Recent Talk: Opening Remarks on "Early Modern Mansplaining" (Sept 2025)

A few weeks ago, our director, Florence Forte, was invited to give opening remarks at an international two-day conference entitled "Early Modern Mansplaining: Male-Authored Histories of Women" hosted by the Medici Archive Project in Florence.

Drawing on her experience as a researcher and educator over the past 10 years, Florence's opening talk put the term "Mansplaining" into historical perspective, raising broader questions about the historiography of women from Antiquity to the Renaissance - questions that continue to shape Forte Academy's approach to research and course design.

For example:

• When does 'explaining' become 'mansplaining'?

• Are 'mansplaining' and 'womansplaining' two sides of the same coin?

• Do modern terms like these clarify, or distort, our understanding of the past?

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