The new book by Associate Professor of History Jamie A. Gianoutsos, Ph.D., The Rule of Manhood: Tyranny, Gender, and Classical Republicanism in England, 1603-1660, has been published by Cambridge University Press in the Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History series. The series is a preeminent collection of established and emerging scholars whose research reveals valuable new perspectives on familiar subjects.
“This book is about intellectual history, political culture, the history of gender and the history of literature. It is also a book about how revolutions happen, and how such revolutionary thought shapes long-lasting political ideas,” said Gianoutsos, who lucidly articulates how stories of the Roman republic and classical ideas of masculinity helped undermine British monarchy and establish a new republic.
The Rule of Manhood explores the importance of gender, especially masculinity, in anti-monarchy writings of the 17th century and in the republican tradition of thought. “While much has been written about the republican tradition, no one has focused on the ways that this tradition was built upon a masculine and anti-feminine notion of citizenship,” Gianoutsos explained. “More broadly, the book raises the question of whether sexism, militarism and elitism are necessary, inherent or logical consequences of our republican heritage—or whether they were merely contingent historical prejudices that can and should be shed in contemporary republics, such as ours.”
The first half of the book focuses on the reigns of King James I and King Charles I in Britain from 1603-1640 and the ways classical stories of tyranny provided criticisms against these early Stuart kings and revealed broader problems of hereditary monarchy, Gianoutsos explained.
The second half of the book studies the significance of these stories for the English Civil Wars of the 1640s and the English Revolution of 1649-1660. Gianoutsos successfully argues how the writings of John Milton and Marchamont Nedham influenced views of tyranny as emasculating and put forth a vision for male citizens to restore their manliness by exercising virtues of reason and justice through political participation, courage on the battlefield, and governance of themselves and their households.
“For my field of study, I’m hopeful that scholars studying the history of monarchy and of our republican heritage will now recognize gender as fundamental to understanding the history of power, and that it will reshape the scholarly conversation accordingly,” she added.
Gianoutsos received her B.A. from Baylor University. Through being awarded the Marshall Scholarship (a 2006 Marshall Scholar), she completed an M.A. in Renaissance literature from the Queen’s University of Belfast and an MPhil in political thought and intellectual history at the University of Cambridge. Upon returning to the U.S. in 2008, she completed a Ph.D. in history at the Johns Hopkins University through a George and Sylvia Kagan Graduate Fellowship and through generous grants including an IHR Mellon Pre-Dissertation Fellowship, Huntington Library Fellowship, and Charles Singleton Center Fellowship. Gianoutsos joined the History Department at Mount St. Mary’s University as an assistant professor in 2014 and is director of the Office of Competitive Fellowships.
Her articles and book chapters have been published in the Renaissance Quarterly, the leading American journal of Renaissance studies, History of Education Quarterly, an international, peer-reviewed academic journal, and Reformation & Renaissance Review. Her book chapter, “Loyalty to a Nero? Publicising Puritan Persecution in the 1630s” was recently published in an edited volume from Palgrave MacMillan.
Gianoutsos is also a recipient for the highly-selective 2021 Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Short-Term Research Fellowship. The RSA is the largest international academic society devoted to the study of the era 1300-1700. The award will fund initial research in London for her second book project titled The ‘Propagation of Liberty’: Marchamont Nedham and the Classical Republican Tradition.
“The book explores the thought and legacy of republican theorist and pioneering journalist Marchamont Nedham and considers three principles from Nedham’s writings which have been fundamental to the Anglo-republican tradition and our democracy: free press, the concept of ‘republican bodies,’ and the propagation of liberty through empire. The last chapter considers the influence of these principles on the American founding and especially John Adams,” Gianoutsos summarized.
Gianoutsos has been interested in the history of republics for two decades—citing her teenage discovery of an English translation of Machiavelli’s The Prince as a first experience that sparked her passion for political thought. Her later research was driven by a desire to understand the relationship between virtue, education, and citizenship, seeking to understand how a government by and for the people was supported by and could also encourage good citizens.