Plenary speakers: Danielle Clarke (University College Dublin), Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille (Université de Rouen Normandie), Emilie Murphy (University of York), Sue Wiseman (Birkbeck, University of London)
Early modern historical writing encompasses a wide range of subjects, approaches, and forms, including, to name a few, chronicle histories, verse narratives, drama, pamphlets, and biographical lives. While recent scholarship has paid attention to this variety and generic hybridity by looking beyond major chronicle and humanist histories, the contributions that women made to historical culture have often been overlooked. Women were, however, actively engaged in historical writing, producing a diverse range of texts that have not been adequately incorporated within our understanding of ‘history’ as a genre or mode of writing about the past.
Clio Reframed aims to explore historical writing and historiography produced by women between the sixteenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, asking why, when and to what purpose and effect women chose different historical subjects as their focus; to situate these texts within their social, religious, political, and textual production contexts, with the aim of expanding our critical understanding of historical writing that often elides the participation of women; and to challenge narratives that homogenize women’s interests in history and their writing strategies. It proposes that women’s historical writing is not an essentially gendered or isolated space in which individual contributions and agendas are uniform. Rather, women’s historical writing is diverse, prevalent, and characterized by relational frameworks and networks, involving other writers, patrons, stationers, and readers.
The conference defines historical writing broadly to include any text, in print or manuscript, that purports to offer some account of a historical past or what was once thought to be a historical past. These parameters include political and military histories (what has been conventionally thought of as ‘mainstream’ history), but also biblical and religious histories, legendary histories, such as those linked to a nation’s narrative of origin, and individual histories about specific lives, including memoirs. The conference welcomes global perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches and is not limited to early modern writing in English.
Clio Reframed invites proposals for 20-minute panel papers that explore a variety of topics and approaches, including, but not limited to:
- The significance of different forms or modes for historical writing, including prose histories, verse narratives, memoirs, plays, treatises, epistles, and dialogues
- The hybridity of historical writing that blends different forms and/or approaches to the past, including political and personal histories
- Negotiating and constructing gender within historical writing
- Collaboratively authored or edited histories that complicate notions of singular authorship, such as the histories of religious communities
- The use and aims of women’s historical writing, including its circulation and influence during early modernity and beyond
- The evidence and influence of networks – that might include authors, stationers, patrons, and political or familial communities – on the development and production of texts
- Women’s contributions to political, religious, (trans)national, local, and individual histories
- Cross-cultural and transnational influences on historical writing that might prompt a comparative analysis of histories in different languages or from different countries
- Contributions of authors from a range of social backgrounds, including royal or aristocratic writers and those from the middling ranks
- Women’s access to and use of historical sources
- Histories by women in exile
- Critical methods and terminology for discussing women’s historical writing
To apply, please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short biography to clioreframed@gmail.comby 28 February 2026. For queries, please contact Dr Amy Lidster (University of Oxford) at the same address.
Submissions from doctoral students and ECRs are particularly encouraged – and several graduate/ECR bursaries will be available for assisting with travel and accommodation expenses. To apply for one of these, please submit an additional statement (c. 200 words) that briefly outlines why a bursary would be beneficial and how your research fits with the aims of the conference.
Clio Reframed is generously supported by grants from Corpus Christi College, Oxford’s Centre for Early Modern Studies, and the Society for Renaissance Studies.
For more details about the conference, visit our website at https://clioreframed.hcommons.org.