bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
School Social Work
Authors: Allen-Meares Paula , Franklin Cynthia , Hopson Laura
Published: May 2010

School social work is a subspecialty within the social work profession. The field has been in existence in the United States for over one hundred years and is practiced in many other countries. Although the actual number of school social workers worldwide is unknown, the field serves children in most states in the United States. According to the School Social Work Association of America, “School social workers bring unique knowledge and skills to the school system and the student services team. School Social Workers are instrumental in furthering the purpose of the schools: To provide a setting for teaching, learning, and for the attainment of competence and confidence. School social workers are hired by school districts and charter schools to enhance their ability to meet its academic mission, especially where home, school, and community collaboration is the key to achieving that mission.” This entry covers introductory works on the history of school social work, important policies, and select journals that support this field of practice. Articles on interventions and empirical studies that support the work of school social workers are further highlighted in this entry.
Historiography
Authors: Marsham Andrew
Published: May 2010

Historiography literally means “the writing of history.” It has two main, related, meanings: (1) the actual process of writing about the past, and (2) the study of the theory and philosophy of writing history. This entry is concerned with history writing and historical thought in the Islamic world from the origins of Islam in the early 7th century ce to the present, with a particular focus on the central Islamic lands in the early, medieval, and early modern periods (c. 600–1800). That is, the entry discusses writing about the past that might be described by the Arabic word taʾrikh (“history,” or “chronology”), whence the Persian tarikh and the Turkish tarih. It does not address writing about the past for a more specialist legal or religious purpose (e.g., jurisprudence or Qurʾanic exegesis).
Islamic Criminal Law
Authors: Warren Christie S.
Published: May 2010

Although criminal law in other legal systems tends to be organized according to the nature of crimes, criminal offenses under classical Islamic law are categorized according to the nature and sources of punishments. Islamic criminal offenses are divided into three categories: (1) offenses and punishments fixed in the Qurʾan or Sunna (hudud); (2) offenses against the person, including intentional injury and homicide, which are considered matters to be settled between the offender and victim, and for which remedies include retaliation (qisas) and financial compensation (diya); and (3) Offenses not fixed in the Qurʾan or Sunna, for which punishments are discretionary (taʿzir). Islamic criminal law is not applied uniformly in all locations—interpretations of Sharia and hudud punishments in countries such as Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, for example, can be very different. In Pakistan, hudud offenses have been incorporated into state legislation. In recent years, Islamic criminal law has been the subject of commentary and critique by scholars and activists within the international human rights community.
Orientalism and Islam
Authors: Varisco Daniel Martin
Published: May 2010

The term “Orientalism,” later known as “Oriental Studies,” began in reference to the study of languages and cultures of the so-called Orient. Although initially focused on the ancient and modern Near East, the term “Orient” was indiscriminately used for all of the Asian civilizations encountered by Europeans in their eastward imperial and colonial expansion. The term is derived from the Latin oriens, in reference to the direction of the rising sun or the east. The study of Islam and Muslim cultures during the medieval period in Europe was primarily apologetic. By the 17th century, Arabic and other Oriental languages began to be taught in universities. The Thomas Adams Chair of Arabic, for example, was established at Cambridge University in 1632. Orientalist scholars translated religious, historical, and literary texts from Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and Chinese, but most of these translations are not considered critical editions. Modern Orientalism in an academic sense begins at the end of the 18th century. Napoleon's expeditionary force that invaded Egypt in 1797 included scholars who recorded ancient Egyptian texts and monuments as well as contemporary Islamic architecture. The British presence in India, most notably in the work of the philologist William James, led to a field of study formally called “Orientalism.” The first academic society devoted to the study of the Orient was the Société Asiatique, founded in France in 1821. This organization was followed by the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1823) and the American Oriental Society (1842). In 1873 the first International Congress of Orientalists was held in Paris. With a few notable exceptions, most Orientalist scholars held negative views of Islam until the middle of the 20th century. By 1973 the term “Orientalist” was abandoned by the International Congress of Orientalists, recognizing that specialty disciplines were more significant than the vague geographical notion of an “Orient.”
Islam in Yemen
Authors: Varisco Daniel Martin
Published: May 2010

