Portraits and Poses: Female Intellectual Authority, Agency and Authorship in Early Modern Europe

Interdisciplinary and cross-cultural view on authority construction among early modern female intellectuals

The complex relation between gender and the representation of intellectual authority has deep roots in European history. Portraits and Poses adopts a historical approach to shed new light on this topical subject. It addresses various modes and strategies by which learned women (authors, scientists, jurists, midwifes, painters, and others) sought to negotiate and legitimise their authority at the dawn of modern science in Early Modern and Enlightenment Europe (1600–1800). This volume explores the transnational dimensions of intellectual networks in France, Italy, Britain, the German states and the Low Countries, among others. Drawing on a wide range of case studies from different spheres of professionalisation, it examines both individual and collective constructions of female intellectual authority through word and image. In its innovative combination of an interdisciplinary and transnational approach, this volume contributes to the growing literature on women and intellectual authority in the Early Modern Era and outlines contours for future research.

Contributors: Laura Beck Varela (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Feike Dietz (Utrecht University), Armel Dubois-Nayt (University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin/Paris-Saclay), Nina Geerdink (Utrecht University), Aurélie Griffin (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle), Seren Nolan (Durham University), Caroline Paganussi (Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte Naples), Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval (Univesity Paris-Est Créteil), Kelsey Rubin-Detlev (University of Southern California), Belinda Scerri (University of Melbourne), Catriona Seth (University of Oxford), Lien Verpoest (KU Leuven), Vera Viehöver (Université de Liège), Rotraud von Kulessa (Universität Augsburg), Valerie Worth-Stylianou (University of Oxford).

Ebook available in Open Access.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).