Okay, okay.  I'll get the ball rolling.  Here are some books to get you started--by the way, all of these are in our library.
For the Explorers/Pirates group:
Jonathan Hart's Columbus, Shakespeare, and the Interpretation of the New World.
Claire Jewitt's Culture of Piracy.
Rebecca Weaver-Hightower's Empire Islands.

For the Clothing and Social Stratification group:
Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning.
Several articles in Cox and Kastan's A New History of Early English Drama.
Barbara Harris's English Aristocratic Women.
Margot Hill's Evolution of Fashion.

For the Courticulture Group:
Hillay Zmora's Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the State in Europe.
Rosemary Kegl's Rhetoric of Concealment.
Harris's book above.

For the Women & Allies Group:
SP Carasano's Renaissance Drama by Women
Harris's book above.
Janet Smarr's Joining the Conversation.
Margaret King's Women of the Renaissance.

All of you might look at The Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and The Dictionary of National Biography as reference books.