Yemen plays a prominent role in the early history of Islam. The Christian Yemeni king Abraha is said to have attacked Mecca during the lifetime of Muhammad’s grandfather. The Sassanian governor of Yemen, Bathan, was an early convert to Islam. It is also said that ʿAli, Muhammad’s nephew, brought the message of Islam to Yemen. During the reign of the Ummayid caliph al-Muʿawiyya, Yemen was divided into two regions: the north, centered around the city of Sanʿa’, and the south, around the town of al-Janad. Yemen proved difficult to control under the Abbasid caliphate because of its remoteness and tribal character. In the mid-9th century, the local dynasty of the Yuʿfirids took control of the highlands. At the beginning of the 10th century, the Shiʿa leader Yahya ibn al-Husayn established the Zaydi imamate in the northern highlands of Yemen; this lasted until the Republican revolution of 1962. In the southern highlands, along the Red Sea coast and along the Gulf of Aden, local dynasties evolved, which were often subjected to foreign invasions. The Ayyubids invaded Yemen from Egypt at the end of the 12th century, followed by the Rasulid dynasty until the middle of the 15th century and the first Ottoman Turkish occupation in the mid-16th century. From 1839 to 1967, Britain controlled the major southern seaport of Aden. Most of Yemen remained divided, with the Shiʿa Zaydi school dominant in the north and the Sunni Shafiʿi school most common in the south and along the coast. The Hadramawt region maintained its independence for most of Yemen’s history and established strong links with India and Indonesia through out-migration. Following the unification of North and South Yemen in 1990, an Islamist perspective has increased, promoted in part through Saudi Arabian Wahhabi influence. The current state constitution defines Yemen as following Islamic law, with only a small number of Yemenite Jews and no indigenous Christian population. Instability in Yemen following the Arab Spring revolution in 2011 led to the overthrow of President Ali Abdullah Salih, the rise of the Huthis, and the expansion of extremist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.
René Descartes
Authors: Skirry Justin
Published: May 2010

There is no doubt that Descartes is one of the most influential and perhaps one of the most misunderstood philosophers of the modern era. In many ways, Descartes can be seen as kicking off the great era of philosophical system building at the beginning of the 17th century and continuing until David Hume destroyed these systems in one blow in the late 18th century. As the builder of a philosophical system, Descartes’s works cover just about everything under (and above) the sun, from metaphysics to physics to theology to cosmology to physiology, and, with each area intersecting with the others, raise their own set of problems and questions. An article of this sort cannot hope to cover such a range of intersecting issues that arise in Descartes’s system, since an issue in one aspect of the theory often ripples out to other, far-reaching, aspects. Accordingly, this article attempts to provide a mix of introductory essays and detailed analyses of the major issues in Descartes’s system so as to guide the reader toward a clear and even-handed understanding of this giant of Western thought.
Metaethics
Authors: Miller Alex
Published: May 2010

Metaethics can be described as the philosophical study of the nature of moral judgment. It is concerned with such questions as: Do moral judgments express beliefs or rather desires and inclinations? Are moral judgments apt to be assessed in terms of truth and falsity? Do moral sentences have factual meaning? Are any moral judgments true or are they systematically and uniformly false? Is there such a thing as moral knowledge? Are moral judgments less objective than, say, judgments about the shapes and sizes of middle-sized physical objects? Is there a necessary connection between moral judgments and motivation? Are moral requirements requirements of reason? Do moral judgments have a natural or non-natural subject matter? A useful way of starting on metaethics is to distinguish between realist and non-realist views of morality. Moral realists hold that moral judgments express beliefs, and that some of those beliefs are true in virtue of mind-independent moral facts. Opposition to moral realism can take a number of forms. Expressivists deny that moral judgments express beliefs, claiming instead that they express non truth-assessable mental states such as desires or inclinations. Error theorists and (revolutionary) fictionalists claim that moral judgments are systematically false. Response-dependence views of moral judgments allow that moral judgments express beliefs and that at least some of them are true, but hold that they are true in virtue of mind-dependent moral facts. Moral realism itself comes in many varieties: reductionist, non-reductionist, naturalist, non-naturalist, internalist, externalist, analytic, and synthetic.
Wilfrid Sellars
Authors: Wolf Michael P. , Koons Jeremy Randel
Published: May 2010

