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Reinventing Woman’s Nature: Early Modern Feminism and Its Roots – Day 3

306 Royce Hall 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles

Register to attend in person in Royce 306. Register to attend online with Zoom. Challenges to inferiorizing conceptions of women’s nature that grew in prominence in the 16th and 17th centuries should be seen not just as applications of changing philosophical conceptions of nature under the rise of mechanical philosophy, but as helping to shape those reconceptualizations. Through their polemical writings in defence of women, their rejection of histories written by men that excluded or skewed the contributions of women, in their own philosophical treatises and correspondence with male philosophers, feminists, including some feminist men, helped to shape a conception of human nature and...