Ran Huo
College:
Clare College
Research:
My doctoral research traces the intellectual development of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza (1566-1614) by exploring her life and works within the framework of the concept of intellectuality. Rejecting the conventional paths for early modern women of either marriage or convent life, she decided to devote herself to the cause of the faith in an unconventional way and travelled from Catholic Spain to Protestant England where she undertook missionary work and founded her own independent female community.
Moving away from the method of biographism which has been predominant in existing scholarship, my study will, on the one hand, explore the concept of intellectuality with the example of Carvajal y Mendoza and, on the other, shed new light on her life and oeuvre from the unprecedented perspective of the theory of intellectuality. Based on the idea that knowledge, autonomisation, isolation, and political involvement represent four consecutive steps in the development process of intellectuality, my thesis argues that each of the genres through which Carvajal expressed herself – autobiographical, poetic, and epistolary – not only marks various chapters of her life, but also and more importantly the different stages of her intellectual evolvement.
Anthony Close Scholarship
In 2015, I was awarded this scholarship. The Anthony Close Scholarship, granted by Clare College, has been funded in honour of the great Cervantes scholar Anthony Close. For further information, please see: http://www.clare.cam.ac.uk/The-Close-Studentship/