Wilfrid Sellars (b. 1912–d. 1989) did some of the most interesting and challenging work in Western philosophy in the 20th century. At a time when most philosophers were moving toward increasingly narrow specialization in their scholarship, he produced a large corpus that was both systematic and extensive in scope. Sellars is also a difficult philosopher to read, however. “I revise my papers until only I can understand them,” he is rumored to have said, “and then I revise them once more.” His prose is both idiosyncratic and ambitious, striking out in novel directions while striving to address the concerns of the past on every page. This article strives to address his most significant contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and ethics. Most of the details of his work in the history of philosophy, particularly his work on Kant, are passed over. Wherever possible, original dates and sources of publication are included to give the reader a sense of the progression of Sellars’s work, but nearly all of these papers are included in one or more of the anthologies listed.
Hate Crime
Authors: Addington Lynn A.
Published: May 2010

The term “hate crime” is relatively new; it was coined in the mid-1980s to identify crimes motivated by bias against the victim’s actual or perceived membership in a status group such as a particular race or religion (Jacobs and Potter 1998, in Issues with Criminalizing Hate Crime). Although the term itself is new, the fact that some crimes are motivated by bias against a particular group is not (Petrosino 1999, in Issues with Criminalizing Hate Crime). Initial research on this modern categorization of hate crimes focused on the difficulty in defining hate crimes and the criminal justice response to these new crimes, a smaller body of research has examined those who commit hate crimes as well as hate crimes in a comparative or international context. In this area, some researchers prefer the term “bias crime” as they believe it more accurately captures the motivations of the offender. Both terms are used interchangeably in this entry.
Sentencing Policy
Authors: Rengifo Andres F.
Published: May 2010

Sentencing policies govern the administration of legal sanctions for individuals convicted of a criminal offense. As such, these policies shape a vast array of institutional processes ranging from the likelihood, nature, and duration of imprisonment, to release decisions and the conditions of post-incarceration supervision. Starting in the mid 1970s the US approach to sentencing moved away from a relatively uniform set of indeterminate state systems focused on individualized, case-specific decisions to a more fragmented set of determinate systems emphasizing structured decision making and reduced discretion for legal actors. This change also implies a greater emphasis on retributive ideologies in contrast to more traditional rehabilitation-centered approaches. This framework has been progressively developed through a number of state and federal sentencing policies—including, for example, repeat-offender statuses, sentencing enhancements and mandatory minimums, truth-in-sentencing statuses, and drug laws. In most cases these initiatives have been implemented through legislative action, although in recent years other government entities (such as sentencing commissions) have had more influence in the development of these policies. A rich tradition of socio-legal studies has explored the linkages between sentencing and the role, justification, and functions of legal punishments in society. Research has also highlighted a number of social covariates of sentencing policies—such as more conservative political ideologies and more intense partisan politics, as well as greater levels of economic resources—that have been linked to more punitive approaches and higher incarceration rates. Studies have also explored case- and jurisdiction-level disparities in sentencing outcomes and processes related to attributes of defendants (notably race and gender). An emerging body of works has begun to document the specific impact of sentencing policies on offenders and on the criminal justice system as a whole. These works are particularly relevant to understanding the context and impact of mass incarceration for prisoners, communities, and government agencies.
Prisons and Jails
Authors: Huebner Beth M. , McGuirk Morgan
Published: May 2010

Prisons and jails have been a central part of society for many centuries, and a substantial body of work has been amassed on theories of punishment. Correctional institutions serve many functions but generally serve to manage men and women who have been accused or convicted of criminal offenses. The nature and purpose of correctional institutions vary considerably. Traditionally the study of corrections focused on the prison; however, the research on corrections now includes the study of a range of institutions and community sanctions. In addition, a specialization of research in this area seeks to explain unique experiences of inmates, including that of women and juveniles. The literature listed in this article summarizes the prominent works in this area and provides sources of reliable data on jails and prisons.
Community Corrections
Authors: Huebner Beth M. , Boxerman Bobby
Published: May 2010

Most individuals under correctional supervision reside in the community. Community corrections includes a broad array of programs including alternatives to incarceration (such as boot camps or probation) and services, like parole, that aid individuals in making the transition to community life after imprisonment. Professionals in the field of community corrections have the dual role of ensuring accountability to both the criminal sanction and provision of services. There is substantial variation in forms of community sanctions, and these programs can be administered by a broad range of agencies within the criminal justice system, including corrections, courts, probation, and the police. In an era of mass incarceration, correctional agencies have been called on to supervise an ever-increasing number of individuals in the community. Subsequently, scholars and practitioners alike have called for the development and evaluation of community-based correctional programming. The following literature summarizes the prominent works in this area and provides sources of reliable data on a range of community sanctions.
Crime Control Policy
Authors: Blomberg Thomas G. , Brancale Julie
Published: May 2010

