Gender, Violence and the Early Moderns

• Department of History

This workshop explores how past societies understood and narrated gendered violence

Violence puts the gender roles in a society firmly on records. Although we can never fully grasp the motives behind past acts of violence, through them we can gauge what was tolerated or sanctioned in any given society. Historical violence can suggest which meaning early modern people had of assault and abuse, whether physical, verbal or psychological. This brings us to the fundamental methodological question of how modern categories can capture past social realities. In this regard, the aim of the workshop is to offer a more precise picture of gender violence, with a quantitative study on survivors, their witnesses, and the negotiating process.

This gathering aims to promote a discussion on how to defy certain stereotypes around gender-based violence by investigating how women and men in the past viewed and talked about their roles within the abusive act. While some treated the violence suffered as an intimate matter, charged with shame and danger and therefore difficult to articulate, others saw it as a matter to be publicly outed and put into words.