English Professor & Catholic Studies Affiliated Scholar
We sat down with Paula McQuade to discuss her forthcoming book Catechisms and Women's Writing in Seventeenth-Century England. McQuade is a Professor in the Department of English and an Affiliated Scholar in the Department of Catholic Studies. Her new book, published by Cambridge University Press, will be available July 2017.
Catechisms and Women's Writing in Seventeenth-Century England is a study of early modern women's literary use of catechizing. By studying female catechists, Paula McQuade shows how early modern women used the power and authority granted to them as mothers to teach religious doctrine, to demonstrate their linguistic skills, to engage sympathetically with Catholic devotional texts, and to comment on matters of contemporary religious and political import - activities that many scholars have considered the sole prerogative of clergymen.