On Tuesday, March 5, 2019, the Utrecht Centre for Early Modern Studies (UCEMS) will hold its yearly public lecture:
Professor Amanda Pipkin, University of North Carolina Charlotte
Studious Mothers and Nurturing Fathers: Articulating Middle-class, Reformed Identity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century English and Dutch Domestic Advice
Date and time: Tuesday, March 5, 2019, 19.15-21.00 (Lecture starts 19.45)
Location: Belle van Zuylen zaal, Academiegebouw of the University of Utrecht (Domplein, Utrecht)
Language: English
About the speaker
Amanda Pipkin (Ph.D. in History, Rutgers University, 2007) is Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her book, Rape in the Republic, 1609-1725: Formulating Dutch Identity (Brill 2013), reveals the significance of sex and gender in the construction of Dutch national identity during the period of the Revolt of the Netherlands and beyond by examining depictions of rape in pamphlets, plays, poems, and advice manuals. She has also published articles on seventeenth-century Dutch culture in the Journal of Early Modern History and in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis. Pipkin’s current research highlights women’s vital contributions to religious communities in the early modern Netherlands and as conduits between English, German, and Dutch Protestants. She recently edited a volume with Sarah Moran entitled Women and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries (Brill, forthcoming).
About the lecture
There is no question that the sixteenth-century reformations transformed men’s and women’s religious opportunities and obligations across Europe. This is particularly evident in the domestic advice published in catechisms, emblems, instruction manuals, and devotional guides from 1529 to 1679 in German, Dutch, and English. The authors of these books, who were often middle-class ministers, took a very lively interest in inspiring household members to help raise Christian children and to participate in domestic worship services. Their advice often urged parents to provide religious instruction to their children and expected a wife to assist the family patriarch in his home ministry by leading group prayers and running domestic worship when he was unable to do so, thus providing some women with the tools to make more concrete religious contributions. This presentation will examine the international spread of domestic advice in response to religious persecution, trade, and voluntary travel, compare authors’ instructions to parents, and to identify religious opportunities for women.
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