Books by Kimberly A Coles
The Routledge Companion to Women, Sex, and Gender in the early British Colonial World, 2018
In the wake of the 2016 presidential elections, we have heard from the right and left of t... more In the wake of the 2016 presidential elections, we have heard from the right and left of the political spectrum that identity is no longer a useful term of political engagement—that the politics of identity are constrained, and that a commitment to political issues more broadly based than those grounded in identity is requisite for any political future. That it is easy enough to perceive the default identity that girds such claims – the white, male, heteronormative subject projected as a universal – in itself signals both that politics cannot be untethered from identity and that politics cannot (or should not) be considered separate from its manifestation in the material world. The assertion thus is useful, because it forces a reengagement with the debate, now decades old, of the material terms of identity itself. Identity is politics; and politics are always material. How the body is represented in political space; the means by which it is clothed, fed, protected; how the social and political state enacts upon it: these are the concrete issues that animate identity and structure its imbrication in public terms (which are its only terms, since identity is never privately engaged). But embodied identity must be understood in its time: if deconstruction taught us to see identity as contingent and indeterminate, we should also now understand the extent to which the body too, with its vulnerabilities and transformations, is malleable, unfixed, not a priori in its terms in relation to political formations.
Over the past three decades, women’s and gender studies have evolved into fields of inquiry that have energized—and transformed—the study of the early modern period. But they are not engaged in the same inquiry. As a field, feminism begins with the assumption that the sexed body changes the interaction of the subject in political space, regardless of other considerations of subject position. How other social categories inflect the position of woman as a social actor and political subject does in many ways define the discipline of feminist inquiry, but the sex of the body, irrespective of gender identification, has always informed feminist analysis, which concerns primarily the political uses to which the body is put: in its labor; its social position; its religious identity; its cultural participation. Gender studies, by contrast, typically elides biological sex, inquiring into how gender identity and identification crucially alter social and political engagement, and how gender is imbricated in the social, political and even epistemological arrangements and assumptions of culture. Now, however, we occupy a historical moment when this critical divide has begun to collapse: when the sex of the body can be altered to adhere more closely to the gender identity of the subject, when calls have been made to appropriate the long-shunned science of biology for feminist analysis, when the political moment—in terms of both policy and rhetoric—has intensified focus upon the organs that determine our sex. Our political moment alters our scholarly and theoretical practice, and our thinking about the sexed subject in political space must inevitably change.
The essays collected in this volume consider how conceptions of blood permeate discourses of huma... more The essays collected in this volume consider how conceptions of blood permeate discourses of human difference from 1500 to 1900 in England and continental Spain and in the Anglo- and Ibero-Americas. The authors explore how ideas about blood in science and literature have supported, at various points in history, fantasies of human embodiment and difference that serve to naturalize social hierarchies already in place. Situating the complex relationship between modern and pre-modern conceptions of race at the junction of early modern medicine, heredity, religion, and nation, *The Cultural Politics of Blood* challenges established accounts of the genealogy of modern racism.
Long considered marginal in early modern culture, women writers
were actually central to the... more Long considered marginal in early modern culture, women writers
were actually central to the development of a Protestant literary tradition in England. Religion, Reform, and Women’s Writing in Early Modern England explores their contribution to this tradition through thorough archival research in publication history and book circulation; the interaction of women’s texts with those written by men; and the traceable influence of women’s writing upon other contemporary literary works. Focusing primarily upon Anne Askew, Katherine Parr, Mary Sidney Herbert, and Anne Vaughan Lok, this book argues that the writings of these women were among the most popular and influential works of sixteenth-century England.
Articles and Book Chapters by Kimberly A Coles
Any feminist inquiry must assume that the gravity of political power bears upon the sexed subject... more Any feminist inquiry must assume that the gravity of political power bears upon the sexed subject, irrespective of other considerations of subject position. Years ago, Dympna Callaghan wrote brilliantly and provocatively about how Elizabeth Carey “deploys and manipulates the concept [of race] as a vital aspect of her construction and interrogation of femininity” in her drama The Tragedy of Mariam. I revisit this question because (as much as I admire the piece) I believe that a different concept of race needs to be applied to Carey’s interrogation than any modern apprehension of the term affords. Recent scholarship has opened up the question of the continuities and discontinuities between early modern and modern rationalizations of human difference, and Cary’s drama usefully throws both into sharp relief. But perhaps more productively, a contemporary (early modern) application of the concept reveals, I think, the extent to which sex is weighted among the competing claims on subjectivity explored in the play.
