Program

15.00h: Annelien de Dijn, Utrecht University

Patriarchy in History: From Henry Maine to Pippa Norris

This paper reconstructs Victorian debates about the history of patriarchy. It highlights that nineteenth-century thinking about patriarchy as a specific historical phenomenon – rather than the natural and immutable condition of mankind - was more multifaceted than it is usually assumed. Second, this paper also unveils the long shadow of these Victorian accounts of the history of gender relations. To a surprisingly large degree, as we will see, twentieth-century scholars continued to walk in the footsteps of their nineteenth-century forbears. Indeed, it is possible to argue that even today, our conception of patriarchy continues to be shaped by these Victorian narratives, for better or for worse. 

16.00h: Suzanne Kooloos, Vossius Fellow

Theater and/or Economy: How Bubble Objects Produced a Stock Market Crisis (1720) — and Economic Thought 

This project challenges the modern separation of theatre and economy by examining their entanglement in the early eighteenth century. Focusing on the stock market crisis of 1720, I argue that theatrical references were not merely metaphors for economic processes but constitutive of emerging economic thought. Through an analysis of Het groote tafereel der dwaasheid—a folio-sized compilation of satirical prints, plays, and pamphlets—as well as “bubble objects” such as engraved glasses, tobacco boxes, and porcelain plates, I show how economic knowledge was produced across media. The emergence and interpretation of new practices of financial speculation were mediated by theatrical repertoires, including commedia dell’arte and the magic lantern. By approaching theatrical, visual and material culture as epistemic tools rather than commentary, my project contributes to the history of science, arguing that economic thought, and later, economics as a scientific discipline, emerged through what we would now read as interdisciplinary practices that exceed the boundaries of formal economic discourse.