The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute is a co-sponsor of an academic conference on "Early Modern Queenship" organized by the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Amanda Herbert, Associate Professor (Early Modern Americas) in the Department of History at Durham University, and Vanessa Wilkie, William A. Moffett Senior Curator of Medieval Manuscripts and British History and Head of Library Curatorial at the Huntington Library, are the conference conveners.

During the Tudor and Stuart monarchies, five queens regnant ruled across England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the spaces they claimed as colonies; for many British people living in that time, it was more routine to bow to a woman on the throne than it was to bow to a man. And yet within that period, submission to female rule remained controversial, despite its commonplace; contemporaries viewed it as a cause for anxiety and antagonism rather than accommodation and acceptance. This discomfort continues today. This conference calls together an interdisciplinary community of scholars working on femininity, monarchy, authority, and governance in the early modern British world, to join in assessment of both the early modern experience of gendered power and its longer legacy.

Please visit the Huntington Library website for more information and to reserve tickets.