Abstracts

Ancient Philosophy and Christian Learning in the Works of Anna Maria van Schurman

Joyce Irwin (Princeton Research Forum)

While the reputation of Anna Maria van Schurman, Dutch defender of women’s education, was widespread throughout Europe in the seventeenth century, the most direct evidence of her connection to Scandinavian women is in her dedicatory poem in the front matter of Birgitte Thott’s translation of the works of Seneca. Numerous Danish women were active as translators, but translations of ancient classical writings by women were rare. Thott’s translation efforts could well have been inspired by van Schurman’s advocacy of encyclopedic learning and her frequent citations from Seneca, Cicero, and other ancient philosophers. Along with other Dutch Calvinists of the time, van Schurman regarded the ethical wisdom of these pagan authors as reinforcing Christian values. During her later period of commitment to the Labadist community, she rejected her earlier intense dedication to humanistic learning, and yet she continued to draw on the writings of Seneca. My goal will be to trace her view of classical sources from her earliest writings to her latest. In so doing, I hope to make a small contribution to the larger question of the place of humanistic learning among Protestants.  

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)

Sabrina Ebbersmeyer (University of Copenhagen)

Birgitte Thott’s explores in her treatise Om vejen til et lyksaligt liv (ca. 1659) the notion of virtue as a vehicle on the path to a happy life. Virtue is obviously a core concept in this work. However, virtue cannot stand on its own but is grounded in piety (Guds fryct), according to Thott. In this presentation, I explore the reasons why piety plays such a crucial role in Thott’s thought. I supplement the analysis of her treatise with observations on the intellectual and religious context of her time.

I argue that while women’s capacities for intellectual pursuits were contested, their ability for piety was not. Hence piety became a pathway for women to claim intellectual authority and gain equal access to the intellectual sphere.

Radical Pietist Women in the Scandinavian Enlightenment

Juliane Engelhardt (University of Copenhagen)

An older research tradition in Enlightenment history has focused on Great men in History; great intellects who conceived great ideas that drove modernity forward. This approach has largely rendered women invisible because they did not have the same room for manoeuvre or opportunities to educate intellectually. In recent years, heterodox and dissenting groups have increasingly been considered a serious field of research because they were arenas where women were not only numerous - sometimes they even outnumbered men - they often held leading roles, they were eloquent and in clear opposition to traditional patriarchal power structures. This presentation traces the intellectual back catalogue of their opposition, which largely emerged among radical religious communities in Catholic and Protestant countries in most parts of Europe. In Denmark and Norway there was no real development of ideas, but many women spoke within a distinct discourse of power criticism. The presentation includes two case studies in Copenhagen and Drammen, Norway, where women took on central roles in radical Pietist assemblies that were in opposition to authorities. It also unravels the pattern of accusations that women acting in the public sphere were met with. On this background, the presentation discusses whether the road to modernity sometimes followed different paths than the well-known highway of rationalism, secularism and written debates in the public sphere, which has been the topic of so much established research.

From Paratext to Politics: Women’s Ideas of Equality in Early Modern Scandinavian Religious Contexts

Martin Fog Arndal (University of Copenhagen)

In this presentation, I would like to explore conceptions of equality as developed by female Danish-Norwegian psalm- and hymn-writers during the turn of the 17th century. These conceptions will be drawn from insights found in the paratexts that followed the collections they either edited or wrote themselves, revealing fascinating ideas about both metaphysical and political ideals of equality. By using the flexible genre of the preface, or prefatory poem, and disguising their ideas within an orthodox theological context, these women were able to put into print ideas about both women’s nature and station and thus distribute potentially subversive ideas to wider audiences, from peasants to the bourgeoisie. These paratexts thus provide a fascinating insight into the history of Scandinavian equality-conceptions.

