Charlotta Forss
My research explores how people in the past have conceptualized the world and their place in it. At the intersection between cultural history and the history of science, I study how people in the past have made sense of their world through making, valuing and legitimating information in various settings. In my doctoral thesis, I looked at early modern geographical imaginaries of the continents. In my current work, I focus on ideas and practices relating to health and morality in the early modern sauna. I work with a broad range of sources, from historical cartography and scholarship to travel diaries, letters and court records. The primary focus of my research is the early modern period, and especially the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The material I work with stem mostly from the Northern hemisphere: Sweden, Northern Europe and America.
My current project explores the sauna culture of early modern Sweden (including Finland). Saunas in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sweden were places where questions relating to health and morality came to the fore. Medical and theoretical knowledge about the body merged with the practical know-how of the Bathers’ Guild as well as with folk practices. In parallel, saunas also constituted a setting that actualized conflicting moralities, and not least in the eyes of foreign visitors. These issues merged in interesting ways that bring light to the complex nature of how early modern people made sense of their world. The project runs from 2019 to 2023, and is funded by the Swedish Research Council. Part of the project was based at Stockholm University, University of Turku, University of Cambridge and University of Oxford. A taster of what kinds of questions the project addresses can be found at http://notchesblog.com/2019/03/19/some-like-it-hot-sex-and-the-sauna-in-early-modern-sweden/
My doctoral thesis (2018) investigates how geographers and travelers from 17th century Sweden understood geographical concepts - in particular the continents - and how they gained and valued information about different parts of the world. The book consists of three case studies that each considers a setting where the use of geographical concepts was important. The first case examines conceptual knowledge in the geography education of early modern Sweden, through a close readings of educational maps, school books and preserved lecture notes. The second case considers how these geographical concepts fared in the narratives of travelers to the Ottoman Empire - located at the intersection between Europe, Asia and Africa. The third case shifts focus westward and looks at how travelers to the Swedish American colony New Sweden understood these concepts in the context of the New World. The thesis showcases the ways in which geographical conceptualization was situational and fluid in nature, and that an understanding of the world was closely tied to the processes of validating old, new and hitherto unknown information. My thesis is published by Illoinen Tiede and available through open access: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1174983&dswid=5182
From my doctoral thesis stems a persistent interest in understanding how people in the past have used maps and travel narratives to understand their world. In 2018-2019 I pursued these issued through a close study of the fascinating cartography of the seventeenth-century Swedish polymath Olof Rudbeck, and through a study of the conceptualization of the far-North. This project was based at the Bodleian Library and Linacre College, University of Oxford.
I also have an interest in the political history of the early modern period. Together with Joackim Scherp, I have co-authored a book on the reign of the Swedish Queen Ulrika Eleonora (1719-20) and the families she ennobled: Ulrika Eleonora: Makten och den nya adeln 1719-1720 (Setterblad förlag, 2019). See http://setterbladforlag.se/index.html
My current project explores the sauna culture of early modern Sweden (including Finland). Saunas in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sweden were places where questions relating to health and morality came to the fore. Medical and theoretical knowledge about the body merged with the practical know-how of the Bathers’ Guild as well as with folk practices. In parallel, saunas also constituted a setting that actualized conflicting moralities, and not least in the eyes of foreign visitors. These issues merged in interesting ways that bring light to the complex nature of how early modern people made sense of their world. The project runs from 2019 to 2023, and is funded by the Swedish Research Council. Part of the project was based at Stockholm University, University of Turku, University of Cambridge and University of Oxford. A taster of what kinds of questions the project addresses can be found at http://notchesblog.com/2019/03/19/some-like-it-hot-sex-and-the-sauna-in-early-modern-sweden/
My doctoral thesis (2018) investigates how geographers and travelers from 17th century Sweden understood geographical concepts - in particular the continents - and how they gained and valued information about different parts of the world. The book consists of three case studies that each considers a setting where the use of geographical concepts was important. The first case examines conceptual knowledge in the geography education of early modern Sweden, through a close readings of educational maps, school books and preserved lecture notes. The second case considers how these geographical concepts fared in the narratives of travelers to the Ottoman Empire - located at the intersection between Europe, Asia and Africa. The third case shifts focus westward and looks at how travelers to the Swedish American colony New Sweden understood these concepts in the context of the New World. The thesis showcases the ways in which geographical conceptualization was situational and fluid in nature, and that an understanding of the world was closely tied to the processes of validating old, new and hitherto unknown information. My thesis is published by Illoinen Tiede and available through open access: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1174983&dswid=5182
From my doctoral thesis stems a persistent interest in understanding how people in the past have used maps and travel narratives to understand their world. In 2018-2019 I pursued these issued through a close study of the fascinating cartography of the seventeenth-century Swedish polymath Olof Rudbeck, and through a study of the conceptualization of the far-North. This project was based at the Bodleian Library and Linacre College, University of Oxford.
I also have an interest in the political history of the early modern period. Together with Joackim Scherp, I have co-authored a book on the reign of the Swedish Queen Ulrika Eleonora (1719-20) and the families she ennobled: Ulrika Eleonora: Makten och den nya adeln 1719-1720 (Setterblad förlag, 2019). See http://setterbladforlag.se/index.html
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A scheme of continents-usually consisting of the entities 'Africa', 'America', 'Asia', 'Europe' and sometimes the polar regions-is often a part of descriptions about what the world looks like. The continents are often treated as existing outside of history. However, like other concepts, the meaning and significance of the continents have changed drastically over time and between contexts. This fact is a matter of importance for historians, but equally so for a wider public using geographical categories to understand the world today. Concepts such as the continents may describe what the world looks like, yet they can create both boundaries and affiliations far beyond land and sea.