The literature on crime control policy has developed from several areas of study. Included among these areas are general descriptive studies of the operations of the crime control system (police, courts, and corrections), studies of the causes of criminal behavior in relation to the rehabilitation of offenders, critical inquiry into crime control policies and practices, historical studies of crime control, studies of crime control reforms, studies of get-tough crime control policies, and studies aimed at linking crime control knowledge to public policy. A theme emerging from this literature has been a recognition of the patterned capacity of various crime control policies and reforms to have unintended consequences.
The Juvenile Justice System
Authors: Taylor Terrance J.
Published: May 2010

The American juvenile justice system is an often-misunderstood component of our justice system. Developed in the late 1800s, the juvenile justice system was designed to be distinct from the adult criminal justice system. This was based, in part, on the idea that youth offenders were particularly malleable and would be more responsive than adults to individualized treatment efforts. Since its inception, the mission of the juvenile justice system has emphasized discretion and rehabilitation. Yet throughout history there have been calls for the juvenile justice system to take on a mission and form similar to that of the adult criminal justice system. The readings highlighted here focus on the history and mission of the juvenile justice system, the function of key juvenile justice institutions (such as police, court, and corrections), and how the system has changed over time (alternatives and innovations).
Prisoner Reentry
Authors: Rengifo Andres F.
Published: May 2010

Approximately 650,000 individuals are released from state and federal prisons every year in the United States. Nearly two-thirds of these ex-prisoners recidivate within three years. The social costs associated with this phenomenon are significant for prisoners and their families (e.g., higher penalties for repeated offenders, further detachment from pro-social networks) and government agencies (e.g., public safety concerns, growing fiscal pressures). Some of these obstacles are not new; however, their relevance and impact has been amplified by mass imprisonment and more conservative policies and ideologies. In response, practitioners and scholars have reconsidered the logic and structure of the reintegration process for ex-prisoners in order to provide more effective services and interventions. A growing body of research has begun to document these reentry initiatives from various perspectives and methodologies.
Restorative Justice
Authors: Lauritsen Janet
Published: May 2010

Restorative justice refers to a general philosophy, model, or way of practicing justice that stands in contrast to many Western criminal and civil justice proceedings. Restorative justice practices have long historical roots and are known by a variety of names, including victim-offender mediation, community justice conferences, restorative or sentencing circles, victim-offender reconciliation programs, and reparative justice. In restorative justice practices, victims, offenders, and communities affected by a particular offense meet to find a way to “restore” or make amends for the harm resulting from an offense. Rather than rely on legal professionals or the state to render decisions about guilt or innocence and the appropriate type of punishment, restorative justice proceedings delegate that responsibility directly to the parties involved. Participants in restorative justice meetings or conferences vary across settings, ranging from relatively large groups that include a wide circle of supporters for victims and offenders, to smaller groups limited to the victim, offender, a mediator, and a handful of others. Participation in restorative justice proceedings is most often voluntary, typically offered as an alternative to some form of legal proceeding. The precise nature of the meetings also varies, sometimes involving relatively few rules, sometimes closely following a script for action and discussion. The key feature of the meetings is that victims and offenders, and oftentimes others, openly discuss the offense, how it has affected them, and what might be done to remedy the harm. Restorative justice programs are more common for juvenile or first-time offenders than adult or repeat-offenders, and are typically used as a diversionary program in lieu of a formal plea or criminal judgment. These programs also have been used for solving other kinds of problems and disputes, such as nursing home regulation and insurance fraud in lieu of civil litigation. Criminologists study restorative justice programs to determine whether such efforts provide better outcomes than traditional criminal justice system practices. The outcomes typically studied include victim satisfaction and restitution outcomes, and offender recidivism and perceptions of fairness. Evaluations of restorative justice primarily have been conducted for programs in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Canada, and the United States.
Human Rights
Authors: Albanese Jay S.
Published: May 2010

The concept of human rights is an old idea, but its application to criminology and criminal justice is fairly new. Human rights are those rights seen as being fundamental freedoms to which all human beings are entitled. In the United States, they are referred to as civil rights, most of which are enumerated in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights and which include freedom of speech, assembly, privacy, equality before law, and other civil and political rights. Other countries have similar lists of rights guaranteed to all citizens. The notion of human rights goes beyond civil and political rights, however, and also commonly includes the right to opportunities for work, education, and fair treatment in all aspects of life. Writings on human rights cover centuries, consisting of many works of political and social philosophy that provide the basis for natural and individual rights in the face of the greater power of governments. Many of these classic works are summarized in other reference works, such as The Encyclopedia of Human Rights and The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, both cited in this entry. This guide to sources focuses on contributions to human rights literature and their connections to criminology and criminal justice.
Desistance
Authors: Kazemian Lila
Published: May 2010

