Description
This annual graduate student conference, organized and run by advanced doctoral students, has become a premier opportunity for emerging scholars to present papers, participate in discussions, and develop collaborations across all fields of medieval, Renaissance, and early modern studies. Participants from a wide variety of disciplines find a supportive and collegial forum for their work, meet future colleagues from other institutions and disciplines, and become familiar with the Newberry and its resources.
The 2024 conference program will include virtual and in-person sessions relating to career diversity, professionalization, and rare book presentations in addition to the workshops and conference panels.
Click here to see the conference schedule and a complete list of abstracts and participant bios.
Organizers
Maria Capecchi, University of Iowa
Nawel Cotez, University of Pittsburgh
Hannah Chambers, Emory University
Hannah Wiepke, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Caroline Fish, Purdue University
Jamie Keener, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Summer Lizer, Claremont Graduate University
Hillary Loomis, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville
Alvise Stefani, Indiana University Bloomington
Michael Ray Taylor, The University of Aberdeen
Conference Schedule
Thursday, February 1
11am - Registration starts (Ruggles Hall)
12-1:30pm - Panels 1 and 2
Panel 1: Material Meaning-Making (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Hillary Loomis
Presenters:
Kit Frye (Oklahoma State University), "Divine Vision: The Virgin of Almudena in Cusco, Peru"
Tanya Pattison (Florida State University), "Mysticism in Candlelight: The Performative Nature of Mounted Porcelain"
Panel 2: Making Musical Sense (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Alvise Stefani
Presenters:
Stanislas Germain-Thérien (McGill University), "The Challenge of Notating an Oral Tradition: Vincenzo Capirola and the Art of the Lute Intabulation"
Sarah Sabol (Indiana University Bloomington), "Taking Up the Cross: Difficulty, Effort, and Contemplation in Three Cruciform Riddles"
Nevena Stanic Kovacevic (Northwestern University), "Motherly Affects as Women's Agency in 17th-Century Venice: Barbara Strozzi's 'Mater Anna'"
1:30-2:45pm - Interactive Book Session (ITW Seminar Room)
2:45-3:00 - Break/informal mingle (Ruggles Hall)
3:00-4:00pm - Meet a Newberrian (Rettinger Hall)
Sarah Boyd Alvarez (Director of Exhibitions, Newberry Library)
4:00-4:30 - Break/informal mingle (Ruggles Hall)
4:30-5:30pm - Keynote Conversation (Ruggles Hall)
Speakers:
Rebecca L. Fall (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Aileen A. Feng (University of Arizona/Newberry Library)
5:30-7:00pm - Opening Reception (Ruggles Hall)
Friday, February 2
9:00-9:30am - Coffee and light breakfast (Ruggles Hall)
9:30-11:00am - Panels 3 and 4
Panel 3: Ethnoreligious Myth and Mythmaking (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Michael Ray Taylor
Hüseyin Göcen (UC Davis), "Plagues, Witches, and Vampires: Vampire-Related Questions in Provincial Jurisconsults’ Fatwa Collections in Early Modern Ottoman Odessa (Early Seventeenth-Century)"
Alisa Karam (Claremont Graduate University), "The Monasterboice High Cross: How the Phoenicians Helped St. Patrick Christianize the Pagan Druids"
Giacomo Berchi (Yale University), "Portuguese Mythmaking Practices and the African Other: Zurara, Camões, and the Capes"
Panel 4: Self-Fashioning Women (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Hannah Chambers
Lauren Kilbane (University of Aberdeen): "Performing Widowhood Mourning in 17th-century Drama"
Hye Hyon (Illinois State University), "Self-Objectification and Female Empowerment in Aphra Behn’s The Rover"
Cristino Pacquing (Yale University), "Teresa of Ávila: A Patient's Tale"
11-11:30am - Break
11:30-1pm - Panels 5, 6, and Virtual Panel
Panel 5: Corporeal Practices (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Hannah Wiepke
Caleb Allen (University of Minnesota), "Pursuing Pleasure, Pursuing Knowledge: Erotic Imagery in Estienne’s 'De Dissectione'"
