Allyson Poska
Professor Emerita
Email: aposka@umw.edu
Allyson M. Poska received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1992 and joined the Mary Washington faculty the same year. Primarily a social historian, she recently taught upper-level courses on the histories of Spain and Latin America and frequently offers course in women’s history and on gender issues. Her most recent book is Gendered Crossings: Women and Migration in the Spanish Empire (New Mexico, 2016) which was awarded the Best Book Prize for 2016 from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. She is also the author of Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia (Oxford, 2005), winner of the 2006 Roland H. Bainton Prize for best book in early modern history; Women and Gender in the Western Past (coauthored with Katherine French, Houghton-Mifflin, 2006); and Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century Spain (Brill, 1998). She is the coeditor of The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, 2013). Her work has been funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2000), the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis (2004), an ACLS/NEH/SSRC International and Area Studies Fellowship (2007), and the John Carter Brown Library (2011). She has served as a member of the executive council of the Sixteenth Century Society, the executive board of the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, and as President of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. She is coeditor of Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Education
- Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1992. History.
- M.A., Brown University, 1987. History.
- B.A., The Johns Hopkins University, 1985. International Studies.
Courses Recently Taught
HIST 121 Western Civilization I
HIST 299: Introduction to Historical Methods
HIST 334: Early Modern European Women’s History
HIST 336: The Reformation
HIST 360: History of Spain
HIST 361: Colonial Latin America
HIST 362: Modern Latin America
HIST 471B5: Gender and Empire
Publications
Gendered Crossings: Transatlantic Migration in the Spanish Empire (New Mexico, 2016).
Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Coedited with
Katherine McIver and Jane Couchman (Williston, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2013).
Susan D. Amussen and Allyson M. Poska. “Restoring Miranda: Gender and the Limits of European Patriarchy in the Early Modern Atlantic World.” Journal of Global History 7.3 (November 2012): 342-363.
“Public Health, Peasant Bodies, and the Spanish Colonization of Patagonia.” Social History of
Medicine 25.2 (2012): 290-306.
“Babies on Board: Women, Children, and Imperial Policy in the Spanish Empire.” Gender and History 22:2 (August 2010): 269-283. Honorable Mention 2011 Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Essay and Article Award.
“How Women‟s History Transformed the Study of Early Modern Spain.” Bulletin of the Society
for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 23:1 (2008): 5-19.
“‟A Married Man is a Woman‟: Negotiating Masculinity in Early Modern Northwestern Spain.” In
Masculinity in the Reformation Era eds. Scott Hendrix and Susan Karant-Nunn, 3-20.
Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008.
“Spain.” In Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Research. ed. David M.
Whitford, 290-308. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2008.
Women and Gender in the Western Past. Coauthored with Katherine French, Houghton Mifflin
(now Cengage), 2006.
Women and Authority in Early Modern Spain: The Peasants of Galicia. Oxford University Press,
2005. Winner of the 2006 Roland H. Bainton Prize for best book in early modern history
or theology.
“Managing Stress?: Connecting Research and Pedagogy in Women’s History.” In Structures and
Subjectivities: Attending to Early Modern Women ed. Joan E. Hartman and Adele Seeff,
341-355. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007.
“Elusive Virtue: Rethinking the Role of Female Chastity in Early Modern Spain.” Journal of Early
Modern History 8:1-2 (June 2004): 135-146.
“Confessionalization and Social Discipline in Early Modern Spain.” Archiv für
Reformationsgeschichte 94 (2003): 308-319.
Regulating the People: The Catholic Reformation in Seventeenth-Century Spain. Leiden: E. J. Brill Academic Press, 1998.
For further information, including CV and a complete list of publications, see
allysonmposka.com