In the field of criminology, desistance is generally defined as the cessation of offending or other antisocial behavior. However, researchers have not reached a consensus on the definition of desistance. Various authors have pointed out the shortcomings of a dichotomous definition of desistance, and some have suggested instead that a process view of desistance may provide a more accurate picture of the concept. Although desistance has become an increasingly popular research topic in recent years, it has been argued that the state of knowledge on this topic is still relatively limited. More specifically, it has been suggested that very little is known about the causal processes underlying desistance.
Family and Childhood
Authors: King Margaret L.
Published: May 2010

Scholars largely neglected the history of the family until after World War II, when they began to employ theoretical perspectives imported from the social sciences. In the 1960s, two principal figures triggered its study: Philippe Ariès, associated with the French Annales school, and Peter Laslett, cofounder at Cambridge University, England, of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Since that period, studies have proliferated on the history of family and household in Europe and its subregions and on the related topics of childhood and youth.
Humanism
Authors: Grendler Paul
Published: May 2010

Humanism was the major intellectual movement of the Renaissance. In the opinion of the majority of scholars, it began in late-14th-century Italy, came to maturity in the 15th century, and spread to the rest of Europe after the middle of that century. Humanism then became the dominant intellectual movement in Europe in the 16th century. Proponents of humanism believed that a body of learning, humanistic studies (studia humanitatis), consisting of the study and imitation of the classical culture of ancient Rome and Greece, would produce a cultural rebirth after what they saw as the decadent and “barbarous” learning of the Middle Ages. It was a self-fulfilling faith. Under the influence and inspiration of the classics, humanists developed a new rhetoric and new learning. Some scholars also argue that humanism articulated new moral and civic perspectives and values offering guidance in life. Humanism transcended the differences between the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, as leaders of both religious movements studied and used the ancient Latin and Greek classics. Because of the vast importance and broad scope of humanism, it is not surprising that scholars have studied it intensively and view it in different ways. This article provides a sampling of some of the best and most influential scholarship on the subject and demonstrates the broad impact of humanism in the era of the Renaissance and Reformation.
The Classical Tradition
Authors: Kallendorf Craig
Published: May 2010

Even the word “Renaissance” (“rebirth” in French) points to the effort to revive the learning of antiquity that motivated the intellectual elite of that era—for what sprang forth was an urgent awareness of the ancient past, prompting innovations in both ideas and the arts. The classical tradition, accordingly, has long played a central role in Renaissance studies. With the growing interest in nonelite cultures, the classical tradition in what is now sometimes called the early modern period has had to share the scholarly stage with an ever-increasing number of other areas of inquiry, but the recent burst of activity in reception studies has given the classical heritage a new lease on life along with a way to engage with the more theoretical discourse that has flourished in other areas of Renaissance studies over the past generation.
Printing and the Book
Authors: Rummel Erika , Wilson Mark , Kooistra Milton
Published: May 2010

Until the 1980s, when periodization fell out of favor among historians, the development of printing was used as one of the markers for the onset of the Renaissance. Thus the significance of printing has long been recognized. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, its impact on social and intellectual history moved to the center of research in early modern history. This interest may be explained by the fact that the last decades of the 20th century experienced a media shift that equals the importance of the shift in the 15th century. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein’s seminal 1979 book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (see Eisenstein 1979 cited under General Overviews) was in the vanguard of this wave of research. Criticism of Eisenstein for placing too much emphasis on the revolutionary character of printing and its singular impact on the Reformation has prompted some modification in the approach to the history of printing, but the recognition of its significance for the dissemination of information and learning and as an opinion maker has remained unchanged.
Schooling and Literacy
Authors: Grendler Paul
Published: May 2010

