God Save the Queen: Queenship and Prayerful Power

The use of prayers to support queenship is not new but has a long history. This collection of essays seeks to offer scholarship focused on examining the relationship between queens and the power of prayers. It is the aim of this collection to include essays on queens and queenship, including queen consorts, regnant queens, and queen mothers, fictional or historical queens, as well as incipient female heirs to the throne from the middle ages through the early modern and modern eras; and to include essays on queens from a broad region, including but not limited to European, Russian, Ottoman, Byzantine, Mongol, or New World queens. Essays should consider queens and the use, or power, of prayers in the context of: queens’ personal prayers, either written for or by them; prayer books; prayers as politics; public prayers, in praise and support, as well as in supplication, petition, or admonishment; private prayers; policy as prayer; images of queens at prayer. In addition, papers might examine what contemporaries considered appropriate realms of prayer for queens, including but not limited to prayers on occasions such as marriage, accession, childbirth, sickness, death, or intervention. What do prayers by or for queens suggest about religious identity, national identity, or authority (by definition not female)? What do prayers written for, or by, queens to a masculine deity reveal about gender ideals or anxieties?

Although previously some scholars have explored this subject in relation to individual queens in separate articles and books, the editors of this collection hope that this volume will allow people to assess similarities and differences in the ways that prayers were used in connection to queens across countries and across time. If you are interested in contributing to this volume, please send a 250 word abstract to the editors: sduncan@shc.edu, Renee.Bricker@ung.edu, and Margaret.Oakes@furman.edu.