Women have long been perceived as occupying a marginal place in history, especially in legal and economic history. While most historians agree today that such a claim is erroneous, it is fruitful to deal head front with this issue in order to challenge our own view on what could have been in the past marginal and what was not, as well as to illustrate various past processes of marginalization, and counter-measures to avoid it. One paper (Terpstra) will explore for instance how the marginalization of young orphan girls in early Modern Italian cities allowed the latter to build a thriving silk commerce. A similar approach is also fertile to discuss masculinity. Were the most vivid masculine activities, such as playing war (Lawrence) or acting same-sex relations in confraternity plays (Eisenbichler), really marginal to pre-modern male lives?
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Thank you for your interest. Posted June 7, 2010.
Click here for updated program. Posted May 30, 2010.