Kate Buis (University of Minnesota), “Paper Stages: Exploring Early Modern Corporeal Imaginaries through the Fugitive Sheets and Mobile Performance”
Rebekkah Hart (Case Western Reserve University), "The Lithic and the Liquid in the Virgin’s Womb"
Panel 6: Book Use (Rettinger Hall)
CHAIR: Nawel Cotez
Jessie Brown (University of Arkansas), "Blood, Death, and Sacrifice in Codex Borgia"
Sam Holguin (Oklahoma State University), "The Convent, The Home, and The Sacred: Understanding Devotion and Space Using a Late Medieval Hymnal"
Vera Pieri (Oklahoma State University), "The Use-Life of Thirteenth-Century Southern German Psalter"
Virtual Panel: Forms of Rebellion (ITW Seminar Room)
Chair: Caroline Fish
Anna Davis (Western Michigan University), "'Capta Est:' Examining Female Criminal Agency in Early Fourteenth-Century Norfolk"
Kristi Flake (University of Warwick), "An Ambiguous Authority: The Book of Homilies and the Development of the Church of England, 1688–1720"
Clare Frances Kemmerer (John Hopkins University), "Self and Other, Black and White, Foreign and Familiar: Race-Making and Self-Fashioning in the Leipzig Kaminbehang"
1-2pm - Lunch - Ruggles Hall
2-3pm - Meet a Newberrian (Rettinger Hall)
Nora Epstein (Instruction and Outreach Librarian, Newberry Library)
3:00-3:30pm - Break
3:30-5:00pm - Panels 7 and 8
Panel 7: Past Informs the Present (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Jamie Keener
Iraboty Kazi (University of Western), "Refashioning Renaissance Pastoral Landscape in Brokeback Mountain"
Rose Poku (University of Pennsylvania), "From Mockery to Recovery: An Exploration of 'Habla de Negros' Through the Ages"
Chad White (Louisville University), "Nazi Knights & Heinrich Himmler: Rewriting the Medieval Past in WWII Germany"
Panel 8: Criminality (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Caroline Fish
Chela Aufderheide (Northern Illinois University), "Men, Women, and Treason: A Gender-Focused Rereading of Pamphlet Representations of the Concinis"
Miranda Beaujon (Kent State University), "Unraveling the Old Bailey: Theft Cases, Fashion Trends, and Women’s Consumerism in Eighteenth-Century London"
Austin Raetz (Cornell University), "The Sodomitical Dangers of the Home: Masters, Manservants, and Sexual Violence"
Saturday, Feb 3
9:45-10:15am - Coffee and light breakfast (Ruggles Hall)
10:15-11:45am - Panels 9 and 10
Panel 9: Views of Empire (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Michael Ray Taylor
John Ferenczy (University of Aberdeen), “Modern Thought in the Crusades: Contextualizing the 1229 Treaty of Jaffa and the Sixth Crusade”
Liz Villamizar (University of Arkansas), "Stradanus' Colonial Discourse in 17th-century Spanish Drama"
Sharon Zhang (University of Pittsburgh), "Mapping the Land of Cathay: Exploratory Agenda of the Medieval Papacy to China under Mongol Rule"
Panel 10: Appetites of the Flesh (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Hannah Chambers
August Rickard (St. Louis University), "Showers of Their Blood to Quench Our Revenge: Amazonian Prayer and the Early Modern Stage"
Ceren Sevin (Florida State University), "'A Little Oil and Root': Early Modern Vegetarian Discourse in Timon of Athens"
12-1:30pm - Panels 11 and 12
Panel 11: Forced Labor and the Precarity of Freedom (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Summer Lizer
Horus Tan (University of Texas-Austin), "Where There Was No Second Serfdom in Manchuria?"
Tyayia Young (Miami University), "The Slave Narrative: How Does Analysis of These Pieces Evolve When Switching between a Historical Lens and a Creative Lens?"
Panel 12: Ideas that Travel (Rettinger)
Chair: Maria Capecchi
Tyler Jones (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), "'Mundus In Maligno Positus Est'": De re militari as a Response to the Murder of Thomas Becket"
Piper Milton (University of California-Santa Cruz), "Divine Weather: Climate and Evangelization in Colonial Sonora"
PJ Zaborowski (University of Iowa), "From Mandeville to Milton: Mapping Satan’s ‘Heroic’ Journey in Paradise Lost"