Dr Ball studied German and English Language and Literature at the Philipps University of Marburg and at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Her PhD dealt with the literary mediator and journalist Johann Christoph Gottsched (Moralische Küsse. Göttingen: Wallstein 2000). After her PhD, she became senior researcher in the project Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, at the Saxon Acadamy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. Working with the letters of the members of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, she developed an interest in the communication models of early modern societies and academies, with a special emphasis on female organizations such as the Tugendliche Gesellschaft (founded in 1619). Her interest in societal networks comprises the use of different media and institutional contexts in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe: letters, books, journals and libraries concerning male and female society members likewise.

In the framework of the Freigeist project, Dr Ball currently works on the project “Virtue and Sociability. Early Modern Moral Culture in the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (1617-1680) and the Tugendliche Gesellschaft (1619-1652).” Her project concentrates on the language academies and literary societies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as remarkable examples for how ideas about virtuous conduct and the love of learning were translated and transformed into new forms of social and political organization. She is especially interested in understanding how is the notion of virtue was woven into the doctrinal and ideological fabrics of these societies, how they connected language, sociability, and virtue, and to which extent they helped to develop ‘gendered’ versions of male and female virtue.

Recent Publications

‚Tugend schwebt oben‘. Das Gesellschaftsbuch der Fürstin Sophia von Anhalt-Köthen (Die Nährende). In: Frauen – Bücher – Höfe. Wissen und Sammeln vor 1800. Women – Books – Courts. Knowledge and Collecting before 1800. Essays in honor of Jill Bepler. Hg. Volker Bauer, Elizabeth Harding, Gerhild Scholz Williams u. Mara R. Wade. Wiesbaden 2018 (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 151), S.383–395.

Die Arbeitsbibliothek der kulturellen Übersetzerin Luise Gottsched. Englische Literatur im Catalogue de la bibliothèque choisie de feue Madame Gottsched, née Kulmus.In: féminIinΙvisible. Women authors of the Enlightenment. Übersetzen, schreiben, vermitteln. Angela Sanmann, Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère & Valérie Cossy (éds.). Centre de Traduction Littéraire de Lausanne 2018, S. 301–327.

with Klaus Conermann, Andreas Herz and Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer: Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (1617–1680). Hundert Jahre nach der Reformation. Forschungen der Arbeitsstelle der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften an der Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 150), Wiesbaden 2017.

For a complete list of publications, see here.