Final conference of COST Action IS0901
Women Writers In History
The closing conference will be held 19-21 June 2013 at Huygens ING, The Hague (Grant Holder of the Action). The conference was prepared by a preliminary workshop held in April in Münster.
Aim of the conference in The Hague will be to show what has been achieved over these four years, on the level of:
- New knowledge about the role of women authors in Europe, during the centuries until the early 20th ;
- Conception and development of new tools allowing for the analysis of new data found by using sources not yet often consulted (new sources);
- New collaborations created thanks to the COST-WWIH connections developed during this period (leading to new networks).
Overview of the program content (provisional)
Wednesday, 19 June 2013
This final conference will present the history (see also here) as well as the future of the collaborative network which has been constituting itself as a COST Action, and very successfully functioning as such. Thanks to COST we have been able to create possibilities for future and more advanced research in the field of women’s authorship from the Middle Ages over the centuries until the early 20th century.
We want to avoid excluding any part of Europe, although this might not be completely visible during the conference....
The order in which the contributors will present their work – which in most cases is work in progress – is not arbitrary: we will start by those literatures/languages that are most studied, and often referred to as representing “European” literature. Yet we will put them in their transnational context: French, English and German women authors, as groups, have been much more internationally successful than we are often aware of; and as languages – vehicles for communication – these languages have often played particular roles for women.
Session 1:
“Dominating” languages and their “female” influence in Europe
1.
- Anglophone women authors as received in four European countries (19th century): Braddon, Yonge, Austen, others…
2.
- German women’s writing received all over Europe: the case of Eugénie Marlitt
3.
- French as a “female” language – for queens and other women writers (18th – 19th century): Christina of Sweden, Catherine the Great, Sophie of the Netherlands, Carmen Sylva, …
We then will give an impression of the ways in which women’s writing has circulated in earlier periods – not always in printed form – and also with the help of the authors “circulating” themselves through different European countries.
Session 2:
Circulation of women and their writings
4.
- Manuscript circulation of women’s texts in the early modern period – writings by English, Portuguese, Spanish women
5.
- Women authors traveling all over Europe and writing about it: Ida Hahn-Hahn, as many others
Our collective research has been carried out largely with the help of the research tool which had been created in one of the earlier phases of the NEWW network: the WomenWriters database. We have used it intensely during these four years: its use-value has been discussed, connection to theory discussed, and colleagues have been trained to enter and analyse their data in this tool. The process of becoming familiar with it has been monitored and examined, and some of the members, supported by IT centers in their own institutions (which were also part of the earlier Interedition COST Action), have proceeded to different ways of testing the tool – related to the use of it by students and to further possibilities for our research.
Session 3:
Becoming Digital Humanists....
6.
- Reflections about the theoretical framework at the basis of the digital infrastructure, as well as the future research
7.
- Scholarly labour on women’s writing and digital collaboration between European countries
8.
- Reporting about experiences in research and teaching
Thursday, 20 June 2013
We then will consider the geographical scope we are concerned with: in this network, for the first time, efforts are being made to really include any European country. This is quite a challenge – first because the amount of preliminary work carried out in each country greatly varies, and second because the understanding from one country to another, even between women and in spite of potential gender solidarity, is in some cases difficult or even completely absent. Image building has played an important role here, which can in particular be shown with regard to the « connections » between women from western and eastern parts of Europe. On the other hand in certain European centers women of different parts of the continent met and exchanged directly: the role of these centers will be discussed.
Session 4:
Nations, cultures, women authors
9.
- Women authors from the East receiving the West and reflecting Orientalisms
10.
- Women authors connecting to each other at particular “meeting places”, such as Prague, for authors like Zofka Kveder, and others
The reception documents often suggest that (female) readers might have had specific interests for women authors and their “feminine” or potentially “feminist” messages. Therefore there is a need for large-scale analysis of this communication: what kind of plots and characters did they propose to their readers? Did these readers react to supposedly specific messages? Digital availability of the text and categorizing it in the database are important here. Characteristics of the text can be highlighted in the database; the same applies for a specific interest with the reader for aspects of the text he/she read, or the author he/she is interested in.
Session 5:
Specific messages? sent and received
11.
- Women novelists using typically (perhaps?) “feminine” narrative topoi: refusing_marriage; finding_oneself_pregnant; giving_birth_and_abandoning_the_child; other…
12.
- Receiving instances focusing on particular items in women’s works and authorship, commenting less their writings than their private life
During this meeting we also reflect upon the importance of our Action for the participants as well as for colleagues who are not members. Is it possible to reach aims formulated at the beginning of the collaboration - thanks also to projects which have been initiated during COST-WWIH ?
Session 6:
Evaluating the COST-WWIH Action
13.
- Reflections about our long-term objective: gendered historiography of literature
and
- Short presentations by COST-WWIH MC core group members and (future) project leaders
Friday, 21 June 2013
For women authors the large scale was in a way a well-known feature: for centuries they were inventoried and put together in those bio-bibliographical compilations which seem to anticipate databases. Real IT tools, however, not only allow particular aspects of their texts to be recognised and tagged, but also allow us to go beyond the anecdotal perspective so often applied to women who participated in the public field, and to compare on a larger scale: between the women’s writings considered on various levels, and also between “male” and “female” texts.
Session 7:
Using large-scale approaches in view of understanding women’s merits as authors and their present place in literary history
14.
- Bio-bibliographical compilations of women authors (including the most recent Dutch compilation 1001 vrouwen): historical perspectives for comparing male vs. female “compilers”
15.
- The possibility of comparing (for the 19th century) the whole national novelistic production as opposed to translations from abroad; “male” novels as opposed to “female”
16.
- Discussing the “femininity” of women’s texts: using narrative topoi, stylometrics or comparison of parallel corpuses
Proceeding by networks is a solution to several of the problems and obstacles we encounter in our field. Many of them are similar, and working together is an important practical help. But many of “our” authors were also “networked” and “networking”. They were not the isolated cases they may seem: they knew and read each other, or knew and read about each other (obviously without forcibly agreeing…). Present electronic tools can do justice to these connections, and indeed make visible a European female literary field. These tools can again be connected, so that also can be visualized women’s connections to male authors, and women’s place in the larger literary field taken as a whole.
Session 8:
Networks (including Belle de Zuylen…)
17.
- Connecting tools: “networks between persons” (female, male), found by co-citations or by interpretation of researchers – Belle de Zuylen, Lalande, Boswell, Anne Frank…
18.
- Connecting persons: “networks between tools”, allowing research in all kinds of directions around Selma Lagerlöf, Marquesa d’Alorna, Belle de Zuylen, others…
More details soon...
Members of the organizing committee:
- Suzan van Dijk, Ton van Kalmthout (Huygens ING)
- Francesca Scott (Amsterdam University College)
- Lizet Duyvendak (Open University)
- Arno Kuipers (Royal Library)
- Core Group members of the Action
SvD, 10 May 2013
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