The study of schooling, defined as preuniversity education, in the Renaissance and Reformation era is old and new. Historians have long been aware of the high value that Renaissance pedagogical theorists, political leaders, and clergymen placed on educating the young properly. From the late 19th century onward, local historians have produced valuable monographs on the schools in their own cities, towns, and villages, often without connecting their research to a larger context. Historians also analyzed humanistic pedagogical treatises and assumed that students acquired rhetorical skills and moral wisdom by reading the classics. Protestant theologians and Catholic religious orders believed that students learned Christian truth in the schools that they organized, and historians generally took them at their word. Only in the past few decades have historians made a determined effort to find out what really happened. They have asked practical questions as, what kinds of schools existed? How many boys and girls attended them? What did they learn? Such questions and answers have animated, broadened, and renewed the study of schooling. At present most historiography focuses on two areas. The first is institutional research: that is, studying the organization of schooling. What kinds of schools did state, town, religious order, family, or private teacher establish, and who attended them? When enrollment figures and census information is available, scholars can make estimates about the literacy of the population and formulate hypotheses about the educational levels of society. The other focus of research is the content of schooling: What did teachers teach and students learn? This involves analysis of the textbooks and much else. Of course, institutional and intellectual investigations are two halves of a whole and should not be separated. What follows is a select bibliography, most of it recent, on schooling and literacy in the Renaissance and Reformation era, defined as beginning in Italy about 1350, and in northern Europe about 1450, and lasting to about 1648.
Spanish Literature
Authors: Kallendorf Hilaire
Published: May 2010

The Renaissance came later to Spain than to any other European country, which led to a certain sense of “belatedness” in Spain’s literal and literary historiography. Most histories of Golden Age literature (as the peak period of Spanish Renaissance literature is often called) begin with Fernando de Rojas’s humanistic tragicomedy the Celestina (c. 1499) and extend through at least the early Baroque (a convenient terminus being Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño, c. 1635). This time period proved extraordinarily fertile, however, coinciding with the era of Spanish world dominance. Spain was the birthplace of several important literary movements and genres, including the first modern novel. The glories of so-called “Golden” Age literature, however, may obscure the harsh conditions experienced by women, colonized people, and the victims of the Inquisition.
Vernacular Languages and Dialects
Authors: Moyer Ann
Published: May 2010

Written vernaculars increased enormously in use during the Renaissance. They also became objects of scholarship and debate. While modern linguistics looks back to the 19th century for its professional origins, Renaissance humanists began to develop systematic approaches to language study much earlier. Accordingly, some modern scholars have focused upon the languages, others on the era’s writings about language. One approach to the subject is diachronic, dealing with change over time. Synchronic change across region or social rank has attracted new attention with recent interest in questions of power, rank, and social control. The rapid development of computers has improved the ability to use large bodies of surviving sources, producing historical grammars, lexicons, dialect mappings, and other results. Most such projects are centered on a single European language. For many European languages, the Renaissance saw the rise of the modern literary language. Each developed a canon of writers; thus the study of languages overlaps with that of the literature, including the impact these writers had on their language. Renaissance writers also wrote about language, comparing vernaculars with Latin, and composed and written language with spoken and spontaneous. They debated how to set normative and aesthetic standards. The Italian term for these disputes, questione della lingua, often appears in the scholarship on other languages as well. Interests in colonial expansion; in the history of the book; in power and its exercise; and in gender distinctions have all led to a series of new approaches. Earlier portrayals of the development of vernaculars as progressive and egalitarian, parts of nationalist or romanticized narratives of modernization, is giving way to an appreciation of the losses and more complex issues at stake in the gradual move away from Latin. Some research focuses on medieval continuities: preaching and sermon-writing, popular drama, religious devotion, and many genres connected with lived religion. The rise of political states led to more records and more vernacular record-keeping, as well as matters of linguistic standardization and its ties to political and social power.
English Reformation
Authors: Fletcher Stella
Published: May 2010

Fifteenth-century England was solidly Catholic, 17th-century England predominantly Protestant: the difference between them constituted the English Reformation. Scholarly opinion is divided about the nature of the changes that happened in the 16th century, the rate at which they occurred in town and country and from region to region, and whether they came about because of a series of political decisions imposed “from above” by the Tudor monarchs from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I or as the expression of popular religious fervor welling up “from below.” Henry’s reign (1509–1547) witnessed the formal break with Rome, the declaration of royal supremacy over the church in England, and the plundering of the nation’s monastic wealth, but official promotion of more overt expressions of Protestantism had to wait for the brief reign of Edward VI (1547–1553). Mary I (reigned 1553–1558) reversed the policies of her father and brother, thereby placing England at the forefront of Catholic attempts to stem the Protestant tide. The long reign of Elizabeth (1558–1603) witnessed the emergence of an Anglican via media between the Catholic and Puritan extremes on the English ecclesiastical spectrum.
The Reformation and Wars of Religion in France
Authors: Diefendorf Barbara B.
Published: May 2010

