Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World. Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, ed. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. xvi + 382 pp. $129.95.
This book encapsulates and extends many seminal ideas presented at the eighth “Attending to Early Modern Women” conference held at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in June 2012. Merry Wiesner-Hanks has done a masterful job editing these papers within a central theme of the interaction of spatial domains with gender-based phenomena. The fifteen chapters of this book are organized into four sections: “Framework,” discussing theoretical concepts; “Embodied Environments,” focusing on physicality; “Communities and Networks” of social patterns; and “Exchanges” across geographic space. Together, a global society shaped by gender and sexuality and intersected by race and class emerges. A key idea of the book is that gender-based phenomena do not form peripheral forces organizing personal, social, and cultural space, but they are central to the formation of spatial constructs. While acknowledging limitations of access to places based on gender, these limitations were often used or transcended by people in creative ways involving actual and meta-narratives on topics such as art, archives, the body, or genealogy. Spaces such as gardens and residences were designed in ways that coded meaning in terms of class and privilege. Routes were opened at times by wearing the garb of the opposite gender, by one’s ethnic appearance as a foundation for the representation of other cultures, or by forming alliances that paved the way of mobility. The ontology of what is real includes politics and power as well as other evidentiary history. Attesting to these ideas are studies demonstrating analyses of social-based phenomena at various spatial scales: community, regional, and global, as well as their associated structures, such as architecture, plazas, or outdoor marketplaces. The early modern world was the threshold of trends relating to global interaction. Changing economic practices defined new roles for men and women, including within marriage and cloistered communities. The expansion of the economy had implications for gender-defined routes and spaces. As men departed on extended travel in the new economy, they left a paradigm shift for their domestic partners at home, where new responses were required to the burgeoning commercial travel, advice absent from marital and travel guides alike. The book presents perspectives, even methodologies, that are applied in a broad range of specific historical situations; the relevance of these methodologies and their practice to our world today is also explored. In addition to a wealth of factual information, the narratives are expertly written with subtle personal and environmental tones that characterize those social spaces. The book is a rich resource for different interests, as well as enjoyable reading.