Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference 2026 (February 19-21, 2026)
protection de Jupiter et de Junon, 1622-1625, Huile sur toile, 155 x 394 cm,
Paris, Musée du Louvre.
DESCRIPTION
In her 1659 essay on the possibility for a woman to be a scholar, Dutch savante Anna Maria van Schurman lists the following limitations:
“that the condition of the times, and her quality be such, that she may have spare hours from her general and special calling, that is, from the exercises of piety and household affairs. To which end will conduce, partly her immunity from cares and employments in her younger years, partly in her elder age either celibate, or the ministry of handmaids, which are wont to free the richer sort of matrons also from domestic troubles.”
This passage, which shows the difficulty for a woman of finding leisure time, and calls to mind for modern readers the ideas expressed in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, suggests an early modern awareness of women’s differentiated experience of time and its determination by their sex, age, and wealth. As books of civility and household manuals rose in popularity over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries especially, women’s time seemed to have been increasingly codified on a daily basis and over their lifetime, with different rules of conduct applying to women depending on their age, fertility, and marital status. These considerations, however, need to be nuanced in situations that fall outside of a gendered division of labour, especially as we move away from the bourgeoisie and consider both working women and women who held minor and major political positions. The numerous female rulers in France, England, or the Habsburg dynasty, among others, raise the question of their relationship not just to the present time (especially crucial to temporary rulers like regents) but to other temporalities. Their political role also implied a relationship to an individual and collective history and fate, such as the historical figures, ancestors and family members they could relate to in order to establish their legitimacy, as well as the future they sometimes had to ensure through childbearing and political manoeuvring. Important artistic commissions, such as Maria de Medici’s cycle for the Luxembourg Palace in Paris (1621–1625) or Amalia van Solms’s for the Huis ten Bosch in The Hague (1648–1651), immortalised and fictionalised their role as historical characters by emphasising their central position in the history of their country or even Europe, showing the cruciality of mastering time to assert their political agency.
CRITERIA FOR SUBMISSIONS
In this call, we seek participants for an on-location roundtable session. Participants are asked to present a brief case study exploring women’s experiences of time in early modern Europe and crucial methodological questions.
Is there indeed a gendered experience of temporality? By what factors is the experience of time structured? How did women’s experience of time generate visual or textual traces, or how were women’s temporal experiences shaped by visual and textual artifacts? How do we discuss women and time without lapsing into overly simplified biological determinism?
Case studies might include, but are not limited to:
- discussions of women relating to or being depicted as historical or biblical figures;
- the legal, scientific, and social division of women’s lifetime and the rights and duties associated to each different stage;
- the structural role of religion in women’s everyday life;
- imitation and creation of precedent;
- questions of memory and immortality;
- relationship to technology
- concepts of fame, dynasty, and legitimacy
Although the organizers both work on the Low Countries, we welcome submissions from across geographic boundaries and throughout the duration of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. We welcome interdisciplinary, case-based contributions to be briefly presented before our collective discussion.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE
Proposals should be 300 words long and centred on a case study. They should be sent on 31 July at the latest, along with a CV and a short biography, to both Dr. Saskia Beranek (srberan@ilstu.edu) and Dr. Léon Rochard (leon.rochard@outlook.fr). Accepted participants are required to be members of the Renaissance Society of America by the time of the conference and should be able to be present in person in San Francisco during the conference (19-21 february 2026).