The 16th century began in France as a time of relative peace, prosperity, and optimism, but horizons soon darkened under the clouds of religious schism, heresy persecutions, and civil war. French theologians condemned Martin Luther’s ideas as early as 1521, but his views continued to spread underground. The movement remained small and clandestine until the 1550s, when the penetration of John Calvin’s ideas from nearby Geneva resulted in the formation of Reformed churches, whose growing membership demanded the right to worship openly. The accidental death of King Henry II in 1559 left France with a religiously divided court and a series of young, inexperienced kings. Henry’s widow, Catherine de Medici, attempted a policy of compromise that backfired. Militancy increased on both sides of the religious divide, and civil war broke out in 1562. Neither side could secure a decisive win on the battlefield, and neither was satisfied with the compromise peace that ended the war. Indeed, war broke out seven more times before a more lasting peace was secured by the first Bourbon king, Henry IV, with the Edict of Nantes in 1598. The edict set the terms for religious coexistence, allowing French Protestants limited rights to worship and certain protections under the law. It also fostered the spread of a movement already underway for the renewal of Catholic spirituality and reform of Catholic church institutions in France. Until the 1970s, the civil and religious wars that afflicted France through the second half of the 16th century were viewed largely as the consequence of political rivalries that spun out of control following the death of King Henry II. More recently, historians have shifted their attention to the social and cultural contexts in which the wars took place, particularly to the fundamentally religious nature of the quarrels. This has led to a profusion of new scholarship on the impact of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in France, the tensions—and ultimately the violence—generated by competing claims to religious truth, and the difficulty of resolving the quarrels or putting an end to the wars that resulted from them.
Black Death and Plague: The Disease and Medical Thought
Authors: Cohn Samuel Kline
Published: May 2010

The history of the Black Death constitutes one of the most interdisciplinary fields of Renaissance and Reformation studies, bringing together not only a wide spectrum of scholars in the humanities and social sciences—students of literature, art history, economics, anthropology, demography—but also scholars across scientific disciplines such as archaeology, biology, zoology, genetics, dentistry, and more. Modern scholarship and enthusiasm for the subject have closely followed major outbreaks of epidemic diseases threatening Europe: the cholera epidemics of the 1830s (when the term “Black Death” became common in the English language for the disease’s outbreak from 1346 to 1352), the spread of bubonic plague (later christened Yersinia pestis) in 1894 to World War I, and most recently, the spread of HIV/AIDS from the mid-1980s to the present.
Cities and Urban Patriciates
Authors: Cowan Alexander
Published: May 2010

Urban centers had an influence on the development of Renaissance Europe disproportionate to their overall demographic importance. Most of the population continued to live and work in the countryside, but towns and cities functioned as key centers of production, consumption and exchange, political control, ecclesiastical organization, and cultural influence. Historians still debate the relative roles of urban and rural areas in facilitating the development of capitalism in the long term. Writing on urban history has a very long pedigree dating back to the 16th century, but as an academic discipline it began to flourish in the late 19th century. Since the 1960s, the range of approaches to the field has widened considerably from concerns with political and economic organization to take in issues of governance, social structure, and, most recently, overlapping urban cultures. The role of religious belief, particularly in the context of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, runs as a thread throughout the history of the urban experience.
England, 1485-1642
Authors: Covington Sarah
Published: May 2010

The scholarship on Tudor and Stuart England constitutes a parallel universe in its own right, with its sometimes acrimonious debates threatening to paralyze the student (and even specialist) from coming to any clarity or conclusions at all (unless, perhaps, he or she simply submits to the latest historiographical orthodoxy). Aside from the English Civil War, which has been called the “Mount Everest” of English scholarship, debates have centered upon whether the Reformation was “top down” or “bottom up”: religion as a whole was Protestant, Catholic, or something in between; the nobility and the gentry in crisis or ascendant; the Restoration representative of continuity or change; and the events of 1688 momentous, or not. Terms such as “revisionism,” “postrevisionism,” or “neo-Whiggism” convey such confusion, but they are unavoidable when it comes to entering, on a deeper level, the notoriously vexed scholarship of the period. Such debates also testify to the extremely rich nature of the Tudor and Stuart period in England, which continues to yield new insights, interpretations, and conclusions regarding political culture, social relations, the nature of religious belief and allegiance, or causality when it comes to an event as momentous as the civil war. The following entry is limited to the most important or representative works, including studies whose claims have been long discredited or put aside but nevertheless remain important in conveying the full scope of the research and conclusions yielded by the subject at hand. Many more sources (and subjects) could have been added, just as databases such as the Royal Historical Society’s annual bibliography continue to list hundreds of new books and articles each year.
Florence
Authors: Strocchia Sharon
Published: May 2010

