CFP Speaking Internationally: Women’s Literary Culture and the Canon in the Global Middle Ages

Paper proposals are invited for this international conference to be held at Bangor University, North Wales, 26-28 June, 2019. ‘This conference is the latest event in association with the International Research Network, Women’s Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon  (https://www.surrey.ac.uk/womens-literary-culture-medieval-canon).

Keynote Speakers:

Jonathan Hsy, The George Washington University
Shazia Jagot, The University of Surrey
Elaine Treharne, Stanford University

Our last conference, held at Bergen in 2017, encouraged lively conversations that focused predominantly on European texts and authors. At Bangor we aim to extend this dialogue by speaking internationally, and examining how our understanding of medieval European women writers and the canon might be enhanced by taking a more global perspective. What new light is shed by adopting a global perspective on medieval women’s literary modes and practices? What evidence exists for social and intellectual connectivity between European women’s textual culture and that of women living in the lands that border the Mediterranean and beyond? How do medieval women represent the global in their works and to what purposes?

The conference will be full of conversation: a series of ‘In conversation with’ network members, poster presentations, panel discussions, and twenty-minute papers. We welcome individual and collaborative papers that speak internationally on topics that might include the following:

  • Women as authors
  • Women as patrons
  • Book ownership and use in the household
  • Genre and gender
  • Literary reception
  • Women as translators
  • Women readers
  • Book ownership in women’s religious communities
  • Manuscript production
  • Literary influence
  • Textual transmission
  • Collaboration
  • Women, Literature and Location: place, travel, pilgrimage
  • Women, Literature and Life-course
  • Literature and Trade

Paper abstracts of no more than 250 words, plus a short biography, should be sent to Dr Sue Niebrzydowski at s.niebrzydowski@bangor.ac.uk and Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy at e.mcavoy@swansea.ac.uk no later than 31 October 2018. Successful speakers will be notified shortly thereafter, and online registration will open in late November 2018.