Vocation of Woman: Dead End or Compass

Conference

The Vocation of Woman: Dead end or compass?

Organizers: Anne Pollok, Laura Anna Macor, Joanna Raisbeck

JGU Mainz and Università di Verona

September 3 – 5, 2024

Erbacher Hof , Mainz, Germany

This international and interdisciplinary conference seeks to inquire into the participation of women philosophers in the lively philosophical debates in the 18th and 19th century. Quite some of these contributions were more or less explicitly formed during the influential debate concerning the human vocation, initiated in the middle of the 18th century by Johann Joachim Spalding’s Betrachtungen über die Bestimmung des Menschen (1748). This little booklet caused a literal flood of publications bearing similar titles between 1750 and 1850. While the main lines of this debate have been widely discussed elsewhere, the issue of the “Vocation of Woman” still awaits further research. Our conference aims to showcase the mechanisms of liberation and oppression within this sub-genre, inquire into the array of reasons as to why women intellectuals are seldomly found in academic philosophical debates, and show which alternative routes they chose instead to instantiate themselves as participants in this discussion.

Program

Day 1, Sep 3: Workshop “The Vocation of Woman” – Sideline or Genre?

2 – 5pm           Roundtable discussion (short introductions by Anne Pollok and Corey Dyck)

6pm                 Presentation of RMU-Project Romantische Ökologien: Barbara Thums (Mainz), Frederike Middelhoff (Frankfurt/M), “Alles ist ein Wechselwirken”: Romantic Ecologies and the Role of Women

Day 2, Sep 4: Historical Roots and Developments

Morning Session: Literary Aspects: Women and Public Expression

9-9:45             Stefanie Buchenau (Paris), The German Enlightenment on the vocation and dignity of women

9:55-10:40       Astrid Dröse (Verona), Journalpoetik, Revolution, Emanzipation. Die Bestimmung der Frau in Wielands Teutschem Merkur

11:45-noon      Sophie Forst (Oxford), Marianne Ehrmann: the outsider and her journal(s)

Afternoon Session: Perspectives of Romanticism

2-2:45             Allen Speight (Boston), The Beautiful Soul and the Vocation of Women

2:55-3:40         Dalia Nassar (Sydney), Perspectives of Romanticism

4:15-5             Elena Schorz (Mainz), Echoes of Friendship: Conceptions and Potentials of Women's Friendships in Karoline von Günderrode and Bettina von Arnim

5:30-6:30         Presentation of MSCA Project: Joanna Raisbeck (Verona), Towards an Alternative History of the Age of Goethe: Rahel Levin Varnhagen’s Dialogic Thought

Day 3, Sep 5: What does female self-constitution mean?

Morning Session: Perspectives of Kantianism and beyond

9-9:45              Olga Lenczewska (Wilmington), Karolina: Critiquing Women’s Perpetual Intellectual Confinement

9:55-10:40       Moran Godess-Riccitelli (Tel Aviv/Potsdam), Aesthetic Disinterestedness and Feminism: A Kantian Perspective (remote)

11:45-noon     Katharina Kraus (Baltimore), Lou Salomé on the Self-Development and Vocation of Women

Afternoon Session: Philosophical Aspect: Women and Public Expression

2-2:45             Giulia Valpione (Paris), Romantic Women Philosophers as Subjects

2:55-3:40         Keren Gorodeiski (Auburn), How are such distinctions possible? An Analytic Perspective

4:30-5:30         Presentation of RMU Project Making Visible: Female Authors in German Romanticism around 1800:  Martina Wernli (Zürich), Cosima Jungk (Mainz), Hidden Treasures

Funded by: Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, JGU Mainz Forschungsförderung, Freunde der JGU Mainz e.V.,

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, Università di Verona

A limited number of seats is available for external participants. In-person participation only. Please contact apollok@uni-mainz.de for further information.