36th International Seminar on Architectural History
WOMEN, SPACES, FREEDOM. Architecture and the Female Universe in the RenaissanceVicenza, Palladio Museum, 21-23 May 2025Organized by Donata Battilotti, Cammy Brothers, Bianca de Divitiis and Deborah Howard
Call for papers
Those interested in participating with a contribution (20 minute limit) should send an outline (no more than 250 words) and brief CV (no more than 100 words) to cfp@cisapalladio.org by 30 September 2024.
The papers will be submitted for publication in the “Annali di architettura”. Further special issues dedicated to women will be considered in the future.
Although the list of possible topics given below is broad and interdisciplinary, the seminar aims to preserve the focus on architecture and the built environment.
The focus is on Italian case studies between 1400 and 1700, but comparative geographical lenses are also welcome. Discoveries that have emerged through archival research, work with inventories and the direct examination of buildings are especially encouraged.
Possible themes include but are not confined to the following:
- Women as patrons of architecture
- Women as patrons of gardens
- Dowries as stimulus for building
- Inheritance laws and legal restrictions on women’s movement
- Gender divisions in domestic and religious buildings
- Spaces for widows and single women and their use
- Child-rearing
- Spaces for study and devotion
- Women’s lives in frescoes and paintings
- Women’s furnishings in domestic settings (childbirth, devotion etc)
- Spaces for female servants and slaves
- Prostitutes and courtesans
- Convents, role of abbesses and prioresses in patronage; decoration of cells
- Women’s patronage of family chapels and funerary monuments
- Women as artisans and entrepreneurs
- Workshops and artisanal spaces
- Hostelries and inns
- Baths and laundries
- Street life, shops
- Urban improvements