The True and the Good: Truth as Authenticity and a Meta-Goal in Birgitte Thott

Jelena Bundalovic (University of Copenhagen)

In Chapter 33 of her moral-philosophical treatise on happiness (Om vejen til et lyksaligt liv), Birgitte Thott presents truth (Sandhed) as a moral virtue that underpins all others. Examining this chapter (“Om Sandhed”), I present Thott’s threefold definition of truth as it appears in the political sphere, as something anchored in the divine, and as a personal imperative. I argue that, for Thott, truth comprises two crucial aspects: (1) it demands authenticity—a ‘proper’ alignment between inner belief, speech, and action, and (2) truth also serves as a meta-goal—a higher-level moral orientation that guides and directs us toward the good, as persons and as a society. I show that Thott ultimately equates ‘the true’ with ‘the good’ and seeks to establish a normative framework wherein the moral agent directs herself towards truth and, more importantly, where political authorities are held morally accountable. I conclude by discussing the significance of Chapter 33 for our understanding of Thott’s conception of happiness (Lycksalighed), and I point to the broader historical context to situate her ideas properly. 

Gender Instability in the Nordic gynæceum: Argumentative strategies of Otto Sperling the Younger and his female correspondents

Bodil Hvass Kjems (University of Copenhagen)

Otto Sperling the Younger (1634-1715) is the author of Scandinavia’s largest (and yet unpublished) gynæceum, De foeminis doctis. He also corresponded with several contemporary learned women, among them Swedish poetess Sophia Elisabeth Brenner, with whom he exchanged almost 30 letters in neo-Latin. In my presentation, I will explore the following questions: Which argumentative strategies regarding women’s intellectual capacities emerge in the letter correspondence compared to the catalogue? Are there gendered differences between the views and epistolary styles of Brenner and Sperling, and do they influence each other? I will argue that, with his catalogue, Sperling proposes a new and more inclusive conception of learned women which benefitted them in their intellectual pursuits. I also emphasize that gender remains ambiguous and unstable particularly in the Sperling-Brenner correspondence, and I discuss the upshots of this.

“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

Anne Birgitte Rønning (University of Oslo)

“When our sex only read books like this, our whole way of thinking and acting would take a different turn”, states Anna Drewsen after having read Bibliothek for det smukke kiøn. Drewsen was a young mother when she in 1796 started to note down every book she read, and the feelings and reflections that arose from her reading. Her log shows a variety of titles and genres, from theatre, poetry, and novels to philosophical and pedagogical works. Some notes are brief exclamations of pleasure or irritation, others are longer and shows a reader expressing aesthetic judgement and reflecting on existential and moral issues. In my paper I will present some of her entries and explore the way she educates herself as a woman and mother through reading.

Women as political actors in the shaping of Denmark-Norway’s late-eighteenth century ‘enlightened’ reforms

Kristine Dyrmann, (University of Oxford)

In July 1792, Charlotte Schimmelmann, the Danish-Norwegian Finance Minister’s wife, wrote to her husband from a visit at the spa at Bad Pyrmont about the enlightened people she had encountered there: She had discussed Kant’s writings with the spa’s leading physician, whilst a minister had shared with her an educational treatise and promised to show her one of his country’s schools, an educational institute founded by the pedagogue Friedrich Eberhard von Rochow. At another occasion, she had recommended to her husband that he should enter into contact with another German writer, Villaume. And indeed, a few years later, Villaume was hired by the Danish leadership to join their project of reforming the Danish-Norwegian educational system by developing new schools at Brahetrolleborg. The reformer ministers’ wives thus had a significant influence on shaping of the reforms, primarily through informal modes of political negotiation, such as meetings with ministers and royals, mediation between factions, and sponsorship of writers and pedagogues.

This paper will analyse the role of a group of elite women in shaping the educational and agricultural reforms of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth century Denmark-Norway. Historians often link the school and land reforms with a Nordic enlightenment, but this contribution will broaden the analysis by integrating perspectives from new diplomatic history, gender history, and the spatial turn in historiography. I will examine the women’s roles as 1) participants in discussions of the reforms 2) negotiators, influencing who should be hired to carry out the reforms in practice 3) maecenas for authors and enlightened thinkers; 4) a network of correspondents. This case study can thus shed new light on women’s participation in the Nordic Enlightenment and allow us to shift our narratives away from the ‘founding fathers’ associated with the late eighteenth-century reforms towards the more informal (but no less important) roles of the women in their circle.