In early modern England, the term “race” commonly referred to family lineage, or bloodline, and relied upon pervasive notions of what were believed to constitute the properties of blood. The humors—the four bodily fluids of yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood—were thought to be in equilibrium in noble subjects. The anxieties anatomized in Thomas Elyot’s Boke named the Governour (1537) about the degradation of race, or the corruption of noble blood, describe the physical technologies by which virtue—both physical and moral—was understood to convey through bloodlines. If Carey’s Mariam is “about” anything, it is about rank—and the privileges of moral courage and superiority that rank inherently bestows. Mariam’s whiteness against the blackness of Salome and of Herod does constitute the moral encoding of raced subjects—but the “race” in question is a difference in rank. By reading these binaries of white and black as Christian semiotics mapped onto tribal differences, we miss two components of Carey’s interrogation that are most reveling of her representation of early modern subjectivity. First, that she posits a moral constitution: moral differences that are literally a feature of the blood—or humoral disposition—and that are revealed in the external complexion of her characters; second, that rank, or race, is a more essential constituent of the human being than is either sex or sexual identity and identification. The attitudes expressed in the play may well be altered by 1625 when Carey’s confrontation with her husband makes her political power (or the absence of it) painfully evident. But this is c. 1605.
If we assume the structural integrity of the 1590 Faerie Queene—and the structural genius of cont... more If we assume the structural integrity of the 1590 Faerie Queene—and the structural genius of contemporary work such as the Amoretti and Epithalamion recommends that we do—then we should assume that the aborted marriage of Una and Redcrosse at the end of Book I is finally effected in the merging of Scudamour and Amoret into one flesh at the conclusion of Book III. But the mystical marriage of Spenser’s principal character of love, Amoret, is not the depiction of ideal heterosexual coupling. It is rather the emblem of the ideal church: of the union that transcends the bonds of heteronormative relations and the love that exceeds sexual union. The claims by which subjectivity is defined are rendered diffuse in a creature that has no integral subject. And the body’s plans—its pleasures, its needs, its chronology and the reproductive impulses that are housed within it—are set aside. The hermaphrodite is expressive of the universalism requisite for the ideal church—and of the conviction that the affiliations or categories that distinguish us must be eradicated in order to construct a universal church. Such convictions can be set to darker purposes, but the conclusion of the 1590 Faerie Queene imagines love as the vehicle for reform.
Though historians of religion have demonstrated that the theological commitments of early modern ... more Though historians of religion have demonstrated that the theological commitments of early modern English people were labile and complex, there was nonetheless a prevailing sense in the period that belief posited bodily consequences. This article considers this bodily presence in John Donne’s poetry by exploring the humoral construction of religious identity in his Holy Sonnets. Donne’s conversion provided him with an unusual perspective: not many people were positioned to hold as nuanced a view of religious ideology. It is surprising, then, that when Donne considers his conversion—which he does in little and large in the Holy Sonnets—he casts it in somatic terms. Donne’s humoral constitution of faith in the Holy Sonnets anatomizes the vexed transactions of body and soul particular to late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century thought. He depicts his body in the same terms that he uses to represent his religious temperament—as changeable and lacking integrity.
Book Reviews by Kimberly A Coles
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Books by Kimberly A Coles
Over the past three decades, women’s and gender studies have evolved into fields of inquiry that have energized—and transformed—the study of the early modern period. But they are not engaged in the same inquiry. As a field, feminism begins with the assumption that the sexed body changes the interaction of the subject in political space, regardless of other considerations of subject position. How other social categories inflect the position of woman as a social actor and political subject does in many ways define the discipline of feminist inquiry, but the sex of the body, irrespective of gender identification, has always informed feminist analysis, which concerns primarily the political uses to which the body is put: in its labor; its social position; its religious identity; its cultural participation. Gender studies, by contrast, typically elides biological sex, inquiring into how gender identity and identification crucially alter social and political engagement, and how gender is imbricated in the social, political and even epistemological arrangements and assumptions of culture. Now, however, we occupy a historical moment when this critical divide has begun to collapse: when the sex of the body can be altered to adhere more closely to the gender identity of the subject, when calls have been made to appropriate the long-shunned science of biology for feminist analysis, when the political moment—in terms of both policy and rhetoric—has intensified focus upon the organs that determine our sex. Our political moment alters our scholarly and theoretical practice, and our thinking about the sexed subject in political space must inevitably change.
were actually central to the development of a Protestant literary tradition in England. Religion, Reform, and Women’s Writing in Early Modern England explores their contribution to this tradition through thorough archival research in publication history and book circulation; the interaction of women’s texts with those written by men; and the traceable influence of women’s writing upon other contemporary literary works. Focusing primarily upon Anne Askew, Katherine Parr, Mary Sidney Herbert, and Anne Vaughan Lok, this book argues that the writings of these women were among the most popular and influential works of sixteenth-century England.
