Professor’s book out Jan. 1

Kirilka Stavreva’s book, “Words Like Daggers: Violent Female Speech in Early Modern England,” to be released Jan. 1 by the University of Nebraska Press, is now available for order.

Stavreva is professor of English and creative writing at Cornell College. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and her undergraduate degree in English literature from Sofia University in Bulgaria, and is a scholar of early modern literature and culture. Her monograph analyzes literary material, performance, and legal documentation to challenge the myth of the silent, obedient woman of early modern England.

The University of Nebraska Press’ publicity material describes the work:

Blending gender theory with detailed historical analysis, “Words Like Daggers” asserts the power of women’s language—the power to subvert binaries and destabilize social hierarchies, particularly those of gender, in the early modern era. In the process Stavreva reconstructs the speech acts of individual contentious women, such as the scold Janet Dalton, the witch Alice Samuel, and the Quaker Elizabeth Stirredge. Because the dramatic potential of women’s powerful rhetorical performances was recognized not only by victims and witnesses of individual violent speech acts but also by theater professionals, Stavreva also focuses on how the stage, arguably the most influential cultural institution of the Renaissance era, orchestrated and aestheticized women’s fighting words and, in so doing, showcased and augmented their cultural significance.

According to author Anna Riehl Bertolet, “Stavreva’s book furthers the work of many feminist scholars, contributes to women’s history, and advances our understanding of the early modern culture in its textual, sonic, and even physical manifestations.”

Stavreva has taught at Cornell since 2001. Her first trade book, “Cultures of the World: Bulgaria,” was published in 1997 by Marshall Cavendish. In 2013 she collected and edited a cluster of 11 articles—including one she wrote herself—about multidisciplinary approaches to teaching Dante for the journal Pedagogy.