Queen Maria Carolina of Naples-Sicily serves as a prism, or more precisely as an intersection of overlapping crossovers that enables us to contextualise broadly defined social, economic, and political developments of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This crossover should be analysed both vertically – through social hierarchies – as well as horizontally across geographic regions throughout Europe in this period.
Organized by: Ellinor Forster, Jonathan Singerton, Department of History and European Ethnology, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck (Austria)
08.09.2022 – 09.09.2022
The Habsburg queen of Naples-Sicily, Maria Carolina (1752–1814), navigated a life marred by revolutionary social upheaval, geopolitical restructuring, dynastic competition, and concurrent personal tragedies and triumphs. As a foreign consort to the Bourbon monarch of Naples-Sicily, she encountered xenophobic hostility and countless challenges to her influence at court. As a reform-minded individual, she helped to enact wide-ranging alterations to society and state in southern Italian world. As a thrice-exiled figurehead, she experienced first-hand the harsh difficulties of political instability and contested legitimacy. And, as a queen she employed her position as a power to shape the fortunes and paths of dynasties across Europe. More than a mere “arch rival” to Napoleon Bonaparte, Maria Carolina represents the myriad experiences of a female ruler during a period of dynamism and irrevocable change.
We see Queen Maria Carolina of Naples-Sicily as a prism, or more precisely as an intersection of overlapping crossovers that enables us to contextualise broadly defined social, economic, and political developments of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This crossover should be analysed both vertically – through social hierarchies – as well as horizontally across geographic regions throughout Europe in this period. In this context, Maria Carolina of Naples-Sicily serves as a primary starting point and as a model for wider considerations of rulership, gender, societal change, familial status, and political participation as well as geopolitical shifts and dynastic integration and competition.
Schedule:
Thursday, 8th September 2022
10.00h
Welcome and Introduction
Ellinor Forster (Innsbruck), Jonathan Singerton (Innsbruck)
10.30h
Panel I: Gender Politics
Chair: Isabella Brandstätter (Innsbruck)
Gabriel Guarino (Ulster): The Politics of Slander: Diplomatic Intrigue and Marital Strain in the Court of Maria Carolina and Ferdinand IV
Jonathan Singerton (Innsbruck): The Hunter and the Hunted: Gender Dynamics in the Reign of Ferdinand IV and Maria
Carolina of Naples-Sicily
Joachim Bürgschwentner (Innsbruck): Abbess and Representative: Maria Elisabeth between Attributions and Agency in Innsbruck 1781–1806
14.30h
The Online-Edition of Maria Carolina’s Correspondence – An Approach to Digital Humanities
Chair: Florian Ambach (Innsbruck)
Jonathan Singerton (Innsbruck), Ellinor Forster (Innsbruck), Anne-Sophie Dénoue (Innsbruck), Giovanni Merola (Innsbruck), Joseph Wang (Innsbruck), Birgit Raitmayr (Innsbruck)
Commentaries: Elisabeth Lobenwein (Klagenfurt), Klaas Van Gelder (Brussels)
Friday, 9th September 2022
09.00h
Panel II: Visual Representations
Chair: Klaas Van Gelder (Brussels)
Çiğdem Özel (Vienna): Mourning for Marie Antoinette. A miniature portrait series of Maria Carolina and her family by Eduard Ströhling (1766–1828)
Allison Goudie (London): A Relic of the Ancien Régime? Maria Carolina’s Lost Death Mask
10.45h
Panel III: Changing Europe
Chair: Elisabeth Lobenwein (Klagenfurt)
Jordan Bertuccelli (Ulster): Who Rules Whom? Britain’s Relationship with Maria Carolina, 1768–1800
Ellinor Forster (Innsbruck): Changing Social Representations of Political Order – modelled by the French-Napoleonic Wars
Thomas Kuster (Innsbruck): Visiting Naples with Emperor Francis I of Austria in 1819: an Imperial Guided Tour
12.15h
Concluding remarks
14.30h
Tour of the Innsbruck Hofburg and trail along Maria Carolina’s footsteps in Innsbruck
Ellinor Forster
E-Mail: ellinor.forster@uibk.ac.at