The Early Modern Seminar at Stockholm University arranges a workshop on 10th-11th June 2020, bringing together historians working on ideas and practices related to health in early modern society. The aim with the workshop is to create a forum for a cross- disciplinary and creative discussion on the history of health and society in early modern Europe.
4-5 July 2019
Warburg Haus, Hamburg
In a time of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news’ we may long for an earlier, purportedly simpler world in which facts were simply facts. But were facts ever that simple? How did past generations separate fact from fiction; truth from falsehood; and proof from hearsay? Tradition has it that written proof once ruled supreme, whether it concerned early modern scholarship or litigation, the spiritual world of demons and the saints or the worldly realm of land rights and taxation. As historians in different fields have since realised, proof was an omnipresent, but nevertheless contested practice that bred fierce conflicts about degrees of trust, the nature of truth, the boundaries between scholarly disciplines, and the purview of official institutions.
The historiography on proof is varied, and scholars work in parallel traditions; historians of science are inspired by Bruno Latour; historians of religion look at wonders and miracles; historians of scholarship discuss authenticity and forgery; cultural historians are fascinated by the witness. Proof, in short, has enjoyed much critical press within today’s scholarly disciplines. Rarely, however, have scholars integrated these individual observations to probe the shared European legacy of proof. This conference seeks to provide an international forum for an interdisciplinary exchange about the concept of proof in its different early modern guises. It invites scholars – from political to religious history, from law to the history of art and science – to think about the common intellectual problems that once underlay practices of proving in the early modern period.
With its focus on the period from roughly 1400 to 1800 it hones in on what we posit was a crucial phase in the history of proof. The early modern period is traditionally affiliated with the construction of precisely the disciplinary boundaries that continue to separate different strands of contemporary research on proving. Proof itself underwent a similar transformation: different ways of proving became specific to separate disciplines. To understand, then, why such a fundamental concept as proof is still too often studied within and hardly across separate scholarly disciplines we need to return to the very moment when different forms of proof were articulated for different spheres of life and thought. But instead of making the mute point that disciplines develop exclusive forms of proving, our conference seeks to understand the processes by which the disiplinization of proof could ultimately come about: for instance, to what extent did the articulation and definition of proof contribute to the development of disciplinary boundaries, and vice versa? Did its articulation in one discipline influence the development in others? Did certain traditions of proving influence this process in disproportionate ways? Did the early modern period develop a hierarchy of proof?
Attendance is free, but if you want to join, please register via email (toelle@gmail.com) before 25 June 2019. Lunch and refreshments are provided during the day, but dinner comes at an extra cost (about €60), should you chose to join us for dinner.
A scheme of continents-usually consisting of the entities 'Africa', 'America', 'Asia', 'Europe' and sometimes the polar regions-is often a part of descriptions about what the world looks like. The continents are often treated as existing outside of history. However, like other concepts, the meaning and significance of the continents have changed drastically over time and between contexts. This fact is a matter of importance for historians, but equally so for a wider public using geographical categories to understand the world today. Concepts such as the continents may describe what the world looks like, yet they can create both boundaries and affiliations far beyond land and sea.
The Early Modern Seminar at Stockholm University arranges a workshop on 10th-11th June 2020, bringing together historians working on ideas and practices related to health in early modern society. The aim with the workshop is to create a forum for a cross- disciplinary and creative discussion on the history of health and society in early modern Europe.
4-5 July 2019
Warburg Haus, Hamburg
In a time of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news’ we may long for an earlier, purportedly simpler world in which facts were simply facts. But were facts ever that simple? How did past generations separate fact from fiction; truth from falsehood; and proof from hearsay? Tradition has it that written proof once ruled supreme, whether it concerned early modern scholarship or litigation, the spiritual world of demons and the saints or the worldly realm of land rights and taxation. As historians in different fields have since realised, proof was an omnipresent, but nevertheless contested practice that bred fierce conflicts about degrees of trust, the nature of truth, the boundaries between scholarly disciplines, and the purview of official institutions.
The historiography on proof is varied, and scholars work in parallel traditions; historians of science are inspired by Bruno Latour; historians of religion look at wonders and miracles; historians of scholarship discuss authenticity and forgery; cultural historians are fascinated by the witness. Proof, in short, has enjoyed much critical press within today’s scholarly disciplines. Rarely, however, have scholars integrated these individual observations to probe the shared European legacy of proof. This conference seeks to provide an international forum for an interdisciplinary exchange about the concept of proof in its different early modern guises. It invites scholars – from political to religious history, from law to the history of art and science – to think about the common intellectual problems that once underlay practices of proving in the early modern period.
With its focus on the period from roughly 1400 to 1800 it hones in on what we posit was a crucial phase in the history of proof. The early modern period is traditionally affiliated with the construction of precisely the disciplinary boundaries that continue to separate different strands of contemporary research on proving. Proof itself underwent a similar transformation: different ways of proving became specific to separate disciplines. To understand, then, why such a fundamental concept as proof is still too often studied within and hardly across separate scholarly disciplines we need to return to the very moment when different forms of proof were articulated for different spheres of life and thought. But instead of making the mute point that disciplines develop exclusive forms of proving, our conference seeks to understand the processes by which the disiplinization of proof could ultimately come about: for instance, to what extent did the articulation and definition of proof contribute to the development of disciplinary boundaries, and vice versa? Did its articulation in one discipline influence the development in others? Did certain traditions of proving influence this process in disproportionate ways? Did the early modern period develop a hierarchy of proof?
Attendance is free, but if you want to join, please register via email (toelle@gmail.com) before 25 June 2019. Lunch and refreshments are provided during the day, but dinner comes at an extra cost (about €60), should you chose to join us for dinner.