International Workshop
26–28 November 2025
ELTE Faculty of Humanities, Budapest, Szekfű Gyula Library
Call for paper
The thematic focus of the planned workshop and accompanying edited volume lies in examining the place and roles of women and men in the production of knowledge across various spheres of everyday life in the Habsburg Monarchy from the 16th to the 19th century — as healers, maids, master craftsmen or their wives/widows, governesses, collectors of books and artworks, and so on. These heterogeneous contents are tied together by the framework of the history of knowledge, which provides a shared methodological approach allowing us to pose questions such as: who?, when?, where?, what?, with what?, and how?, in order to explore the roles, concrete practices, and material tools of knowledge formation among women and men from different social strata. In reconstructing the relationship between various activities — many of which over time became formalized professions — and the production of knowledge, the project places particular emphasis not only on conventional textual sources but also on visual and material sources. These sources, through their social, concrete, symbolic functions and identity-forming meanings, are crucial to understanding how certain forms of knowledge were acquired and embedded in society. The volume builds on a shared set of research questions, on the focused use of text–image–object sources, and on the material dimension of knowledge production as it manifests in “things” and, where applicable, objects — such as books, excerpts, letters, reports, travel journals, inventories, catalogues, tables, lists, as well as drawings, visual representations, and practical/epistemic objects like models, specimens, forceps, organizing furniture, etc. This approach promises significant methodological innovation and may lead to the discovery of previously unknown or little-studied interrelations within the field of knowledge cultures and professional practices.
Registration
Please send a short abstract (10–15 lines) in Hungarian, or German, or English to the following email address: womenkult@gmail.com
Deadline for abstract submissions: June 30, 2025