Proposing activity as a useful category of analysis, this special issue considers Catholic and Protestant women in Europe and the Americas in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. We examine women in religious communities, which include both monastic communities as well as confessional communities. A close analysis of the social, economic, and cultural actions of these women religious challenges historiographical assumptions about monastic cloister and domestic space in the early modern period. In fact, we revisit monastic and domestic spaces to reveal them as stages for previously unexamined activity. This cross-denominational and transnational special issue highlights new spheres of women’s religious activity and raises new questions for the study of early modern women’s lives and their capacity to act in early modern society, economy, and culture.

中文翻译：

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导言：近代早期欧洲和美洲妇女宗教活动的透视

本期特刊将活动作为一种有用的分析类别，探讨了 16 至 18 世纪欧洲和美洲的天主教和新教妇女。我们研究宗教社区中的女性，其中包括修道院社区和忏悔社区。仔细分析这些女性宗教人士的社会、经济和文化行为，挑战了现代早期关于修道院回廊和家庭空间的历史假设。事实上，我们重新审视修道院和家庭空间，将它们揭示为以前未经审查的活动的阶段。这一跨教派和跨国特刊突出了妇女宗教活动的新领域，并为研究早期现代妇女的生活及其在早期现代社会、经济、