Articles and Book Chapters by Kimberly A Coles
In early modern England, the term “race” commonly referred to family lineage, or bloodline, and relied upon pervasive notions of what were believed to constitute the properties of blood. The humors—the four bodily fluids of yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood—were thought to be in equilibrium in noble subjects. The anxieties anatomized in Thomas Elyot’s Boke named the Governour (1537) about the degradation of race, or the corruption of noble blood, describe the physical technologies by which virtue—both physical and moral—was understood to convey through bloodlines. If Carey’s Mariam is “about” anything, it is about rank—and the privileges of moral courage and superiority that rank inherently bestows. Mariam’s whiteness against the blackness of Salome and of Herod does constitute the moral encoding of raced subjects—but the “race” in question is a difference in rank. By reading these binaries of white and black as Christian semiotics mapped onto tribal differences, we miss two components of Carey’s interrogation that are most reveling of her representation of early modern subjectivity. First, that she posits a moral constitution: moral differences that are literally a feature of the blood—or humoral disposition—and that are revealed in the external complexion of her characters; second, that rank, or race, is a more essential constituent of the human being than is either sex or sexual identity and identification. The attitudes expressed in the play may well be altered by 1625 when Carey’s confrontation with her husband makes her political power (or the absence of it) painfully evident. But this is c. 1605.
Book Reviews by Kimberly A Coles
Over the past three decades, women’s and gender studies have evolved into fields of inquiry that have energized—and transformed—the study of the early modern period. But they are not engaged in the same inquiry. As a field, feminism begins with the assumption that the sexed body changes the interaction of the subject in political space, regardless of other considerations of subject position. How other social categories inflect the position of woman as a social actor and political subject does in many ways define the discipline of feminist inquiry, but the sex of the body, irrespective of gender identification, has always informed feminist analysis, which concerns primarily the political uses to which the body is put: in its labor; its social position; its religious identity; its cultural participation. Gender studies, by contrast, typically elides biological sex, inquiring into how gender identity and identification crucially alter social and political engagement, and how gender is imbricated in the social, political and even epistemological arrangements and assumptions of culture. Now, however, we occupy a historical moment when this critical divide has begun to collapse: when the sex of the body can be altered to adhere more closely to the gender identity of the subject, when calls have been made to appropriate the long-shunned science of biology for feminist analysis, when the political moment—in terms of both policy and rhetoric—has intensified focus upon the organs that determine our sex. Our political moment alters our scholarly and theoretical practice, and our thinking about the sexed subject in political space must inevitably change.
were actually central to the development of a Protestant literary tradition in England. Religion, Reform, and Women’s Writing in Early Modern England explores their contribution to this tradition through thorough archival research in publication history and book circulation; the interaction of women’s texts with those written by men; and the traceable influence of women’s writing upon other contemporary literary works. Focusing primarily upon Anne Askew, Katherine Parr, Mary Sidney Herbert, and Anne Vaughan Lok, this book argues that the writings of these women were among the most popular and influential works of sixteenth-century England.
In early modern England, the term “race” commonly referred to family lineage, or bloodline, and relied upon pervasive notions of what were believed to constitute the properties of blood. The humors—the four bodily fluids of yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood—were thought to be in equilibrium in noble subjects. The anxieties anatomized in Thomas Elyot’s Boke named the Governour (1537) about the degradation of race, or the corruption of noble blood, describe the physical technologies by which virtue—both physical and moral—was understood to convey through bloodlines. If Carey’s Mariam is “about” anything, it is about rank—and the privileges of moral courage and superiority that rank inherently bestows. Mariam’s whiteness against the blackness of Salome and of Herod does constitute the moral encoding of raced subjects—but the “race” in question is a difference in rank. By reading these binaries of white and black as Christian semiotics mapped onto tribal differences, we miss two components of Carey’s interrogation that are most reveling of her representation of early modern subjectivity. First, that she posits a moral constitution: moral differences that are literally a feature of the blood—or humoral disposition—and that are revealed in the external complexion of her characters; second, that rank, or race, is a more essential constituent of the human being than is either sex or sexual identity and identification. The attitudes expressed in the play may well be altered by 1625 when Carey’s confrontation with her husband makes her political power (or the absence of it) painfully evident. But this is c. 1605.