Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks is an American historian and Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee's Department of History.[1] She describes herself as wearing "... two hats, one as a historian of early modern Europe and the other as a world/global historian, with a primary focus on women, gender, and sexuality within these".[1] She has taught and published in European history, world history, and history pedagogy, and served as the President of the Sixteenth Century Society, the Society for Reformation Research, The Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender, and the World History Association.
She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and before moving to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee she was an assistant professor at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, from 1979 to 1985.[3]
Wiesner-Hanks is the long-term senior editor of The Sixteenth Century Journal: The Journal of Early Modern Studies,[4] and from 2011 to 2020 an editor of the Journal of Global History.[5] In history pedagogy, she was the Chief Reader for Advanced Placement World History, is on the board for the Society for History Education and World History Commons, and was one of the history authors of the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards, which by 2017 had been incorporated into the social studies standards in 23 states. She has also been on the author team of several innovative source books and textbooks used in college and Advanced Placement high school classrooms. These include Discovering the Western Past (Cengage, 7e 2104) and A History of Western Society (Bedford, 14e 2023) often used in Advanced Placement European History classes.[6]
Selected publications
Working Women in Renaissance Germany. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986.
Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 2e 2000; 3e 2008; 4e 2019. ISBN9781108739351 Italian translations 2003, 2016.
Editor and, with Joan Skocir, Translator, Convents Confront the Reformation: Catholic and Protestant Nuns in Germany. Reformation Texts in Translation (Series editor Kenneth Hagen) Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1996.
Gender, Church, and State in Early Modern Germany: Essays by Merry E. Wiesner. Women and Men in History. London, Longman, 1998.
Co-editor, with Renate Bridenthal and Susan Stuard, Becoming Visible: Women in European History. 3rd. edition, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Co-editor, with Lisa Di Caprio, Lives and Voices: A Sourcebook on European Women. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Co-editor, with Monica Chojnacka, Ages of Woman, Ages of Man: Sources in European Social History, 1400-1750. London: Longman, 2002.
Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 2000. 2e 2010; 3e 2020. ISBN9780367201791. Spanish translation 2000.
Gender in History: Global Perspectives London: Blackwell, 2001. 2e 2011; 3e 2022. ISBN9781119719205. Chinese translation 2003; Korean translation 2006; Turkish translation 2022.
Co-editor and translator, with Susan Karant-Nunn, Luther on Women: A Sourcebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN9780521658843.
Co-editor with Teresa Meade: A Companion to Global Gender History, London: Blackwell, 2004. 2e 2021. ISBN9781119535805.
An Age of Voyages, 1350-1600. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN9780195176728
Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789. Cambridge History of Europe, Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 2e 2013; 3e 2023. ISBN9781009160803. Greek translation 2010; Turkish translation 2010, 2014.
The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and their Worlds. London: Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN9780300127331.
Religious Transformations in the Early Modern World: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford Series in History and Culture. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Books, 2009. ISBN9780312458867.
Co-editor, with Peter Y. Paik, Debt: Ethics, the Environment, and the Economy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.
A Concise History of the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. ISBN9781107694538 Korean translation 2018; Portuguese translation 2018; Spanish translation 2020.
Editor, Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015. ISBN9780367880149.
A Primer for Teaching Women, Gender, and Sexuality in World History. With Urmi Engineer Willoughby. Series: Design Principles for Teaching History. Series Editor: Antoinette Burton. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. ISBN9781478002475.
Editor, Gendered Temporalities in the Early Modern World. Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World Series. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. ISBN9789462984585.
What Is Early Modern History? London: Polity, 2021. ISBN9781509540563.
Editor, Challenging Women’s Agency and Activism in Early Modernity. Gendering the Late Medieval and Early Modern World Series. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. Winner of the 2021 Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender Prize for a Collaborative Project. ISBN9789463729321.
Women and the Reformations: A Global History. London and New Haven: Yale University Press., 2024. ISBN9780300268232. Italian translation forthcoming.