The Cultures of Philosophy project at the Univ. of Exeter (Web)

Time: 02.-04.06.2025
Venue: Exeter
Proposals by: 29.11.2024

The history of philosophy is experiencing a major paradigm shift, with the work of early modern women philosophers in the spotlight (for e.g. Detlefsen and Shapiro 2023): this conference builds on that momentum to produce a more inclusive account of “science” in the long seventeenth century. The conference aims to recover women’s contributions to early modern natural philosophy, looking beyond the treatise and dialogue to other genres both in manuscript and print; and to examine women’s roles in transnational communities of scientific exchange.
In particular, the conference will foreground women’s textual engagement with natural philosophy and investigate transnational institutions, communities, and collaborations. How are philosophical concepts conveyed by diverse literary forms that cannot be categorised as scholarship? How did European women draw on global perspectives and philosophical cultures outside Europe? How can we trace women’s engagement with philosophical networks and institutions? How might including different genres, figures, and communities shift our understanding of natural philosophy in this period?
Taking a comparative, relational, and transnational approach, the conference seeks to investigate women’s collaborations, exchanges, and roles in networks both within or at the margins of academies, institutions, and other official sites of scientific knowledge exchange; and their involvement in informal salons, manuscript circles, and other spaces of encounter. The CultPhil project examines the European context, but we welcome papers that engage with non-European cultures and philosophical traditions, with attention to different languages, international networks, and contexts. We encourage proposals from scholars in disciplines including (but not limited to): history of science, environmental humanities, literary history, intellectual history, book history, and the history of philosophy.

Proposals could include, but are not limited to:
– Women’s participation in (and exclusion from) academies, salons, manuscript circles, institutions, and other spaces of learning
– Women and transnational and national manuscript and epistolary networks … read more and source (Web)