In the spring of 1732, the twenty-one-year-old Laura Bassi was the first woman in Europe to be appointed professor in Bologna. As an important physicist, she taught at the Faculty of Philosophy thereafter. On the occasion of this inauguration, a medal was minted in her honour, the motif of which was to become a symbol of the dawn of a feminist Enlightenment throughout Europe. The obverse of this medal shows a bust of Laura Bassi with laurel wreath and gown; the reverse shows the goddess Minerva with shield and lamp and, on the right, the personification of philosophy with laurel wreath and book in her hands. Here, Minerva stands for a state community that is as prudent as it is successful in looking after the common good and for this reason turns to scholarship to hand it the light that only a science that sees itself in the service of society can consider.
In the spirit of this allegory, the research project will explore concepts and controversies concerning a feminist Enlightenment in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe.