarship suggests, and highlight the dynamic nature of transatlantic cross-fertilization and influence.

This collection of essays explores the role of women and gender in a broad range of 'radical' religious movements of the post-Reformation.

More than a generation after the rise of women's history alongside the feminist movement, it is still difficult, observes Catherine Brekus, to locate women in histories of American religion. Mary Dyer, a Quaker who was hanged for heresy; Lizzie Robinson, a former slave and laundress who sold Bibles door to door; Sally Priesand, a Reform rabbi; Estela Ruiz, who saw a vision of the Virgin Mary--how do these women's stories change our understanding of American religious history and American women's history? In this provocative collection of twelve essays, contributors explore how considering the religious history of American women can transform our dominant historical narratives. Covering a variety of topics--including Mormonism, the women's rights movement, Judaism, witchcraft trials, the civil rights movement, Catholicism, everyday religious life, Puritanism, African American women's activism, and the Enlightenment--the volume enhances our understanding of both religious history and women's history. Taken together, these essays sound the call for a new, more inclusive history. Contributors: Ann Braude, Harvard Divinity School Catherine A. Brekus, University of Chicago Divinity School Anthea D. Butler, University of Rochester Emily Clark, Tulane University Kathleen Sprows Cummings, University of Notre Dame Amy Koehlinger, Florida State University Janet Moore Lindman, Rowan University Susanna Morrill, Lewis and Clark College Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Augustana College Pamela S. Nadell, American University Elizabeth Reis, University of Oregon Marilyn J. Westerkamp, University of California, Santa Cruz

Through a thoughtful consideration of the complexity of the religious landscape of the Atlantic basin, the collection provides an enriching portrayal of the intriguing interplay between religion, gender, ethnicity, and authority in the early modern Atlantic world.

This groundbreaking book examines the complex relationships between individuals and communities in the profound transitions of the early modern period. Taking a global and comparative approach to historical issues, the distinguished contributors show that individual and community created and recreated one another in the major structures, interactions, and transitions of early modern times. Offering an important contribution to our understanding both of the early modern period and of its historiography, this volume will be an invaluable resource for scholars working in the fields of medieval, early modern, and modern history, and on the Renaissance and Reformation.

This work considers how Frenchwomen participated in Christian religious practice during the sixteenth century, with their words and their actions. Using extensive original and archival sources, it provides a comprehensive study of how women contributed to institutional, theological, devotional and political religious matters. Challenging the view of religious reforms and ideas imposed by male authorities upon women, this study argues instead that women, Catholic and Calvinist, lay and monastic, were deeply involved in the culture, meanings and development of contemporary religious practices.