The Philosophy of Germaine de Staël
Workshop & PhD Defense
Workshop: Germaine de Staël, Women’s Scholarship, and Intellectual History
18 April 2026
When: Saturday 18-04-2026 09:30 – 16:30 hrs.
Where: Erasmus University College, Lecture Hall A, Nieuwemarkt 1A Rotterdam.
Registration: via this form before April 10.
Introduction
As one of the first cosmopolitans, a host to important salons in Paris and Coppet, a first-hand witness of the horrors of the French Revolution, and a politically involved author of best-selling novels, political pamphlets, intercultural studies, and philosophical treatises, Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) became a unique figure in the early modern world. Intellectually, she was influenced by a broad range of traditions, most importantly by the late French and Scottish Enlightenment, 18thcentury sentimentalism, British Whiggism, eighteenth-century sentimentalism, and Early German Romanticism. Staël’s philosophical work can be regarded as an original attempt to unite Enlightened and Romantic traditions, thereby developing a novel theory of the modern liberal individual.
Research into Staël’s literary work, her reflections on the role of literature in society, and her political theory have been undergoing a revival. Today, research into Staël’s philosophical ideas and her role in intellectual history is also gaining momentum. In the workshop “Germaine de Staël, Women’s Scholarship, and Intellectual History” an international group of specialists on Staël’s philosophical thought, women’s scholarship, and the re-canonisation project come together to present and discuss their research and expertise.
The workshop is organised on the occasion of the PhD defence of Eveline Groot who will publicly defend her doctoral thesis Reason and the Passions in the Philosophy of Germaine de Staël the day before the workshop (17 April 13:00 hrs at the Erasmus University Rotterdam).
Programme 18 April
09:30 hrs – Arrival with coffee & tea
09:50 hrs – Word of welcome by Han van Ruler (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
10:10 hrs – Presentation Sandrine Bergès (University of York)
11:10 hrs – Presentation Ada Bronowski (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
12:00 hrs – Lunch
13:00 hrs – Panel conversation on the future of research on Women’s Scholarship with Alicia Montoya (Radboud University) and Ruth Hagengruber (University of Paderborn), moderation by Eveline Groot (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
14:00 hrs – Presentation Kristin Gjesdal (Temple University) (online)
15:15 hrs – Coffee break
15:15 hrs – Presentation Helena Rosenblatt (CUNY) (online)
16:15 hrs – End of workshop
Biographies of the speakers
Sandrine Bergès is British Academy Global professor in philosophy at the University of York and professor in philosophy at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. She is the author of No place like home, Women Philosophers’ Struggles with Domesticity, and Liberty in their Names, the Women Philosophers of the French Revolution, as well asseveral books and articles on women in the history of philosophy, including Wollstonecraft, Sophie de Grouchy and Olympe de Gouges. She runs the blog Feminist History of Philosophy and is one of the founders of the new SWIP-Turkey and of the Mary Wollstonecraft Philosophical Society.
Ada Bronowski is an associate professor of Classical Thought at at Erasmus School of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, specializing in Stoicism, Epicureanism, ancient materialism, philosophy of mind and language. She is currently finishing a book on Stoic lekta and working on a project about the non-material origins of materialism. Her parallel interests include the philosophical commitments of Renaissance Humanists Leon-Battista Alberti and Nicholas of Cusa. She has also published Dear Friend, you must change your life, a project focused on the philosophical letter through the ages
Kristin Gjesdal is professor of philosophy at Temple University. Her scholarship covers modern European philosophy and her monographs include Gadamer and the Legacy of German Idealism (Cambridge University Press, 2009/2011), Herder’s Hermeneutics (Cambrige University Press, 2017/2019), and The Drama of History: Ibsen, Hegel, Nietzsche (Oxford University Press, 2021). She is the editor and co-editor of eight volumes, including Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century: The German Tradition and the The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition(both with Oxford University Press).
Ruth Hagengruber professor of philosophy at the University of Paderborn, founder and director of the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists, and founder of the research area EcoTechGender. She is editor of the German Springer series Frauen in Philosophie und Wissenschaft , as co-editor of the international Springer series Women in the History of Philosophy and Science . She founded and co-edits the Journal for the History of Women Philosophers at Brill’s. With De Gruyter Publishing she edits the series Women Philosophers World Heritage Collection. Hagengruber’s research is dedicated to the revision of patriarchal history, specially to the rediscovery of women’s alternative contributions to the history of philosophy and the history of economics. She specialises in the history of women philosophers, focusing on the mathematician, physicist and philosopher Émilie Du Châtelet.
Alicia Montoya is professor of French Literature and Culture, specializing in eighteenth-century studies. She is the author of Medievalist Enlightenment: From Charles Perrault to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marie-Anne Barbier et la tragédie post-classique and the co-editor of several volumes, including Lumières et histoire / Enlightenment and History . Montoya is currently Principal Investigator on the NWO-funded Civic Fictions project, and was formerly PI on the ERC-funded MEDIATE project (2016 - 2022). She is the recipient of the 2017 Ammodo-KNAW Award Humanities, and a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities.
Helena Rosenblatt is professor of history and French at the CUNY Grad Center, as well as a recent recipient of a prestigious Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. She is also a member of the Board of Editors of the Tocqueville Review and Global Intellectual History Review. Rosenblatt is author of Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion, Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to the Social Contract, 1749-1762, and The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century.
Han van Ruler is professor of Intellectual History at Erasmus School of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, General Editor of Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History and President of Dutch Spinoza Society ‘Vereniging Het Spinozahuis’. He specialises in the history of philosophy, theology and science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Erasmus, Descartes) and has edited and published various editions of early modern texts in Dutch and English (Geulincx, Spinoza, Leibniz). Since 2020, he has been leading the NWO research project ‘Decoding Descartes’ in Rotterdam.
Registration
The workshop will be held in English. Registration is free, but essential. If you would like to attend this workshop, please register via this form before April 10. Attendance is in person, but in case you would like to audit online, please send Eveline Groot (e.j.a.groot@esphil.eur.nl) a message.
For questions about the event, please contact Eveline Groot at e.j.a.groot[at]esphil.eur.nl.
Proefschriftverdediging: Reason and the Passions in the Philosophy of Germaine de Staël
17 April 26
Op vrijdag 17 april 13.00 uur verdedig ik publiekelijk mijn proefschrift aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. De ceremonie is publiekelijk toegankelijk. Let wel dat vanwege de officiële aard van de ceremonie wordt afgeraden kinderen jonger dan 6 jaar mee te nemen.
De aanvang van de verdediging is 13:00 uur stipt. Daarna sluiten de deuren van de zaal en is de verdediging online bij te wonen. De locatie is de Senaatszaal van het Erasmusgebouw aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. Informatie over de route en parkeren is hier te vinden.