Lecture Maria Agren

Abstract: Maria Agren’s  talk will be situated at the intersection of labor history and digital humanities. Its point of departure is the Uppsala-based Gender and Work project (GaW) and the type of data about work the project collects with the help of the verb-oriented method. This method allows us to catch information on the concrete practices of work that early modern people engaged in, as described in e.g. court records. Examples of such practices are ‘mow grass’, ‘repair shoes’, ‘paint portrait’, ‘collect tax money’. With the help of this method we have been able to characterize the repertoires of work practices people in early modern Sweden had (Ågren, ed., Making a Living, Making a Difference, OUP 2017)

However, other types of verb-phrases also get stuck in our ‘net,’ namely phrases that describe not what the work consisted in but for whom and under what conditions work took place. These are phrases such as ‘to serve’, ‘to help’ and ‘to have someone do something’. We cannot easily group these phrases into larger categories – such as agricultural work, care work, etc. – because they are too vague. While these phrases are less common, they are nevertheless interesting as they (a) make women’s work visible and (b) are descriptions of labor relations and labor identities.

In her presentation, she will focus on vaguely described work and what this type of data can tell us about early modern labor relations. She will also link these observations to the possibilities offered by the digital humanities, especially collaborations with computer linguistics.

Bio: Maria Ågren is a Swedish historian who specializes in early modern and nineteenth-century history. Her scholarly production is extensive, in both Swedish and English, and has been published by e.g., UNC Press, Manchester University Press and Oxford University Press. She is the leader of the large Gender and Work project at Uppsala University, within which the GaW database has been developed as an example of Digital Humanities. She has supervised 18Ph.D. students to completion of their doctorates. She has broad academic experience, e.g. as chair of one of Uppsala University’s recruitment panels (Faculty of Arts), as chair of one of the panels at the Swedish Research Council and as Sweden’s representative in the European Science Foundation’s Standing Committee for the Humanities

IISH Seminar: This lecture is part of the monthly IISH Seminar series. In principle, seminars take place every first Tuesday of the month. The seminar is open to the public online only. For the Zoom link and paperplease contact  jacqueline.rutte@bb.huc.knaw.nl.