“Applying Oneself to the Sciences”: The Concept of ‘Lærde Fruentimmer’ (learned women) in Eighteenth-Century Danish-Norwegian Periodicals

Ulrik Langen (University of Copenhagen)

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the presence of women – fictional and real – as acting, reading and writing individuals in the Danish-Norwegian public sphere was predominantly expressed and represented in educational literature and moral periodicals inspired by the English spectator journals. Women's intellectual equality was regularly discussed in such periodicals as La Spectatrice danoise, Den patriotiske Tilskuer, Fruentimmer-Tidenden, and Ugentlige Tillæg til Adressecontoirets Efterretninger. This paper analyses these discussions and demonstrates how women's learning and knowledge sharing were conceptualized and how women's knowledge was linked to intricate and changing systems of social position.

The Beautiful Knowledges: Women voices and Scientific Enlightenment in early modern Denmark

Maria Nørby Pedersen (Aarhus University)

In the 18th-century, “videnskab” (“wissenschaft” or “science”) became pivotal to further societal development and enlightenment. This is apparent in the periodical press, the prime focus of which was to “cure the weakness of the mind” (Den Danske Spectator, 1744) by bringing moral philosophy, science and “learned things” to the coffee tables of private homes. Journals were a primary vehicle of the enlightenment; however, researchers have mainly studied the Danish periodicals’ importance in creating a public sphere. The journals nevertheless hold potentials for the study of the conceptualisation of science, and the role of women and women’s voices in the Enlightenment. Women’s role in the development of press have been address by French and British researchers, but investigations of similar matters in Denmark-Norway is limited. However, a few studies invite further investigation, f. ex. how La Spectatrice Danoise (1740s) sought to enliven “the 17th century golden age” of women’s literary endeavours, and that it contrarily was a more common perception of the late 18th century that women should be secluded from scientific knowledge. What happened in mid-century that might explain such a change in the perception of female intellectuality?

Taking off from that question, this paper will explore the connections between the conceptualization of “the sciences” and the role of women in early Danish periodicals (1740-70) and propose new lines of exploration of the relationship between early modern women and the scientific enlightenment. The paper’s focus will be on probing what kind of science women were told to pursue and why from two cases: Firstly, the paper will look back on earlier thoughts on “science” and women’s studies, in the writings of Birgitte Thott (1610-1662). Secondly, the paper will draw a line to similar thoughts presented in the journal Den Patriotiske Tilskuer (1761-63), edited and mainly written by Jens S. Sneedorff. The two cases will lead to concluding considerations on the contextualisation of women’s participation in the learned world.

Johanna Maria Gamst and the Republic of Translations

Nicolai von Eggers (University of Copenhagen)

‘Partikulærkassen’ was the king’s private funds with which he could buy artistic artefacts. After the fall of Struensee in 1772 and until the coup of 1784, the fund was also used to support artists. Amongst the first recipients in 1772 were two men and one woman, Johanna Maria Gamst who was awarded 50 rigsdaler for her tragedy Kiøbenhavns Beleiring (The Siege of Copenhagen). In the years that followed, Gamst wrote one additional play and also conducted a series of translations including, most importantly, of Fénelon’s influential treatise on the education of girls in 1776. This edition, Om Pigebørns Opdragelse, also included a foreword containing Gamst’s own reflections on the education of girls.

I have thus far been able to identify seven works produced by Gamst, three original compositions and four translations. In spite of this fact, nothing has to my knowledge ever been written about Johanna Maria Gamst or her role in the Nordic Enlightenment. There is not even an entry for her in The History of Nordic Women’s Literature. So in spite of her publishing activities and her translation of one of the most important enlightenment tracts on the education of girls, she has until now been completely erased by history.

