‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’ (‘CultPhil’ for short) will run from 2023-2028: it was originally awarded as a European Research Council Horizon Europe Starting Grant in the 2022 round (€1.5 million) and is now match-funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].
The project focuses on the seventeenth century, on case studies from France, England, the Dutch Republic and Italy, and zooms in on the sub-discipline of natural philosophy. These case studies are explored across three strands—Genres, Exchanges, Identities—which probe distinct but interrelated ‘cultures of philosophy’. The first strand, Genres, focuses on forms of writing often not considered in scholarship to be philosophical: certain literary texts, prefatory material, periodicals, salon poetry, published conversations, marginalia, and commonplace books. The second, Exchanges, interrogates transnational dynamics of women’s learning by looking at previously neglected correspondence, the archives of the few academies that admitted women, and manuscripts of salon production and exchange. It also compares the disciplines in which women philosophers have been recovered and taught across the four case studies to interrogate processes of canon formation. The third strand, Identities, examines how ideas of the figure of the female philosopher, broadly conceived, influenced the production and reception of philosophical writing by women.
These strands appraise the ‘cultures of philosophy’ that constituted the material, socio-literary, and conceptual conditions for women
writing knowledge; they also enable analysis of the reception of such writing.
Exploring these cultures will a) allow us to move beyond reliance on the philosophical treatise as the main principle for inclusion in
the canon, and b) enable analysis of the sociological conditions of learning that were both restrictive and enabling for women writers.
CultPhil aims to take a transnational and comparative approach to women’s knowledge production; to interrogate processes of historiographical invisibility; and to challenge the philosophical canon.
The project asks the following research questions:
- Which processes have determined which texts ‘count’ as philosophical, and as part of the canon, and how have such processes varied across cultural region?
- How did sociological conditions of learning inflect philosophical writing by women?
- How was a (female) philosopher defined and what effects have these definitions had on women’s philosophical writing and its reception?
- What does a comparative analysis of dynamics of women’s learning reveal about the Republic of Letters?
- How does a varied and more inclusive approach to philosophical writing change our understanding of seventeenth-century natural philosophy, its historiography, and notions of a ‘Scientific Revolution’?
Helena Taylor, Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature, as PI is joined by Exeter’s Dr Felicity Henderson (a specialist in the history of science), who will work on the project as a Senior Researcher, and 3 full-time post-doctoral fellows: Dr Catherine Evans, working on England; Dr Carlotta Moro, working on Italy; and Dr Floris Verhaart, working on the Dutch Republic.
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