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Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

University of Exeter, https://culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk/
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cultphil.bsky.social
We're so excited to announce our new lecture series for 2026 "Women Writing Knowledge: Philosophy in the Early Modern World"

Please do join us online for an incredible selection of talks by leading scholars working on #womeninphilosophy

Sign up here: forms.office.com/e/8V5WjGG3hN
Women Writing Knowledge: Philosophy in the Early Modern World Lecture Series 2026 Cultures of Philosophy, University of Exeter Thursday 29 January 4 pm UK | 5 pm Italy Natalia Zorrilla Sirlin (McGill University | Università Ca' Foscari Venezia) Origin Stories of Gender Inequality in early modern Feminist Philosophy Thursday 12 February 4 pm UK | 5 pm Sweden Cecelia Rosenberg (University of Gothenburg) Women as Agents of the Enlightenment in 18th-century Gothenburg Thursday 19 March 4 pm UK | 5 pm Italy Natacha Fabbri (University of Siena | Galileo Museum) Claiming the Heavens: Women, Astronomy, and Intellectual Authority in Seventeenth-Century Europe Thursday 16 April 9 am UK | 6 pm Sydney Dalia Nassar (University of Sydney) Diotima’s Daughters: Women Philosophers on Love, Beauty, Goodness and Truth in the Early Romantic Period Thursday 30 April 4 pm UK & Ireland Derval Conroy (University College Dublin) Constructing a Philosophy of Celibacy: Gabrielle Suchon's Le Célibat Volontaire ou la Vie Sans Engagement (1700) Thursday 14 May 4.30 pm UK |11.30 am ET Ann Pang-White (University of Scranton) Two Early Modern Women Thinkers of China: Empress Renxiaowen and Madame Liu Thursday 18 June 9 am UK | 5 pm South Korea Hwayeong Wang (Duke Kunshan University) Women Writing Confucian Philosophy in Late Joseon Korea: Im Yunjidang and Gang Jeongildang This work is supported by the European Research Council-selected Starting Grant, ‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].
December 1, 2025 at 10:21 AM
cultphil.bsky.social
We’re so looking forward to bringing together some incredible scholars in Exeter next week for our conference: Women Writing Philosophy in Early modern Europe - Spaces and Exchanges
Conference poster: Women Writing Philosophy in Early modern Europe - Spaces and Exchanges 2-4 June, knightly building
May 30, 2025 at 2:36 PM
cultphil.bsky.social
We are delighted to announce the program for our summer conference: Women Writing Philosophy in Early Modern Europe: Spaces and Exchanges, to be held in Exeter 2-4 June
Women Writing Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Europe: Spaces and Exchanges University of Exeter, Knightley Building, 2-4 June MONDAY 2nd JUNE From 9.00 COFFEE AND REGISTRATION 9.25 WELCOME – CultPhil Team 9.30-11 ACADEMIES & NETWORKS Chair: Felicity Henderson (Exeter) Annalisa Nicholson (KCL), Mediating Knowledge Across Borders: Hortense Mancini, the Mazarin Salon, and the Royal Society  Carlotta Moro (Exeter), Women, Natural Philosophy, and the Italian Academies in the Seventeenth Century: A Comparative Study of the Ricovrati and the Arcadia  Aron Ouwerkerk (Utrecht), Latin: Language of Knowledge? A Quantitative Analysis of Women’s Latinity across the Early Modern Low Countries and France  Coffee break 11.15-12.45 COMMUNITIES & READERS Chair: Carlotta Moro (Exeter) Meredith Ray (Delaware), Gender, Natural Philosophy, and the Oral Landscape in Early Modern Italy Johanna Luggin (Innsbruck), Publishing an Astronomical Book in Seventeenth-Century Silesia: Maria Cunitz’ Urania Propitia between Self-Translation, Intellectual Networks and Male Power  Kate Allan (Anglia Ruskin), “One rich usefull masse”: Katherine Philips and her Contemporary Scientific Readers Lunch 1.45-3.45 MEDICINE & BODIES Chair: Meredith Ray (Delaware) Giada Merighi (Pisa),  «Io lo vorei curare con questa dicozione» («I would like to treat you with this decoction»). ‘Medical’ advice in family letters from a female hand. The example of Claudia Grumelli Salis  Úna Faller (CNRS, École Normale Supérieure, Lyon), “...to make a woemans milk come & increase, take the Green Leaves of fennell”: Manuscript recipe books’ epistemologies and herbal remedies for managing women’s health concerns, 1600-1697  Madeleine Sheahan (Yale), Mastering Time: Preservation, Longevity, and Timelessness  Ilaria Ferrara (Ferrara), From prejudices about women to gender stereotypes: new forms of female agency starting from Dorothea Christiane Erxleben's "Rigorous Investigation"  4-5.00 CAVENDISH ROUNDTABLE: Esther Kearney (Nottingham), Sophie White (York), Evan Thomas (Otterbein), Chair: Sarah Hutton (York) TUESDAY 3rd JUNE 9.00-10.30 GENRES Cassie Gorman (Anglia Ruskin), '"I am all a storm": Chaos and Disordered Matter in the Writings of Jane Cavendish and Frances Feilding Sajed Chowdhury (Utrecht), Psychology, Alchemy and the Woman Philosopher-Poet: Lucy Hutchinson (1620-1681)  Hannah Cotterill (Royal Holloway), ‘So short do humours last’: Elizabeth Cary on Anger Management in The Tragedy of Mariam  Coffee 10.45-12.45 ECOFEMINISM & NONHUMAN ANIMALS  Eric Jorink (Leiden & Huygens Insitute, Amsterdam), Embroidery, Needles and Microscopes. Seventeenth-century Women and the Representation of Insects  Manuel Fasko (Basel), Anne Conway on the Moral Status of Non-Human Animals (NHA)  Aurélie Griffin (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Women Writing Natural Philosophy in Verse: Ecofeminist Poetry in Early Modern England  Catherine Evans (Exeter), “She rolls her unctuous embryo east and west”: Hester Pulter’s “creaturely poetics” and the Limits of the Maternal Body  Lunch 1.40-2.40 ROUNDTABLE 2: NATURAL PHILOSOPHY & POETICS Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (KCL); Meredith Ray (Delaware); Helena Taylor (Exeter), Chair: Cassie Gorman (ARU) Comfort Break 2.45-4.15 WOMEN AND DESCARTES  Sarah Hutton (York), Women and Cartesian natural philosophy. From Margaret Cavendish to Émilie du Châtelet  Michaela Manson (Monash), The Natural Philosophy of Mary Astell  Richard Serjeantson (Cambridge), Mary Astell Reads Descartes  Tea 4.30-6.00 MANUSCRIPTS & EPISTEMOLOGIES Emma Bartel (Université Paris Cité), Looking for Women’s Engagement with Natural Philosophy in Marginal Manuscript Genres  Jil Muller (Paderborn), Oliva Sabuco on Natural Philosophy  Pedro Pricladnitzky (Paderborn), The Manuscript of Institutions de Physique: Émilie du Châtelet’s Development of Methodological Eclecticism  CONFERENCE DINNER 7pm Côte Brasserie WED 4th JUNE 9.30-11 METHODS Chair: Eric Jorink (Leiden) Kirsten Walsh (Exeter), Action at a Distance—Reflections on the History of Women in Science Peter West (Northeastern University London), “A Scientific Association”: New Digital Methods for Understanding the Impacts of Early Women Writers on the Development of Science and Philosophy  Marina Aguilar (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Tratado Philosóphico-poético escótico by María de Camporredondo as an example of Hispanic Women Thinker from the Modern Age  Coffee 11.15-12.45 RECEPTION, AUTHORSHIP, and POPULARISATION  Chair: Bodil Hvass Kjems (Copenhagen) Arianne Margolin (Independent), Jeanne Dumée’s Plurality of Worlds: The Feminine Voice and the Emergence of the Fiction Scientifique   Aretina Bellizzi (Ghent), From a New Readership to a New Authorship. Vernacular Plato and the Female Audience in Early Modern Italy  Floris Verhaart (Exeter), The Doctor, the Theologian, and the Translator: Medicine and Divine Providence in the Writings of Johan van Beverwijck, Anna Maria van Schurman, and Johanna Dorothea Lindenaer CLOSE AND LUNCH This conference is supported by the European Research Council-selected Starting Grant, ‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].
April 22, 2025 at 2:25 PM
cultphil.bsky.social
Final day of #RSA2025 calls for pancakes and a team debrief after our roundtable yesterday - thank you to all who came! We’re looking forward to more events centring women in early modern philosophy
American style pancakes
March 22, 2025 at 1:28 PM
cultphil.bsky.social
Thank you to everyone who came to our #RSA_2025 roundtable!