In this paper, I therefore wish to discuss Johanna Maria Gamst and her role in what I have elsewhere called the ‘republic of translations.’ Translations were important in disseminating and developing new ideas about politics and society in the enlightenment and revolutionary period. While most translators like most writers were men, there were also a significant number of women engaged in translations who used this activity to spread new ideas about, amongst other things, the status of women in society. Mary Wollstonecraft, for instance, was herself a translator. Wollstonecraft corresponded with Christian Gotthilf Salzmann and translated his Elements of Morality (1790-1) while Salzmann, in return, translated Wollstonecraft’s Vindication in 1793. The German translation became the basis for the Danish translation of Wollstonecraft’s work in 1801. In this way, translations and translator networks were crucial to the circulation of enlightenment ideas, including ideas about women. In the Danish context, many works of the female educational author Stéphanie de Genlis came out in the late 18th century, while one of the most prolific female Danish writers, Charlotte Dorothea Biehl, was also a prolific translator, including of bestselling French author, Françoise de Graffigny’s, 1750 play Cénie.

Gamst’s translation of one of the enlightenment’s most influential texts concerning the education of girls, Fénelon’s Traité de l’éducation des filles (1687), was a monumental act. In this paper, I will consequently discuss Gamst, her role in the republic of translations, and what on this basis we can say about the discussion of the so-called woman question in Denmark in the 1770s and, potentially, the Nordic enlightenment more generally.

Lady Reason speaking: Satire and the Politics of Speech in the Nordic Enlightenment

Irina Hron (University of Copenhagen)

This paper takes as its point of departure Lady Reason, the first of the three allegorical figures in Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies (1405). I argue that Lady Reason not only defends the intellectual equality of women, but also explicitly encourages them to speak, and to speak out. Against this background, the paper explores how women philosophers of the Nordic Enlightenment adopted a range of literary genres that enabled them to articulate critical perspectives on central philosophical issues of the Enlightenment debate. Special attention will be given to the genre of satire – a traditionally powerful tool of social commentary that reveals underlying power structures. Focusing on selected poems by the Swedish writers Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht and Anna Maria Lenngren, the paper examines how these authors engaged with the satirical representation of human nature – especially the female character – and how they responded in verse to reclaim the authority of female speech.

Hedvig Sirenia (1734–1795) and the Enlightenment in Gothenburg, Sweden

Cecilia Rosengren (University of Gothenburg)

In the research about the Enlightenment period in Gothenburg, Sweden, there are still unanswered questions regarding the eighteen women that were elected members of the city’s learned society Göteborgs  Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets Samhälle (which changed name to Kungliga Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets Samhället (KVVS) in 1778).  In comparison with other Swedish learned societies and scientific academies at the time, the percentage was striking (more than 15% of the members were women).  The paper will address the issue of intellectual equality by discussing why these women were invited and how they participated in the society’s enterprise. The traces of their activities are few, but one of the women members was more prolific – Hedvig Sirenia (1734–1795). She published translations and poems in the local newspapers. She was furthermore the only woman represented in the society’s transactions and her public reading of poems at the society’s meetings are reported in the press. However, her work has been only briefly dealt with, and she is (strangely enough) neglected in the official historical account of KVVS. By drawing attention to the voice of Hedvig Sirenia I will reflect upon the material conditions and societal structures for women’s participation in the learned world in Sweden in late eighteenth century but also discuss her own ideas on topics such as love and friendship, marriage and autonomy. 

”Det som landet lycka gifwer”. Charlotta Frölich (1698–1770) as a utilist thinker

Matilda Amundsen Bergström (University of Gothenburg)

In this presentation, I explore Swedish author Charlotta Frölich’s (1698–1770) multifaceted body of written works, which includes three treatises on agricultural methods, a history book, a book of devotion, a pamphlet about poverty reduction and numerous occasional poems. I argue that these works are unified by a commitment to practical enlightenment and that in them, Frölich offers significant contributions to Swedish 18th-century utilism, which began as an economic theory but by the mid-18th century had developed into a form of moral philosophy both linked to and distinct from broader strands of European enlightenment thought.

