Researchers at the University of Valencia create a database with women’s contributions to the historical development of reading audiences
Researchers at the University of Valencia (UV) have developed the open-access database Writing for Women (W4W) as part of the European research project CIRGEN (Circulating Gender in the Global Enlightenment: Ideas, Networks, Agencies). This new resource fills a gap in research regarding the role of women in shaping reading audiences and explores the significance of literature aimed at women as both a commercial strategy and a moral and ideological tool.
The database is one of the outcomes of the ¤2.5 million European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant which has funded the CIRGEN project. The project is led by Mónica Bolufer Peruga, professor of Modern History at the University of Valencia, and includes a team of preand postdoctoral researchers. For the first time, it systematically documents the works (both printed and manuscript) that were recommended or directed towards an imagined female audience, either exclusively or as a part of a wider public.
"Understanding what has historically been defined as ’books for women’ or how female audiences were imagined will provide better insights into the commercial tactics and ideological biases still present in today’s cultural market", explain Mónica Bolufer, who in September 2024 became professor of Early Modern History at the European University Institute (EUI), and Laura Guinot Ferri, a member of the team and currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bologna.
The database, designed by the IRTIC (Institute of Robotics) team at the UV and directed by Ramón Cirilo, also pays close attention to the mediators-authors, translators, printers, journalists, educators-who helped define what was deemed suitable for this audience. It also records evidence of the circulation and readership of these texts, such as subscription lists or their presence in libraries.
Writing for Women includes works produced in the Hispanic world (including colonial America) and in Portugal between 1700 and 1830. From these, the database reconstructs the genealogy of translations and adaptations and traces transnational and transatlantic circulations. This approach sets a model that can be extended in the future to other time periods and geographical areas.
W4W draws on extensive research from catalogues, bibliographies, press advertisements and reviews, private and family library inventories, and other historical sources. The records cover a complex set of data across multiple levels: works (both original and translated or adapted), authors, translators, imagined audiences (represented or invoked in the works themselves-such as in titles, prefaces, dedications and illustrations-as well as in advertisements and reviews), and real audiences (as revealed through library inventories, subscription lists and other evidence).
https://w4w.uv.es/CIRGEN
CIRGEN (Circulating Gender in the Global Enlightenment: Ideas, Networks, Agencies) : https://cirgen.eu/
