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.

Women in the nordic enlightment

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

Read the abstracts

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 Kristine 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
Matilda Amundsen Bergström (University of Gothenburg)
”Det som landet lycka gifwer”. Charlotta Frölich (1698–1770) as a utilist thinker
15:30 - 16:00 Coffee break
16:00 - 16:45 Cecilia Rosengren (University of Gothenburg)
Hedvig Sirenia (1734–1795) and the Enlightenment in Gothenburg, Sweden
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?
Michael Nebeling Petersen (University of Copenhagen)
Archives of Feeling, Stories of Loss: Writing AIDS History in Denmark
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); Anna Lena Sandberg (University of Copenhagen); Ariane Fichtl (University of Copenhagen)
15:00 Closing of the Conference