The Impossible Salon

In this episode, host Helene von Tabouillot speaks with the project’s Senior Research Fellow, Felicity Henderson, about the early days of the Royal Society of London. We discuss the role women played as informal sources, guests, and inquirers in the Royal Society, from which they were officially excluded until 1945. Encountering 17th-century women with particular interests ranging from salmon to s...

In this episode, host Helene von Tabouillot speaks with the project’s PI, Helena Taylor, about the French professional writer and salon hostess, Marie de Gournay (1565-1645). As a young woman in the late 16th century, Gournay met the famed essayist Montaigne, who adopted her as a protégée. She successfully built a career as an editor of his works, a translator of Roman classics, and an essayist. W...

In this episode, host Helene von Tabouillot speaks with Carlotta Moro, postdoc on the Cultures of Philosophy project, about the 17th-century Sicilian writer, Camilla Bonfiglio, and her treatise,  Book in Praise of Women and on the Cruelty of Men . We discuss the arguments and imagery employed by Bonfiglio, through which she suggests that women are superior to men in a myriad of ways, as well as th...