ESOGEN Symposium – Esotericism, Gender, and Sexuality

This interdisciplinary, one-day symposium – open to all, and geared especially towards MA and PhD students from all disciplines – approaches the nexus of Western esotericism, gender, and sexuality. From antiquity until the present, individuals have deployed esoteric ideas to explicate, challenge, or overhaul traditional binaries of sex and gender; as such, the history of Western esotericism overlaps with that of feminism, eugenics, sexology, free love, celibacy, gay and lesbian liberation, polyamory, gender non-conformity, and other such currents.  

The symposium will feature a keynote lecture by Christine Ferguson, Professor in English Literature at the University of Stirling, titled: “Rape, Reincarnation, and Cosmic Justice in the Woman’s Occult Romance”.  

The symposium also marks the launch of the Esotericism, Gender, and Sexuality Network (ESOGEN), founded by Dr. Manon Hedenborg White and Professor Christine Ferguson in 2019 as a a thematic network of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE). The event is hosted in collaboration with the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (University of Amsterdam), and sponsored by ESSWE.