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About Me

Allyson M. Poska is Professor of History at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  A specialist in early modern Spain, colonial Latin America, and early modern women’s history, I have taught at Mary Washington for 25 years. I am the author of five books, including, Gendered Crossings: Women and Migration in the Spanish Empire (New Mexico, 2016), a gendered examination of the Spanish attempt to colonize Patagonia in the 1780s that was awarded the 2016 best book prize from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. My earlier work, Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia (Oxford, 2005), was awarded the 2006 Roland H. Bainton Prize for best book in early modern history or theology.  My  research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (2000) and an ACLS/NEH/SSRC International and Area Studies Fellowship (2007). I have been a research fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis (2004) and the John Carter Brown Library (2011). I am the first CAS recipient of a UMW Waple professorship.

My new project “Contesting Equality: Smallpox Vaccination in the Spanish Empire (1803-1810)”  examines the role of race and gender in the responses to the Spanish Crown’s vaccination campaign on the peninsula and the Royal Philanthropic Expedition that carried vaccination around the globe.  This project has been funded by the American Philosophical Society, an American Council of Learned Societies Project Development Grant, and a CAORC  NEH Senior Fellowship.

I am currently the coeditor of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

https://acmrs.org/publications/journals/emw/about

In 2012, I served as President of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women http://ssemw.org/.

Since 1999, I have been the coeditor of a book series entitled, “Women and Gender in the Early Modern World” originally with Ashgate Press now with University of Nebraska Press http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/series/women-and-gender-in-the-early-modern-world/ .

Recent Publications

Books

Gendered Crossings: Women and Migration in the Spanish Empire. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Winner of the 2016 Best Book Prize from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women.

Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Coedited with Katherine McIver and Jane Couchman. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Press, 2013.

Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia. Oxford University Press, 2005. Winner of the 2006 Roland H. Bainton Prize for best book in early modern history or theology from the Sixteenth Century Society.

Women and Gender in the Western Past. 2 vols. Coauthored with Katherine French, Houghton Mifflin (then Cengage), 2007.

Articles and Book Chapters

“The Case for Agentic Gender Norms for Women in Early Modern Europe,” Gender and History (August 2018).

“Peninsular Women, Migration, and the Creation of the Spanish Empire,” World History Bulletin 33:2 (Fall 2017): 5–8.

“The Pedagogical is Political: Feminism as a Pedagogical and Political Choice in the Classroom.” Sixteenth Century Journal 48:4 (Winter 2017): 890-892.

“From Peasants to Slave Owners: Race, Class, and Gender in the Rio de la Plata.” In The Early Modern Hispanic World: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Kimberly Lynn and Erin Kathleen Rowe, 174-190. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

“Gender on Trial — Attitudes about Femininity and Masculinity: The Inquisition.” In Judging Faith, Punishing Sin: Inquisitions and Consistories in the Early Modern World, edited by Gretchen Starr-LeBeau and Charles H. Parker, 240-251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

“Disciplinary Institutions in the Atlantic World: Inquisitions.” In Judging Faith, Punishing Sin: Inquisitions and Consistories in the Early Modern World, edited by Gretchen Starr-LeBeau and Charles H. Parker, 266-278. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

“Transnationalism and the Study of Early Modern Women,” invited blog post at ssemw.org September 2016.

“Shifting the Frame: Trans-imperial Approaches to Gender in the Atlantic World.” With Susan A. Amussen. Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 9:1(October 2014): 3-23.

“Upending Patriarchy: Rethinking Marriage and Family in Early Modern Europe.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, edited by Allyson M. Poska, Jane Couchman and Katherine McIver, 195-21. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Press, 2013.

“Restoring Miranda: Gender and the Limits of European Patriarchy in the Early Modern Atlantic World.” Coauthored with Susan D. Amussen Journal of Global History 7:3 (November 2012): 342-363.

 

Media Coverage

Social Media

@AllysonPoska

Country Focus

Spain, Spanish Empire, Early Modern Europe

Expertise by Geography

Atlantic, Latin America, Spain, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

17th century, 18th century, Early Modern

Expertise by Topic

Colonialism, Family, Gender, Medicine, Migration & Immigration, Rural & Agrarian History, Sexuality, Women