Reviews
Intriguing.
[Renegade Women] is of tremendous interest to scholars investigating the roles of and opportunities available to women in the early modern period.
The virtues of this intelligent, wide-ranging study are many, and the overarching one is Dursteler's skillful blending of detailed narratives of individual lives with thoughtful, informed accounts of the major cultural and political currents that formed the framework not only of those lives but also of relations between the Venetian and Ottoman empires.
A gem. Beautifully written, creatively crafted, and thoroughly researched, this is an erudite book, written with verve. It brings to life the richness and vitality of Mediterranean societies in early modern times. It also highlights the lack of historical grounding of some recent popular views about the alleged religious and cultural differences that separate Christian from Islamic societies.
Dursteler’s book narrates the lives of early modern women who used the religious, cultural, and political boundaries of the early modern Mediterranean to shape the course of their own lives. Dursteler has skillfully teased these women’s stories from slender archival evidence and has elegantly placed their experiences in a wider context. These fascinating stories are a wonderful introduction to the way gender, religion, and geography intersected in the eastern Mediterranean, and the book will work particularly well in the classroom as a way to begin discussions of the malleability of religious and gender identities in the early modern world.
Book Details
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Fatima Hatun née Beatrice Michiel
2. Elena Civalelli / Suor Deodata and Mihale / Catterina Šatorovic
3. Maria Gozzadini and Her Daughters—Aissè, Eminè, Catigè
Conclusion
Geographi
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Fatima Hatun née Beatrice Michiel
2. Elena Civalelli / Suor Deodata and Mihale / Catterina Šatorovic
3. Maria Gozzadini and Her Daughters—Aissè, Eminè, Catigè
Conclusion
Geographic Equivalents
Abbreviations
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index