From Darwin to Weil: Women as Transmitters of Ideas

Cultural transmitters, or mediators, play an important role in the transmission and reception of literature. What is a cultural transmitter? What role do women play in the field of cultural transfer and transmission and how active were women in developing the profession of cultural transmitter?In this volume, the first in the series Studies on Cultural Transfer and Transmission (CTaT), a select group of scholars from various disciplines from Belgium, the Netherlands and Scandinavia discuss the concept of 'cultural transmitter' from a gender perspective. The importance of the ideologies women cultural transmitters themselves entertained concerning the reception of literature is also investigated.The essays demonstrate that religious, political and economic structures played guiding roles in the lives of many women cultural transmitters. Therefore, they dealt with feminism and sociopolitical issues, sexual politics, the practice of translation (to earn money), the role of women in society and how women were raised, the position of women writers and critics and religion. Examples of other fields in which women cultural transmitters were involved include science and philosophy. Furthermore, the discusssion of the concept of 'cultural transmitter' from a gender perspective reveals that religion, nation, womanhood and entrepreneurship are important aspects to be incorporated into any definition of a cultural transmitter.While the focus is on Scandinavia and the Dutch-speaking region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the positions and activities of the cultural transmitters discussed can be 'translated' into other language areas and 'transferred' to other periods.