Anna Maria van Schurman with Floris Verhaart
Welcome to the Impossible Salon, a podcast from the research project ‘Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe,’ based at the University of Exeter.
In this episode, project PI Helena Taylor speaks with postdoc Floris Verhaart on the ‘Star of Utrecht’, Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678). Verhaart gives an introduction to van Schurman’s life as a renowned intellectual in the Dutch Republic and her later religious sectarianism, and they discuss her works, including both logical treatises and autobiographical image control.
This episode was recorded in May 2026.
This podcast 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].
Guest: Floris Verhaart
Host: Helena Taylor
Music: Leonora Duarte: Simfonia no. 7. Conducted and performed by Korneel Bernolet. Thanks to Bernolet for the kind permission to use his rendition.
Francesca Caccini: Maria dolce Maria. Performed by Capella di Santa Maria degli Angiolini. Thanks to Brilliant Classics for the kind permission to use this rendition.
Graphic design (logo): Nynne Oline B. Bennicke.
Painting (logo): Anna Maria van Schurman, self-portrait as Pudicitia (1633), used with the kind permission of Museum Martena, Franeker, The Netherlands.
In this episode, Floris Verhaart reads from Joyce Irwin’s translations of van Schurman: Schurman, Anna Maria van. 1998. Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated and Other Writings from Her Intellectual Circle. Edited by Joyce Irwin. The University of Chicago Press.
Further Suggested reading:
Baar, Mirjam de, Machteld Löwensteyn, Marit Monteiro, and A. Agnes Sneller, eds. 1996. Choosing the Better Part. Anna Maria van Schurman (1607 – 1678). Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Beek, Pieta van. 2010. The First Female Student: Anna Maria van Schurman. Utrecht: Igitur. (This is available in open-access format: The First Female University Student: Anna Maria van Schurman (1636) – Utrecht University.)
Larsen, Anne R. 2008. ‘A Women’s Republic of Letters: Anna Maria van Schurman, Marie de Gournay, and Female Self-Representation in Relation to the Public Sphere’. Early Modern Women 3: 105–26.
Larsen, Anne R. 2018. ‘Religious Alterity. Anna Maria van Schurman and Jean de Labadie’. French Forum 43 (2): 301–18.
Larsen, Anne R. 2024. ‘Anna Maria van Schurman: Self-Portraiture, Female Scholarly Identity, and the Republic of Letters’. Renaissance Quarterly 77 (3): 879–922.