Matilda Amundsen Bergström
Researcher
Department of Literature, History of Ideas, andAbout Matilda Amundsen Bergström
I am a researcher in comparative literature. In my current project "A Happy Life. Women's Moral Philosophy in 17th- and 18th-Century Scandinavia", financed by Riksbankens jubileumsfond, I explore how Scandinavian women intellectuals debated and discussed happiness and the meaning of a good life. I read philosophical tracts, poems, hymns, journals and novels to understand women's moral and ethical thought of the period. I am also part of the project "Making Enlightenment Happen. Gothenburg Women in 18th-Century Swedish Public Life", financed by the Swedish research council. In that project, we study female authors, printers, editors, journalists, actors, translators and readers in late 18th-century Gothenburg.
I defended my thesis As a Sappho. Three Early Modern Authors and their Strategies of Publication, Self-Presentation and Rhetoric at the University of Gothenburg in 2019. My thesis is focused on the poets Louise Labé, Katherine Philips and Hedvig Carlotta Nordenflycht, and I study how they all presented themselves and were presented as heiresses of Sappho. My primary research interest is early modern women poets and philosophers, and I am especially interested in ethics, rhetoric and issues of authority.
I am the coordinator for the early modern seminar at the University of Gothenburg, and one of the founders of Philosophy in Other Words. Research Network on Early Modern Women and Philosophy (POW).