Announcements, Publications

Associate Professor Publishes on Safavid Ambassadress and 17th Century Globetrotter

Carmen Nocentelli’s “Teresa Sampsonia Sherley: Amazon, Traveler, and Consort” recently appeared in the edited collection, Travel and Travail: Early Modern Women, English Drama, and the Wider World. Known in England as the Circassian wife of Robert Sherley—the Sussex adventurer who served as Shah ‘Abbas I’s ambassador to Europe during the early decades of the seventeenth century—Teresa Sampsonia Sherley was often lionized on the Continent because of her travel exploits in unfamiliar and often hostile environments. Drawing on archival research as well as hitherto ignored early print sources, Nocentelli argues that Lady Sampsonia Sherley’s travel adventures helped theorize female mobility as an enterprise that could be respectable and even exemplary.