Florence has long been considered the epicenter of the Italian Renaissance because of the early and conspicuous development there of humanism and the city’s stunning innovations in the visual arts. Yet this landlocked city was also a major European economic center renowned for its thriving textile industries, extensive banking networks, and creative mechanisms of public finance. In contrast to the celebrated political stability of the Venetian republic, Florence was haunted by frequent political upheavals and deep social tensions that ultimately led to the collapse of the guild republic and the advent of the Medici principate in the early 16th century. Home to illustrious political figures such as Lorenzo de’ Medici, as well as thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Florence was at base a city of merchants and artisans throughout the republican period. It was their exceptional propensity for record keeping, as much as the city’s vaunted cultural achievements, that give Renaissance Florence its enduring reputation. Florentines began chronicling their own history in the 14th century, giving rise to a long and complex historiographical tradition. This article focuses on the major areas of scholarly inquiry that have emerged since the 1950s.
Venice
Authors: King Margaret L.
Published: May 2010

The city of Venice was unique in European history: an independent republic that endured for more than one thousand years, from the 8th to the 18th century. It was a commercial powerhouse, a laboratory of political systems, an exemplar of social cohesion, a principal contributor (along with Florence and Rome) to the culture of the Renaissance, and above all, an entity severed from the mainland, a creature of the sea, and the single most important intermediary between Europe and the regions of the eastern Mediterranean, especially Byzantine and Islamic countries. The city understood itself as unique, as much as we do, almost from the beginning of its rise to prominence during the 12th century. In chronicles and treatises, in the arts and literature, and in distinctive civic and religious rituals, its advocates portrayed the city as exceptional in achievement, capacity, and moral stature, constructing what has come to be known as the “myth of Venice.” For these reasons, scholars have returned often to consider again the principal features of the Venetian phenomenon in every century since its rise, resulting in a complex historiographical tradition. This article maps out major resources and categories of investigation for Venice proper, not the larger Veneto region, and confines itself to printed materials, without citing manuscripts.
Women and Learning
Authors: King Margaret L.
Published: May 2010

In 1977, Renaissance scholar and pioneering feminist Joan Kelly posed the disturbing question: Did women have a Renaissance? Was the period characterized by change and innovation in the cultural realm dominated by men also a period of gains for their wives and daughters? The tsunami of scholarly studies of women’s lives since the late 20th century has suggested that, on the contrary, women suffered setbacks: their economic activities were restricted, their options within the family were limited, and even their opportunities for religious expression, as a consequence of Protestant and Catholic Reformations, were curtailed. In the area of cultural expression, however, more recent work shows that the net result is positive, and that the Renaissance was, in fact, a fulcral moment for women. During the period 1300–1700, the misogynistic consensus of the learned (medical, legal, philosophical, theological) was modified; women entered the mainstream of European intellectual life as authors of Latin and vernacular poetry and prose. They were producers, performers, patrons, and critics of the arts; they engaged in public discourse, including in the philosophical, scientific, and political domains; and they gained access to education. By 1700, the foundations were sturdily in place for women’s further advancement in public, private, and academic life. This enormous shift in women’s role as cultural agent and subject is visible in many areas of concern to Renaissance scholars. This article is concerned with the attitudes of the learned, the debate over women’s essential nature and capacity, and the participation of women in main areas of intellectual life. (For a fuller treatment of women authors, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation articles on “Women Writing in English,” “Women Writing in French,” etc., and for the gender relations of other cultural domains, see “Women and the Visual Arts,” “Women and Science,” etc.) The scholarly literature on women and learning has peculiar characteristics worthy of note. It is very recent (with about half the citations given here published since 2000), it is overwhelmingly anglophone, it is dominated more by collections of essays loosely organized by theme than by monographs, and it has been accompanied by a massive project of the editing and translation of works authored by women.