Call for papers: 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 own 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 true 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.

The conference is part of the ERC funded project Women in the Nordic Enlightenment (WHENCE).

Travel, hotel and meals will be fully covered. Conference speakers will have the opportunity to contribute to a peer-reviewed book publication.

Call for papers

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.