Between 1557 and 1561, a group of women at the convent Santa Maria Maddalena alla Giudecca, known as The Convertite on Giudecca island in Venice ran one of the earliest female operated printing presses in early modern Europe. Unlike other women printers of the time – often widows inheriting their husbands’ shops – these women worked collectively from within an enclosed convent. They were not noblewomen or scholars, but former sex workers, concubines and social outcasts, admitted to the convent precisely because they did not meet society’s ideals of chastity. They lived in poverty and they laboured out of necessity. They printed at least twenty-five titles in Latin and the Venetian dialect, including works authored by medieval visionaries and unknown women. I make a case that these women used typography not just to reproduce words in print, but as a way to remake their subjectivity. Their printing practice was physical, spiritual, and deeply embodied. Their work reveals how books are shaped not only by ideas, but by rituals, and bodies. One of their prints still bears the trace of a single strand of hair – caught between type and paper – a quiet archival witness to their presence.Almost entirely overlooked in mainstream design history, the Convertite’s press offers a radically different story; one where women laboured under restriction and violence, but still found ways to produce, preserve, and participate. Their story is not one of genius or invention, but of resilience, survival, and the printed works they left behind.Content warning: this episode contains references to violence, sexual abuse and rape. Please take care while listening.TIMELINE1542 – Fourteen women enter the newly founded Convertite convent in Giudecca, Venice1551 – Nuns granted permission to profess vows under the Rule of St Augustine1557 – Convertite nuns begin operating a printing press; 2 editions printed1558 – 5 editions printed1559 – 10 editions printed; some sold at the Alla Speranza bookshop in Campo Santa Maria Formosa1560 – 7 editions printed 1561 – 1 edition printed; marks the end of the press’s activity1561 (6 Nov) – Rector Pietro Leon da Valcamonica sentenced to death by the Council of Ten for rape and abuse of more than 20 nuns1561 (10 Nov) – Valcamonica executed in Piazza San Marco; printing operations ceaseEarly 1800s – Monastery suppressed by Napoleon and converted into a military prisonMid-1800s – Building transformed into a women’s prison2024 – Con i miei occhi, the Holy See’s pavilion for the 60th Venice Biennale, opens to the public at Casa di Reclusione Femminile, the former site of the Convertite conventREFERENCESApostolos-Cappadona, D. 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Reinventing GutenbergWoodblock and Movable-Type Printing in Europe and China. In S. A. Baron, E. N. Lindquist, & E. F. Shevlin (Eds.), Agent of Change (pp. 169-192). University of Massachusetts Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vk8sv.14Elliott, D. (2010). Flesh and Spirit: The Female Body. In (pp. 13-46). https://doi.org/10.1484/M.BCEEC-EB.3.2618Feher, M., Naddaff, R., & Tazi, N. (1989). Fragments for a History of the Human Body. Zone. Littau, K. (2006). Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies, and Bibliomania. Polity Press. McGough, L. (2010). Gender, Sexuality, and Syphilis in Early Modern Venice: The Disease that Came to Stay. Palgrave Macmillan UK. McGough, L. J. (1997). "Raised from the devil's jaws": A convent for repentant prostitutes in Venice, 1530-1670. Northwestern University. McKenzie, D. F. (1999). Bibliography and the sociology of texts. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511483226McKenzie, D. F., McDonald, P. D., & Suarez, M. F. (2002). Making Meaning: "Printers of the Mind" and Other Essays. University of Massachusetts Press. Moreton, M. N. (2013). "Scritto di bellissima lettera": nuns' book production in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.l282y0odMuir, E. (1997). Ritual in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press. Peckham, M. (1971). Reflections on the Foundations of Modern Textual Editing. In J. Katz. (Ed.), Proof: The Yearbook of American Bibliographical and Textual Studies 1 (pp. 122-155). University of South Carolina Press. Richardson, K. (2021). Roma in the Medieval Islamic World. Roma in the Medieval Islamic World, 1-256. Vervliet, H. D. L. (2008). The Palaeotypography of the French Renaissance: Selected Papers on Sixteenth-century Typefaces. Brill.

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