[CSHPS] online seminar of the Early Career series of SISS, the Italian Society for the History of Science.
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Allan Olley via CSHPS
May 21, 2026, 4:30:42 PM (3 days ago) May 21
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Sent on behalf of Daniela Monaldi:
Abstract:
Stephanie Reitzig, Columbia University
“So ingenious, so full of art”: Women’s Artistic Practices and the Early Modern Sciences
In the past decade, scholars have shown a greater interest in the intersections of women’s artwork and the early modern sciences. Female scientific illustrators such as Maria Sibylla Merian and Alida Withoos have received heightened attention, while researchers have begun to explore the scientific dimensions of decorative arts such as embroidery. In this presentation, I will first survey the relationship between women’s artistic practices and the sciences as portrayed in this recent work, and then, drawing on my own research, identify two further directions which may be fruitful for scholars to pursue in this area. Studies to date collectively reveal that amateur and professional painting and needlework fostered women’s observation and depiction of the natural world and their interactions with scientific texts. I suggest that attending to the network-building dimensions of women’s artwork and probing gendered materialities can shed further light on the way gendered artistic practices facilitated and mediated women’s participation in the creation and circulation of natural knowledge.
Stephanie Reitzig is a PhD student in History at Columbia University. She specializes in early modern history of science, with a focus on the intersections of art, gender, and natural history in seventeenth and eighteenth-century central and northern Europe. Further info at https://history.columbia.edu/person/reitzig-stephanie/
In the past decade, scholars have shown a greater interest in the intersections of women’s artwork and the early modern sciences. Female scientific illustrators such as Maria Sibylla Merian and Alida Withoos have received heightened attention, while researchers have begun to explore the scientific dimensions of decorative arts such as embroidery. In this presentation, I will first survey the relationship between women’s artistic practices and the sciences as portrayed in this recent work, and then, drawing on my own research, identify two further directions which may be fruitful for scholars to pursue in this area. Studies to date collectively reveal that amateur and professional painting and needlework fostered women’s observation and depiction of the natural world and their interactions with scientific texts. I suggest that attending to the network-building dimensions of women’s artwork and probing gendered materialities can shed further light on the way gendered artistic practices facilitated and mediated women’s participation in the creation and circulation of natural knowledge.
Stephanie Reitzig is a PhD student in History at Columbia University. She specializes in early modern history of science, with a focus on the intersections of art, gender, and natural history in seventeenth and eighteenth-century central and northern Europe. Further info at https://history.columbia.edu/person/reitzig-stephanie/
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