Archives of Feeling, Stories of Loss: Writing AIDS History in Denmark

Michael Nebeling Petersen (University of Copenhagen)

This lecture presents The Cultural History of AIDS in Denmark, a collective research project that has recently culminated in the publication of a co-authored monograph on the history of the Danish AIDS crisis. Drawing on a wide range of material (oral histories, archival sources, media coverage, activist records, and cultural texts) the project explores how the epidemic unfolded in Denmark between 1981 and 2000, and how it was shaped by local histories, institutional structures, and queer communities.

The lecture focuses on the project’s methodological foundation in affect theory, queer-feminist historiography, and cultural analysis. Central to our approach is the idea of an “archive of feelings”: an effort to trace how the epidemic was not only a biomedical and political crisis, but also a deeply emotional and intimate one. Through interviews and memory work, we sought to document the experiences of those who lived through the crisis, not only their activism, anger, and resistance, but also their losses, grief, and forms of everyday care. We worked to write a history that takes seriously the communities for whom death became part of daily life.

The lecture concludes by reflecting on what such a project can teach us about method. I propose a situated, relational, and affective queer-feminist approach. One that treats the archive not only as a storehouse of facts, but as a fragile and partial trace of lived experience. And one that insists that history matters, not only for understanding the past, but for imagining more just, tender, and livable futures.

The Glass Slipper Effect – understanding the Nordic gender equality paradox

Sabrina Spangsdorf (DTU, Technical University of Denmark)

The Nordic countries are known to do well on gender equality having a history of being among the first countries to grant voting rights to women, welfare states that provide support allowing women to continue working when having children, and equal rights in politics and law. Yet the Nordic countries are also known for the “Nordic gender equality paradox” in which, despite high rates of female labour participation and more women than men having secondary and tertiary education, the number of women in top managing positions is very low and the labour market is highly gender segregated. In my presentation I will address some of the theories addressing this paradox, including the Glass Slipper Effect, combining it with my recent research on the concept of ambition and how it has evolved through history and how it has affected the role of women.

On Enlightenment: The quest of ‘being human’ in the political writings of Indian women philosophers

Priyanka Jha (Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India)

As a society, India has had a rich historical lineage of thinking regarding the category of ‘being human’ and the human condition. However, the tropes and ways in which ‘the Human’ came to be explained, was juxtaposed with a pronounced notion of ‘the male’. This category of ‘human’ came to be defined and understood with the rigour of the patriarchies. This patriarchal line of thinking established ‘man’ as the quintessential human, but also took on itself the onus of defining, coding and controlling also those who were not considered ‘human’, for instance, the women the animals. Over the centuries, this has resulted in denying fundamental rights, dignity, esteem, and more significant moral and normative concepts like liberty, equality, and justice. In this larger context, this presentation is an intervention on the category and concept of ‘being human', locating the rich and robust Indian feminist tradition in it. In my presentation, through Therigatha of the Buddhist Bhikkunis (5th Century), Tarabai Shinde’s Stree Pursusha Tulana (1882) and Mahadevi Verma’s Hamari Shrinkala ki Kadiyaan (1942), I trace the tradition of women philosophers’ interlocutions on the dignity, self respect and category of ‘being human’.

Within the discursive ideational as well as philosophical traditions, from ancient to modern to the contemporary times, women as individuals as well as a collective have reflected, responded and also intervened through their articulations on the idea of ‘being human’ and the allied normative concepts like equality, liberty, justice and others that came to be associated with Enlightenment discourse. To unpack the meta category of ‘being human’, this presentation wants to understand the world that women imagine and create, the set of moral and ethical ideals they establish, and most importantly, the human universe they create.