Stevin Seminar: ‘Sister Networks’: Pythagorean and Confucian Advice on How to Survive Patriarchy

The Stevin Centre for History of Science and Humanities cordially invite you to the Stevin Seminar at 11 October 2024.

Speaker
Dorota Dutsch, Professor of Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Abstract
As philosophical movements, Pythagoreanism and Confucianism had much in common. Their founders, Pythagoras of Samos and Kongzi, were active in the Axial period. They taught through conversation, and their ideas spread and evolved thanks to their disciples. Centered on their male founding figures, both traditions prioritized the male point of view. Both imagined ideal communities and shaped historical ones that included women—but restricted their options. How could women intellectuals thrive in such knowledge communities? This paper retrieves strategies inscribed in Pythagorean treatises and letters (1st cent. BCE-1st cent. CE) and Confucian nüshishu treatises (from the 2nd cent. CE and later).

Program
Welcome by Marije Martijn
Lecture by Dorota Dutsch
Response by Mieke de Vos (historian and translater)
Discussion
Drinks afterwards

Date and place
11 October, 15:00, Main Building HG 4a33

Please register via this link