How women shaped the Nordic Enlightenment I
Intellectual Equality, Women’s Education, and Moral Philosophy
In this conference, we seek to explore women’s contributions to relevant Enlightenment debates in the Nordic countries. The conference brings together scholars from different fields to illuminate and deepen our understanding of women’s contributions to the Nordic Enlightenment.
Due to increased scholarly attention to women’s writings and agency, the image of the European Enlightenment as a male-dominated enterprise has slowly begun to fade. It is now established that women writers across Europe participated in intellectual, religious, and political debates, taking up the pen to combat prejudices, voice their concerns on private and public matters, and advocate their cause. While women’s participation in the Enlightenment is well-researched in some parts of Europe, notably in France and England, other regions have been neglected in this wave of research. This holds for Europe’s North, raising the question of how the Enlightenment unfolded in the Nordic countries seen from the vantage point of women. The conference will consider how this affects our understanding of analytical and historiographical categories (such as Enlightenment, progress and equality) and how it relates to debates in other parts of Europe.
If you would like to attend the conference, please register by emailing Marie Poder Bjerregaard. Please include the participant's name and the specific days you wish to attend.
Travel, hotel and meals will be fully covered for conference speakers. Conference speakers will have the opportunity to contribute to a peer-reviewed book publication.
Papers presented at the conference may but need not refer explicitly or systematically to the above outline, but they should address some of the following research questions:
Nordic Perspectives on Women's Intellectual Equality and Moral Philosophy. What was Nordic women’s thought on intellectual equality, women’s education and topics related to moral philosophy (such as happiness, the virtues, and the good life)?
Contextualizing Nordic Women's Participation in the Learned World. What was specific about the historical settings, material conditions and societal structures that shaped women’s participation in the learned world in the Nordic countries?
Exploring a Nordic Path to Women's Enlightenment. Was there a Nordic way of women’s Enlightenment? Did unique cultural, intellectual, or societal factors shape a distinct Nordic approach to women's engagement with Enlightenment ideals?
We want to evaluate these questions from three different perspectives:
- How are these findings related to debates in other parts of Europe?
- How do these findings affect our understanding of the analytical and historiographical categories (such as enlightenment, progress, and equality), which are used when researching this historical period?
- How can these findings inform us about the emergence, development, and shortcomings of modern Scandinavian gender equality?
In this conference, we seek to explore these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. Our primary aim is to assess women's contributions to relevant Enlightenment debates in the Nordic countries. The conference brings together scholars from different fields to illuminate and deepen our understanding of women's contributions to the Nordic Enlightenment.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words, along with a brief curriculum vitae, to irina.hron@hum.ku.dk by February 20, 2025. Participants will be notified of the acceptance of their abstracts by February 28, 2025.
Abstracts
Preliminary programme
9:00 - 9:15 | Arrival |
9:15 - 9:30 | Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (University of Copenhagen) Welcome |
9:30 - 10:15 | I Religious and intellectual spheres: Debates on equality during the 17th century Joyce Irwin (Princeton Research Forum) Ancient Philosophy and Christian Learning in the Works of Anna Maria van Schurman |
10:15 - 11:00 | Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (University of Copenhagen) Piety as a pathway to women’s agency: On the role of piety in Birgitte Thott’s treatise Om vejen til et lyksaligt liv (ca. 1659) |
11:00 - 11:30 | Coffee break |
11:30 - 12:15 | Juliane Engelhardt (University of Copenhagen) Radical Pietist Women in the Scandinavian Enlightenment |
12:15 - 13:00 | Martin Fog Arndal (University of Copenhagen) From Paratext to Politics: Women’s Ideas of Equality in Early Modern Scandinavian Religious Contexts |
13:00 - 14:30 | Lunch break |
14:30 - 15:15 | II Moral philosophy and women’s intellectual identity: The Danish-Norwegian context in the 17th century Jelena Bundalovic (University of Copenhagen) The True and the Good: Truth as Authenticity and a Meta-Goal in Birgitte Thott |
15:15 - 16:00 | Bodil Hvass Kjems (University of Copenhagen) Gender Instability in the Nordic gynæceum: Argumentative strategies of Otto Sperling the Younger and his female correspondents |
16:00 - 16:30 | Coffee break |
16:30 - 17:15 | Anne Birgitte Rønning (University of Oslo) “Naar vort Kiøn kun læste saadanne Bøger, saa ville vist vor hele Tænke- og Handlemaade faa et andet Sving”: Judgement and ‘Bildung’ in a young woman’s reading log in late eighteenth century Denmark |
17:15 - 18:00 | Christine Dyrmann, (University of Oxford) Women as political actors in the shaping of Denmark-Norway’s late-eighteenth century ‘enlightened’ reforms |
9:30 - 10:15 | III Advancing women’s education: The Danish-Norwegian context in the 18th century Ulrik Langen (University of Copenhagen) “Applying Oneself to the Sciences”: The Concept of ‘Lærde Fruentimmer’ (learned women) in Eighteenth-Century Danish-Norwegian Periodicals |
10:15 - 11:00 | Maria Nørby Pedersen (Aarhus University) The Beautiful Knowledges: Women voices and Scientific Enlightenment in early modern Denmark |
11:00 - 11:30 | Coffee break |
11:30 - 12:15 | Nicolai von Eggers (University of Copenhagen) Johanna Maria Gamst and the Republic of Translations |
12:15 - 13:00 | Irina Hron (University of Copenhagen) Lady Reason speaking: Satire and the Politics of Speech in the Nordic Enlightenment |
13:00 - 14:45 | Lunch break |
14:45 - 15:30 | IV Women as public intellectuals: The Swedish context during the 18th century Ann Öhrberg (Upsala University) Conversations Between the Dead: Gendered Enlightenment in 18th-Century Sweden |
15:30 - 16:15 | Cecilia Rosengren (University of Gothenburg) Hedvig Sirenia (1734–1795) and the Enlightenment in Gothenburg, Sweden |
16:15 - 16:45 | Coffee break |
16:45 - 17:30 | Matilda Amundsen Bergström (University of Gothenburg) ”Det som landet lycka gifwer”. Charlotta Frölich (1698–1770) as a utilist thinker |
19:00 | Working Dinner (invited presenters only) |
9:15 - 10:00 | III Trajectories: Broadening the perspectives - What can be learnt from the past and how do we change the future? TBA |
10:00 - 10:45 | Sabrina Spangsdorf (DTU, Technical University of Denmark) The Glass Slipper Effect – understanding the Nordic gender equality paradox |
10:45 - 11:15 | Coffee break |
11:15 - 12:00 | Priyanka Jha (Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India) On Enlightenment: The quest of ‘being human’ in the political writings of Indian women philosophers |
12:00 - 13:00 | Lunch break |
13:00 - 15:00 | Round table: How Women Shaped the Nordic Enlightenment Martina Reuter (University of Jyväskylä); Frederik Stjernfelt (Aalborg University); Anna Lena Sandberg (University of Copenhagen); Ariane Fichtl (University of Copenhagen) |
15:00 | Closing of the Conference |
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