We feel newly invigorated by the discussion & by the advice from esteemed colleagues to “drive the car like we stole it”
Winged statue in Boston square
March 22, 2025 at 12:58 AM
cultphil.bsky.social
Thank you to the SSEMWG for sponsoring our panel! We'll be heading to Laura Knoppers' Lecture for the society after our roundtable: “Heire Apparant”: Aemilia Lanyer, Anne Clifford, and the Arts of the Triptych"
Listing from Conference Program Title: Heir Apparent: Aemilia Lanyer, Anne Clifford, and the Arts of the Tripych Abstract: This paper aligns the much-puzzled-over tripartite division of Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) with religious and dynastic triptychs. Lanyer’s three-part poem parallels the devotional center and the prominent placement of donors in the left and right wings of the altarpiece triptych, as well as its intermingling of past and present, sacred and secular, far and near. Recognizing how Lanyer draws on the triptych, we can see new unity and structure in her composition as well as new links with Anne Clifford, who commissioned a large triptych portrait, some thirty years later, to commemorate her accession to Clifford family titles and estates. Given her court connections, Lanyer might well have seen the tripartite dynastic portraits of Henry VIII adduced by scholars as precedent for Clifford’s portrait. Religious triptychs were also still found in Reformation England, including one owned by Clifford’s cousin. While Clifford fashions herself as landed heir, Lanyer shapes her as “Heire Apparant” of a crown of goodness, grace, and piety, not only by legacy from her pious mother, Margaret Russell, but by her own honorable deeds, including patronage. Lanyer’s appeal is more unified and strategic in its use of the visual arts than has been recognized.
March 12, 2025 at 12:05 PM
cultphil.bsky.social
The CultPhil team are preparing for Boston! We'd love to see you at our #RSA2025 roundtable "Women Writing Philosophy in 17th century Europe" on Friday afternoon

