This book explores early modern Italian women as agents of doubt. While women were often considered prone to doubt as a result of their natural "weakness," the essays gathered here reverse this view, demonstrating how women were able to embrace doubt as a means to expand their agency. Using doubt to contest both official narratives as well as religious and civil practices, women were able to carve out a space of their own in contemporary culture and society. The volume covers a period from the late fifteenth to the mid seventeenth centuries, offering critical insight into early modern doubt and investigating how doubt, like other categories of thought, could be gendered.
Contributors address the topics of doubt and the Querelle des Femmes, religion, writing, and social networks. The volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to early modern doubt, combining gender studies with religious history, the history of literature, social history, and the history of science.

About the Author
Marco Faini is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). His recently co-edited volumes include Errors, False Opinions, and Defective Knowledge in Early Modern Europe(Florence, 2023, with Marco Sgarbi). He is the author of Standing at the Crossroads. Stories of Doubt in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2023).


Book Information
ISBN 9789463721684
Author Marco Faini
Format Hardback
Page Count 182
Imprint Amsterdam University Press
Publisher Amsterdam University Press