Spilling the Tea: Gendering News in the Early Modern World

What makes something ‘news-worthy’? When is something gossip, and when is it cold, hard fact? In the early modern period, a rise in the news across Europe resulted in what some have called an ‘information revolution’, with cheap, widely-available printed news and a thriving manuscript news culture leading to the rise of the public sphere. But – in the past as well as today – the ways that news and information are discussed are highly gendered, with men’s communication networks framed as newsworthy and women’s denigrated as gossip, scandal, tattle, and even ‘dirt’. 

This 1-day conference, Aug 25, 2022, at Durham University UK seeks to reconcile and acknowledge the ways that information is gendered, inviting a fresh consideration of expertise, communication, and publicity, putting women’s contributions, networks, and methods at the centre of news cultures rather than the periphery. We invite scholars and journalists to join us as we consider gender and the rise of the information age. Proposals for 20-minute (presentation) or 10-minute (roundtable) contributions on gender and the news, broadly framed, throughout the early modern (1450-1800) world. This might include, but is not limited to, topics such as:

• Women producers of the news, including women writers, publishers, and creators
• Gendering news as ‘gossip’, ‘tittle-tattle’, or ‘tea’
• Women readers and consumers of the news, and the gendering of readerships
• Letter-writing and epistolary cultures in literature, art, and drama
• Handwriting the news
• Different types of news, including local, social and familial news
• ‘Reporting’ as a gendered action and activity
• Communication methods, information culture and the spread of news both nationally and internationally 
• The history of journalism and women’s roles in the field
• Masculinity, self-control, self-presentation, and public engagement
• Personal networks, alliances, and the sociality of information
• Scandal, rumour, and illicit news-sharing

We encourage abstracts from PhD students and early career scholars and have secured funding to help them attend.

Please send abstracts (of no more than 200 words) and a short biographical note (of no more than 100 words) to the organisers: hannah.jeans@york.ac.uk; a.w.barber@durham.ac.uk; amanda.herbert@durham.ac.uk by 20th June 2022.

Contact Info: 

Amanda E. Herbert
Dept of History
Durham University
amanda.herbert@durham.ac.uk