There'll be chameleons, divine wetnurses, recently uncovered manuscripts, and arguments against tyranny

rsa.confex.com/rsa/2025/mee...
Abraham Bosse, The Wise Virgins, print. Shows 5 women siting around a home altar, discussing books held int heir hands .
March 12, 2025 at 11:57 AM
cultphil.bsky.social
The Cult Phil team has a regular reading group and today we’re discussing Debapriya Sarkar’s wonderful monograph “Possible Knowledge: the literary forms of early modern science”

What should be next on our reading list?
Book held in front of a window. The book has a hand opening a window on the cover and the text: Debapriya Sarkar Possible Knowledge: the literary forms of early modern science
January 27, 2025 at 12:02 PM
cultphil.bsky.social
An exciting #cfp for the History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland, Cork 6 - 7th June

#skystorians #womenshistory
Call for papers The History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland annual conference will take place at the Centre for Executive Education, University College Cork, Ireland on the 6 and 7 June 2025 with the broad theme of: Women Religious: Patronage and Networks from Medieval to Modern We welcome papers on the following or related topics - women religious and social networks - missions as networks - transnational and/or national networks - collaborations between female religious congregations and communities - relationships with the secular and regular clergy - relationships with lay patrons - Family and friendship networks - Financial networks and economic patronage - Cultural networks - Digital networks - Network analysis - Queer networks - Spiritual bonds between women religious and the wider community - The role of lay and choir sisters - Almsgiving and Charitable works Abstracts of between 250 - 300 words together with a short biography may be sent to: hwrbi.conference@gmail.com on or before Friday 31 January 2025
December 18, 2024 at 3:26 PM
cultphil.bsky.social
Research fellow @carlottamoro.bsky.social is in the beautiful Palermo state archives this week tracking down networks of learned Sicilian women #womenshistory #earlymodern
Painted ceiling of a vaulted colonnade. The ceiling mind shows religious men in brown cloaks. On the back wall is a mural of a tree covered in people, at its foot stands a naked man. An Italian courtyard on a sunny day. The walls are whitewashed and there is a tower at the far end.
November 22, 2024 at 8:33 AM
cultphil.bsky.social
We’ve gathered on the sunny Exeter campus today for our first workshop on methodologies with collaborators joining from Australia and Denmark.

On the agenda today: can mysticism be philosophy? Was it a good thing to be a “savant” in 17th cent France? Why is Cavendish so popular now?
Statue of a woman at the bottom of steps with a neoclassical building in the background. A very sunny autumn day.
November 13, 2024 at 3:08 PM
cultphil.bsky.social
A massive recommendation for the “Medieval Women: In their own words” exhibition @britishlibrary.bsky.social

Highlights include this treatise on queenship written for Jeanne I, Queen of Navarre, that was potentially used by the daughters of Henry VII
Illuminated manuscript. The left page is a full page cost of arms for Henry VII of England. The right page has Latin text with an illustration of an advisor approaching a queen.
November 12, 2024 at 9:30 AM
cultphil.bsky.social
Great team meeting this afternoon making plans for archive trips to Sicily, Amsterdam & Paris! Watch this space for CultPhil on tour over the next few months
October 14, 2024 at 3:45 PM
cultphil.bsky.social
Women Writing Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Europe: Spaces and Exchanges (Exeter, 2-4 June 25)
Deadline: 29 Nov
Please see our website for our exciting #cfp! We've had some incredible submissions so far culturesofphilosophy.exeter.ac.uk/2024/08/05/p...
#skystorians #philosophy #histsci
October 14, 2024 at 10:44 AM