18th-century research in dialogue
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In late 1794, the then twenty-year-old former cameralism student Ferdinand Beneke criticized the expectations placed onto students regarding their choice of study. In his extensive diary he explains that he regrets the decision he made when he was fifteen to study both law and cameralism instead of just cameralism. He made this decision because he wished […]
The German author Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807) was an exceptional woman: a writer and a polymath, who landed a bestseller with her first epistolary novel History of Lady Sophia Sternheim (1771) at a time when female writers were an absolute rarity. Her creativity proved indefatigable: after publishing a plethora of diverse texts ranging from […]
Each month, we aim to feature a current research topic by a doctoral student or Early Career Researcher. This month, Ingrid Schreiber (Oxford, Wadham College) talks about the tension between intellectual self-sufficiency and the need to test ideas in an intellectual community in the work of Kant and the Königsberg circle. Human beings, argued philosopher […]
Interdisziplinarität in Zeiten des Umbruchs Institutionell verankert an der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, widmet sich das IZEA der interdisziplinären Aufklärungsforschung. Die Etablierung des Zentrums nahm ihren Anfang in der Vorwendezeit mit den Bemühungen von Paul Raabe, dem damaligen Direktor der Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, und Ulrich Ricken, Professor für Romanistik an der Universität Halle, eine gesamtdeutsche Forschungsstätte Europäische Aufklärung […]
Each month, we aim to feature a current research topic by a doctoral student or Early Career Researcher. This month, Theodor Berwe (IZEA/University of Mainz) talks about tracing the historical development of the genetic definition as an ideal form of forming concepts. Since antiquity and until the 19th century, geometry has been considered a paragon […]
Ever since the 1950s, Oxford-based authors have pondered the difficult ambiguity and polysemy of the term ‘Enlightenment’. In the process they produced a remarkable amount of original research, accompanied by a critical mass of controversy and debates. This short blog post focuses (in very broad brush strokes) on the history of Enlightenment studies at Oxford […]
Each month, we aim to feature a current research topic by a doctoral student or Early Career Researcher. This month, Sam Bailey (School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham) talks about a theme that emerged from his doctoral thesis on disability in early modern French literature. When speaking about my work on disability in […]
‘D’un excellent époux rejoignant la carriere, votre gloire, Madame, egalé son renom,’ so Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz praised Marfa Feodorovna Matveeva (1686?–1720) (neé Princess Baryatinskaya) alongside her husband Andrei Artamonovich Matveev (1666–1728), the ambassador of Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) to the Austrian emperor Charles VI (r.1685–1740). The poem is dated 6 June 1714, when Leibniz […]
Each month, we aim to feature a current research topic by a doctoral student or Early Career Researcher. To start off the series, Sarah Fengler (Medieval and Modern Languages / Jesus College, Oxford) talks about her thesis topic on European dramatizations of Old Testament narratives in the Age of Enlightenment. When Adam sees Eve […]
Le prospectus de la Gazette d’Épidaure fait apparaître son auteur comme bien décidé à occuper une place singulière dans la littérature journalistique de son temps, en particulier celle qui a trait à la médecine. Loin de se limiter à la Gazette ni même au domaine médical, homme de sociétés et d’échanges, Barbeu-Dubourg participe aussi diversement […]
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