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Knowledge, Power and Nature 1500-1700 - Term 2 Week 8

This seminar was taught in week 7 NOT in week 8 this year!!!

Seminar Reading

Nummedal, Tara. Anna Ziegerlin’s Alchemical Relevations,’ in Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, ed by Alisha Rankin and Elaine Leong. (Burlington, 2011), pp. 125-142.

Rankin, Alisha, ‘Becoming an Expert Practitioner: Court Experimentation and the Medical Skills of Anna of Saxony (1532-1585)’, Isis 98 (2007): 23-53.

Seminar Questions

  • Do you think women significantly shaped impact on the Scientific Revolution?
  • ‘Science is not for girls’. Discuss
  • Discuss the reasons why women were so long not part of the official story of the Scientific Revolution.

Further Reading

Findlen, Paula, 'Science As A Career In Enlightenment Italy: The Strategies Of Laura Bassi,' Isis, 84, 3, 1993: 441–469.

Leong, Elaine, ‘Herbals she peruseth’: Reading Medicine in Early Modern England', Renaissance Studies 28, 4 (2014): 556–578.

Rankin, Alisha, Panaceia's Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany (Chicago, 2013).

Ray, Meredith, Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Cambridge, MA., 2015).

Schiebinger, Londa, 'Women in Natural Science', in Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park (eds.), The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 3, Early Modern Science (Cambridge, 2006), 192-215 9 (library electronic resources)

Smith, Helen, ‘Grossly Material Things’. Women and Book Production in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2012).

Strocchia, Sharon T., Introduction: Women and Healthcare in Early Modern Europe, Renaissance Studies 28, 4 (2014): 496-514.

Park, Katharine, Secrets of Women - Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (New York, 2006).

Whaley, Leigh, 'Networks, Patronage and Women of Science during the Italian Enlightenment' Early Modern Women 11,1 (2016): 187-196.

Women, Health and Healing in Early Modern Europe, Special Issue, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008).