This two-day conference aims at developing approaches to the history of the early Enlightenment, focusing on the engagement of women in both the practice of religion and discussion of theology in the post-Reformation period. The conference will explore how social practices such as participation in religious organisations and discussion, were mutually entwined with the development of foundational Enlightenment concepts such democracy, egalitarianism, freedom of conscience, free speech, and tolerant co-existence. For example, social practices where we can see evidence of women’s participation include philanthropy, court hearings, education and caring work, letter writing, pamphleteering, as well as authoring more formal publications.

Dates: 9am to 6pm, June 12-13 2023.

Location: UCD Newman House/Museum of Literature Ireland, 86 St. Stephen’s Green, St. Kevin’s, Dublin.

In Person: Please register by email to Dr. Francesco Quatrini (francesco.quatrini@ucd.ie)

Zoom:

June 12: https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/j/61098787054?pwd=SldSQVI5OFlDUWJqSnEwWW9YdHZnUT09

June 13: https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/j/68636506733?pwd=UVlXazNtaWlUT2VoNUM2M0I3Z2xvUT09

 

Programme

June 12

9:15-9:30 Introduction: Francesco Quatrini, Katherine O'Donnell

9:30 - 11:00 Keynote Lecture

Chair: Katherine O’Donnell

Hilary Hinds (Lancaster University), Early Quaker Women’s Theology and Practice: Gender, Equality, Freedom and the Inward Light

11:00-11:30

Coffee/Tea break

11:30-13:00 Defending Against False Accusations

Chair: Derval Conroy (University College Dublin)

  1. Anna-Rose Shack (University of Amsterdam), “Oh, thought I, mock on”: Faith, False Accusations and Forms of Vulnerability in The Narrative of the Persecution of Agnes Beaumont and Elizabeth Cellier’s Malice Defeated
  2. Dominique Rigby (University of Cambridge), A “bright spirit of the age” or a “boring old maid?” Marie de Gournay and Her Critics, 1594-1645

13:00-14:00

Lunch break

14:00-16:00 Nuns’ and Beguines’ Struggle to Govern

Chair: Carol Baxter (Trinity College Dublin)

  • Isabel Danielle Harvey (Université du Québec à Montréal) [Virtual session], Beyond the Literature: New Elements in the Diodata Malvasia’s Case. Year 1606, Catholic Nuns after Tridentine Council
  • Sarah Moran (Independent scholar), Reform and Resistance in the 1540s: How the Diest Beguines Tried to Get Rid of Their Priest
  • Giada Silenzi (University of Udine), The Port-Royal Nuns’ “relations de captivité”: Subversive Feminine Writings in Louis XIV’s France

16:00-16:30

Coffee/Tea break

16:30-18:00 Constructing Their Leadership of Dissenting Congregations

Chair: Francesco Quatrini (University College Dublin)

  1. Claire McGann (Lancaster University) [Virtual session], Gathering her 'companions': How Anna Trapnel's 1657–58 Orations Command and Construct a Radical Religious Congregation
  2. Hannah Laurens (University of Oxford), Intellectual Pursuits and Piety: Barrier-breaking Women in the Radical Enlightenment of the Dutch Republic

 

June 13

9:30 - 11:00 Keynote Lecture

Chair: Francesco Quatrini

Sarah Apetrei (University of Oxford), Women and Radical Theology in the English Revolution

11:00-11:30

Coffee/Tea break

11:30-13:00 Lucy Hutchinson and Nonconforming Religion

Chair: Danielle Clarke (University College Dublin)

  1. Enrico Piergiacomi (Technion University of Haifa) [Virtual session], Hutchinson on Sex, Lucretius, and Original Sin
  2. Sumant Mallubhotla Rao, The Biblical Rebecca in Lucy Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder: Configuring Marriage and Political Resistance in Post-Restoration England

13:00-14:00

Lunch

14:00-16:00 Defending Freedom

Chair: Daniel Esmonde Deasy (University College Dublin)

  1. Polly Ha (Duke University) [Virtual session], Liberty of Conscience and Women in Revolutionary England
  2. Finola Finn (Leibniz Universität Hannover), Navigating melancholy: How Three English Women Defended Religious Dissent (1660-1700)
  3. Francesco Quatrini (University College Dublin), Gesine Brit: A Dutch Poet Defending Justice and Religious Freedom

16:00-16:30

Coffee/Tea break

16:30-18:00 Representations of Deviance

Chair: Katherine O'Donnell

  • William Miller (University of Rochester), Psychological Blackness in the Visions of Jane Leade
  • Emmanouela Kyriakopoulou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), The Motif of the “domineering woman” in Dutch prints (1566-1700)

The conference is held as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship funded project EuWoRD (European Women and Religious Dissent: The Advent of Modernity and the Democratic Public Sphere), in cooperation and with the support of UCD Newman Centre for the Study of Religions.