University of Gothenburg
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Matilda Amundsen Bergström

Researcher

Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion
Mail
matilda.amundsen.bergstrom@lir.gu.se
Visiting address
Renströmsgatan 6
41255 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 200
40530 Göteborg

About 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 the early modern, Scandinavian intellectuals Birgitte Thott, Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht, Agneta Horn, Charlotta Dorothea Biehl, Dorothe Engelbretsdatter, Charlotta Frölich, Françoise Marguerite Janiçon and Charlotte Schimmelmann philosophized about happiness and the meaning of a good life. 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 explore how female authors, printers, editors, journalists, actors, translators and readers contributed to "making enligthenment happen" in late 18th-century Gothenburg. Lastly, I am completing a monograph about Swedish 18th-century poet Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht's philosophical thought.

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.