Readers and Reputations: a new exhibition from the RECIRC research project

Readers and Reputations: The Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550-1700 is a landmark exhibition that showcases the findings of a major research project, ‘RECIRC: The Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550-1700’. The project, which is led by Professor Marie-Louise Coolahan, Professor of English at NUI Galway, began in July 2014 and formally concludes in January 2020. This was the first literature project in Ireland to have been awarded funding by the European Research Council, and has involved 11 researchers over the course of its five years. Find out more about our research at: recirc.nuigalway.ie

The exhibition shows how women were read both in their own time and posthumously – as powerful queens, controversial exhibitionists, exemplary mothers and autobiographers, pioneering scientists, and witnesses to religious persecution. It includes anonymous poems that challenge our assumptions about gendered voice and authorship.