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Review of Ania Loomba and Melissa E. Sanchez (eds). Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies: Gender, Race, and Sexuality. New York: Routledge, 2016. xiii+275 pages. $128.00 (hardback) $49.95 (paperback).
Reviewed by Willnide E. Lindor
Ania Loomba and Melissa E. Sanchez's volume, Rethinking Feminism, affirms the sustained vitality of feminist criticism and theory in early modern studies. Similar to other salient edited volumes on early modern feminist criticism, such as The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare (1980) and Women, "Race," and Writing in the Early Modern Period (1995), Rethinking Feminism reflects on the state of early modern feminist criticism at a particular moment in history. The Woman's Part (1980) is the first anthology of early modern feminist criticism that emerged at a time when early modern scholars often accused feminist theory of being a politically charged and alienating perspective derived from the point of view of women. Contributors of The Women's Part had to show that feminist criticism was not a threatening methodological practice. Women, "Race," and Writing in the Early Modern Period (1995), was a collection of essays concerned with difference and implored early modern feminists to go beyond white feminist concerns. Conscious of these imperative works, Rethinking Feminism reflects on the genealogies that have informed the current state of feminist criticism while also working to influence its future progenitors with new questions and concerns. Aware of their inheritances from early feminism, the contributors of Rethinking Feminism regard the defense of feminist criticism as their collective responsibility. Loomba and Sanchez write in their introduction that this volume responds to the "current scholarly and political anxieties that feminist criticism is in a state of decline and crisis" (1). Through their diverse scholarly interests, the contributors of this volume advocate that feminist methodological approaches are in constant conversation with larger theoretical and political debates.
This volume is comprised of twelve essays divided into four overarching rubrics: histories, methods, bodies, and agency. The first section contains three essays that delineate coherent trajectories of feminist debates from the 1980s onwards. In their opening essay,...