1st Edition
The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience
Challenging current perspectives of urbanisation, The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience explores how our towns and cities have shaped and been shaped by cultural, spatial and gendered influences. This volume discusses gender in an urban context in European, North American and colonial towns from the fourteenth to the twentieth century, casting new light on the development of medieval and modern settlements across the globe.
Organised into six thematic parts covering economy, space, civic identity, material culture, emotions and the colonial world, this book comprises 36 chapters by key scholars in the field. It covers a wide range of topics, from women and citizenship in medieval York to gender and tradition in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South African cities, reframing our understanding of the role of gender in constructing the spaces and places that form our urban environment.
Interdisciplinary and transnational in scope, this volume analyses the individual dynamics of each case study while also examining the complex relationships and exchanges between urban cultures. It is a valuable resource for all researchers and students interested in gender, urban history and their intersection and interaction throughout the past five centuries.
Biography
Deborah Simonton is associate professor, emerita, at the University of Southern Denmark and author of Women in European Culture and Society: Gender, Skill and Identity from 1700 (2011) and a co-editor of Female Agency in the European Town (2013, with Anne Montenach) and Luxury and Gender in European Towns, 1700-1914 (2014, with Marjo Kaartinen and Anne Montenach). She leads the international network Gender in the European Town.
'In a rich super-collection of 36 essays plus introductions, this Routledge History Handbook offers exciting fare for readers of diverse geographical and temporal interests. Sweeping across Europe, including several of its less familiar northern domains, and reaching out to some of its distant colonies, the anthology spans six centuries. Fruitful coherence and lots of striking fresh insights emerge from the sustained focus on a novel intersection of two themes: gender, both as ideas and in persons, and urban experiences and spaces.'
Elizabeth S. Cohen, York University, Canada
'Simonton ... presents an exciting body of work that simultaneously offers broad overviews and detailed microâ-studies.'
Jennifer Aston, The Economic History Review
'Overall, the Handbook is a vast and empirically rich collection of essays, which is a valuable resource for researchers, and will undoubtedly be informative for both scholarship and teaching. Students interested in gender, urban history and their relationship will also find much here, and will particularly benefit from the helpful advice for further reading included at the end of the book. The collection makes an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the gendering of urban experiences, spaces, and places, and what ultimately resonates throughout the volume is the exciting range and variety of current work on gender in an urban context.'
Laura Harrison, Women's History Review
