Rewriting Women’s Literary History in the West

Hilde Hoogenboom:

Rewriting Women’s Literary History in the West:
Compilations, Databases, and Networks from the Middle Ages to the Present

Compilations of biographies of women (see also this list) — first as historical figures, later as learned women, and then as writers with bibliographies and selections — contain rich national and transnational narratives that allow us to re-envision women’s literary history from the manuscript to the digital age.

The project I have applied for (September 2012) situates digital scholarship on women in a long historical, international continuum as it traces the development over the past 600 years of a coherent, yet dynamic genre that began with Boccaccio’s Famous Women and gradually spread throughout Europe and the U.S. My research has three parts:

• a database that maps the flow of compilations and their contents, with a focus on Russian women, using WomenWriters.nl;
  
• a book; and
  
• an edited volume on compilations in Europe and the U.S.
  
  
  

SvD, October 2012

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• Conferences and activities > COST meetings > Poznan November > Hoogenboom 2012