Conversionsis the first collection to explicitly address the intersections between sexed identity and religious change in the two centuries following the Reformation. Chapters deal with topics as diverse as convent architecture and missionary enterprise, the replicability of print and the representation of race. Bringing together leading scholars of literature, history and art history,Conversions offers new insights into the varied experiences of, and responses to, conversion across and beyond Europe. A lively Afterword by Professor Matthew Dimmock (University of Sussex) drives home the contemporary urgency of these themes and the lasting legacies of the Reformations.

Simon Ditchfield is Professor of Early Modern History and Director of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of YorkHelen Smith is Professor of Renaissance Literature and Head of the Department of English& Related Literature at the University of York

Notes on contributorsIntroduction Simon Ditchfield and Helen SmithPart I: Gendering conversion1 To piety or conversion more prone? Gender and conversionin the early modern Mediterranean Eric Dursteler2 The quiet conversion of a Jewish woman in eighteenthcenturySpain David Graizbord3 A father to the soul and a son to the body: gender andgeneration in Robert Southwells Epistle to his father Hannah Crawforth4 Gender and reproduction in the Spirituall experiences Abigail ShinnPart II: Material conversions5 The needle may convert more than the pen: womenand the work of conversion in early modern England Claire Canavan and Helen Smith6 Uneven conversions: how did laywomen become nuns in theearly modern world? Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt7 Domus humilis: the conversion of Venetian conventarchitecture and identity Saundra Weddle8 Converting the soundscape of womens rituals, 14701560:purification, candles, and the Inviolata as music forchurching Jane D. HatterPart III: Travel, race, and conversion9 Narrating womens Catholic conversions in seventeenthcenturyVietnam Keith P. Luria10 I wish to be no other but as he: Persia, masculinity, andconversion in early seventeenth-century travel writing anddrama Chloë Houston11 Turning tricks: erotic commodification, cross-culturalconversion, and the bed-trick on the English stage,15801630 Daniel Vitkus12 Whatever happened to Dinah the Black? And other questionsabout gender, race, and the visibility of Protestant saints Kathleen LynchAfterword Matthew Dimmock