Project description
Tracing the influence of women’s thought on the Enlightenment in Scandinavia
While the Enlightenment era is captivating for scholars, women’s crucial contributions are largely overlooked, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of this pivotal period. In response to this oversight, the WHENCE project, funded by the European Research Council, will spotlight the sparsely researched region of Europe's North, specifically focusing on the writings of Scandinavian women. The project’s overall goal is to uncover the intellectual legacy of Scandinavian women during the Enlightenment, reshaping our historical narratives and shedding light on these women's role in shaping Scandinavian gender equality.
Objective
The Enlightenment attracts a lot of scholarly attention due to its relevance for the emergence of modern philosophical thought and the identity of present-day Europe. Yet, women’s contribution to the Enlightenment has been largely ignored. WHENCE will fill this research gap in an original and groundbreaking way by focusing on an hitherto overlooked geographical region, namely Europe’s North. By targeting the writings of Scandinavian women, WHENCE will provide results that describe the Nordic way of women’s Enlightenment.
The guiding hypothesis is that this Nordic way significantly differs from developments prevalent in other regions of Europe, and that women played a decisive role in creating a sustainable identification of the Nordic countries with gender equality.
The overall objective of WHENCE is to uncover and critically assess women’s intellectual contribution to the Nordic Enlightenment. This investigation includes two further objectives, namely, to change the standard narratives of the development of the Nordic Enlightenment, and to assess women’s role in the emergence of Scandinavian gender equality.
• What was women’s intellectual contribution to the Nordic Enlightenment?
• How does women’s thought change our understanding of the individual and of society during the early modern period?
• What was the impact of women’s thought on the emergence of Scandinavian gender equality?
To adequately investigate women’s writings, the project uses various methods in an original way. It combines classical philosophical analysis and archival research with new insights developed in gender studies and feminist history of philosophy. Moreover, WHENCE has a strong interdisciplinary outlook and uses the new tool Trajectories to relate historical findings to contemporary debates.
Given the persistence of gender inequality in today’s society, the threats women are facing in the public sphere, and the upheaval caused by the MeToo movement, this project is essential and timely.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
1165 Kobenhavn
Denmark