Abrams, Barbara. Forensic Storytelling and the Literary Roots of Early Modern Feminism, ReSisters. New York, London: Routledge, 2024.

This important archival study opens up the rich possibilities of what Abrams' calls "forensic storytelling."This strategy of scholarly engagement is the author's new way into the story of early modern women's writing as a literature of resistance in 18 th century France.Or, in Abrams' terms, a legacy of French "reSisters."In this study Abrams focuses on the story of the incarceration of three French women in the 18 th century.The stories are themselves forensic as is the forensic data she uses to make her case about these women's lives and their relationship to the literature of early modern feminism.Abrams interrogates the factums, the letters, notes, and arguments that these women put together to plead their own cases at the time.Scouring the archives at the Bibliotèque de l'Arsenal, Abrams brings us into the worlds of three of these women.Investigating their words, and their evidentiary files, she tells their stories, but she also places them in a broader context, both historical and literary.As I read this book, Barbara Abrams's meticulous archival research constitutes in literary and historical terms, forensic expertise that resonates with the work of the American Academy of Forensic Science (AAFS); their work relates to any science used for the purpose of the law.Moreover, as they explain, the forensic scientist is often called upon as an expert witness in court but that this expert witness, "as opposed to the ordinary or 'fact' witness, is someone who is "permitted to testify not just about what the results of testing or analysis were ('facts'), but also to give opinion about what those results might mean." 1 She testifies to not just what is in the archive but is that scholarly expert who is uniquely positioned to tell us what this evidence means.This is precisely what she does in her aptly titled, Forensic Storytelling.She digs out and helps illuminatean extraordinary cache of French 18th century women's writing, a whole genre that has been overlooked as such, and, to date, only partially studied.On this score, Abrams is both gracious and eloquent in the ways she both appreciates and builds on prior scholarship.This is not about conquest as much as it is about a broadening, an opening of this work to new questions and novel perspectives that build from prior scholarly inquiry.She enhances and expands those studies to

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