The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute is a co-sponsor of an academic conference on "Old Women, Race, and Power in the Atlantic World, 1600-Present" organized by the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Corinne Field, Associate Professor in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Department at the University of Virginia, and Kimberly A. Hamlin, Chamberlin Family Professor of History at Miami University, Ohio, are the conference conveners.

Negative stereotypes of older women abound in early modern culture: hags, spinsters, crones, witches, and freaks of longevity, or little old ladies, grannies, and mammies. And yet, throughout the transatlantic world, older women have often provided the vital labor – paid, unpaid, and volunteer – advocacy and caregiving that have kept economies, families, and societies functioning and bending toward equality. How might we understand the power and agency of older women – liberated from pregnancy and childrearing – even as the larger culture has tended to dismiss older women as sexless and invisible? This conference gathers scholars who have been trying to answer these questions from a variety of archivally-based disciplines, including history, art history, literature, gender, and race/ethnic studies.

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