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12th Annual PKMS Graduate Student Conference CFP
Pre-Modernisms: Friday, October 28th, The Graduate Center, CUNY
As the famous sayings go, everything old is new again, and history repeats itself. How many times have we heard someone described as a Renaissance man or woman, or something that seems old-fashioned called “medieval?” Scholars of these periods often find, of course, that such evaluations are, at best, inaccurate. However, trans-temporal approaches to study and even historical anachronisms can produce fruitful new inquiries into our fields, from contemporary children’s literature that engages in medievalisms to produce new fantasy worlds to queer and transgender studies that attempt to see the past from non-normative perspectives. This conference aims to bring together a wide variety of scholars of different disciplines and especially different time periods to pair what we know about the classical, medieval, and early modern periods with what later times perceive about these periods and how they manipulate the past for present agendas. As such, this conference is aimed not only at pre-modern scholars, but also at scholars of later and contemporary periods whose work engages in envisioning the past.
Please submit a 300-word abstract no later than September 15 at 5 PM.
E-mail: medieval.study@gmail.com
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Arthurian Tradition
Early Book Collections
Architectural Styles
Medieval TV and Film
Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Historical Fiction
J.R.R. Tolkien
Historically Based Political Rhetoric
History of Marginal Perspectives
Law and the Legal Tradition
Renaissance Humanism
Philosophical Traditions
Renaissance Faires and Period Dress
Medieval and Early Modern Adaptations of Classical Texts
Premodern Recipes and Remedies
Contemporary Classroom Approaches
Linguistic Developments
Premodern Historiography (including history plays)
“Sanctity and Sinfulness: Hagiographical Studies in Memory of Thomas Head” – 2016 Conference Schedule
We are pleased to announce the schedule for the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study’s upcoming annual graduate student conference, “Sanctity and Sinfulness: Hagiographical Studies in Memory of Thomas Head.” The conference will be held on Friday, February 26 from 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in Room 9204 of the CUNY Graduate Center.
10:30 Registration
11:00 Panel 1: Embodiment and Evidence in the Lives of Holy Women
- Alexander Baldassano, CUNY Graduate Center – The Life of Saint Eugenia: Beyond Gender in the Legenda Aurea
- Alicia Cannizzo, CUNY Graduate Center – The Case of Margherita of Città di Castello and the Burden of Proof for Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages
12:00 Lunch Break
1:00 Roundtable: Hagiography and the Work of Thomas Head: The Legends and the Legacy
- Marlene Hennessy, CUNY Hunter
- Paul Freedman, Yale University
- Cynthia Hahn, CUNY Graduate Center & Hunter
2:30 Exploring the Kinship of the Sacred and the Secular
- Stephanie Petinos, CUNY Graduate Center – Relicized bodies in Le Roman de la Manekine
- Alyssa Coltrain, Rutgers University – “Now art thus Goddus child”: Appropriating Hagiography and Rewriting Family in Sir Gowther
- David A. Heayn, CUNY Graduate Center – Byzantine Monasticism in Two Anatolian Provinces, ca. 500-700
4:15 Reception, room 5105
Paleography and Manuscript Studies Workshop
The Pearl Kibre Medieval Study
“Persecution, Punishment and Purgatory in the Long Middle Ages” – Grad Student Conference, Nov. 7, 2014
10th Annual Graduate Student Conference in Medieval Studies
Persecution, Punishment and Purgatory in the Long Middle Ages
November 7, 2014
Graduate Center – CUNY
Room 9205
9:30 — Registration
10:00 — Panel one
Esther Bernstein “Enmity and Amity: The Ambivalent Nature of Medieval Jewish-Christian Religious Borrowings”
David Heayn “Urban Violence: Riot Culture and Dynamics in Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean Cities”
Nicolas Bergamo “The Constantine V persecution: ‘Building a new imperial elite'”
Moderator: Clare Wilson
11:30 — Panel two
Sian Webb “Untitled”
Rachel Wagner “Acting Like Jesus: St. Margaret of Ypres’s Holy Performance”
Moderator: Jennifer Alberghini
12:30 — Lunch break
1:30 — Roundtable
Jay Gates
Christopher Leydon
Lauren Mancia
Haruko Momma
Moderator: David Greetham
3:30 — Panel three
Deidre Riley “Purgatories of the Mind: Punishment and Self-Knowledge in Robert of Cisyle”
Rebecca Fullan “Untitled”
Kristen Streahle “E bem cavalca a guiza de barone: Elena the Executioner”
Moderator: Chad Turner
This event is co-sponsored by the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study, the Doctoral Students’ Council, the Medieval Studies Certificate Program, the Henri Peyre French Institute, the French Department, the English Department, the Comparative Literature Department, and the Music Department.
“Erecting Sex: Hermaphrodites and the Making of Surgery in Medieval Europe” – lecture by Leah DeVun, Friday, Oct. 3
Please join us for a lecture by Leah DeVun on Friday, October 3, 2014 at 6:00 PM in Room 5409 of the Graduate Center, CUNY. Reception to follow!
Dr. DeVun is an Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender History at Rutgers University.
“Erecting Sex: Hermaphrodites and the Making of Surgery in Medieval Europe”
In this paper, DeVun focuses on ‘hermaphrodites’ and the emerging profession of surgery in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. During this period, surgeons made novel claims about their authority to regulate sexual difference by surgically ‘correcting’ errant sexual anatomies. Their theories about sex, she argues, drew upon both ancient roots and contemporary conflicts to conceptualize sexual difference in ways that influenced Western Europe for centuries after. She argues that a close examination of medieval surgical texts complicates orthodox narratives in the broader history of sex and sexuality: medieval theorists approached sex in sophisticated and varied manners that belie any simple opposition of modern and premodern paradigms. In addition, because surgical treatments of hermaphrodites in the Middle Ages prefigure in many ways the treatment of atypical sex (a condition now called, controversially, intersex or Disorders of Sex Development) in the modern Western world, she suggests that the writings of medieval surgeons have the potential to provide new perspectives on our current debates about surgery and sexual difference.
This event is co-sponsored by the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study and the Doctoral Students’ Council.