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 classical, 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 2026 conference program will include sessions relating to career diversity, professionalization, and rare book presentations in addition to the workshops and conference panels.
Organizers
Caleb Allen, University of Minnesota
Alexandra Butterfield, Emory University
Jingyi Dai, Northwestern University
Zixiao Huang, University of Pittsburgh
Maureen McCord, University of Chicago
Camila Micán Rondón, University of Kansas
Lance Pederson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
August Rickard, Saint Louis University
Julia Salkind, Marquette University
Maneesha Sarda, Claremont Graduate University
Schedule
Thursday, January 29
1:30-2:30 pm – Registration (Ruggles Hall)
2:30-4:00 pm – Session 1
Panel 1: Defying Definition: Portrayals of Resistance and Subversion (Rettinger Hall) Chair: Julia Salkind
Allison Boroff (Case Western Reserve University), “The Beast and The Sun: Morality and Apocalypticism in a ‘Madonna of Humility with the Temptation of Eve’ Altarpiece”
Bella Fiorucci (Loyola University Chicago), “‘Sleep hath seized me wholly’: The Agency of Purity in Sleep Scenes of Cymbeline”
Summer Lizer (Claremont Graduate University), “Difference and Deferral in The House of Fame and The Parlement of Foules”
Panel 2: Her Majesty's Triumph (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Zixiao Huang
Keri Blair (Purdue University), “Crowning the Queen Regnant: Ritualistic Equestrianism and the Gendered Performance of Monarchy”
Abigail Hinrichs (University of Minnesota), “Examining a Racialized Anne Boleyn”
Emma Murray (University of Iowa), “Translating Leonor de Meneses: Recreating Seventeenth-Century Protofeminist Spanish Poetics in Twenty-First-Century English”
Panel 3: Some Pain Only She Knows: Women, Bodies, & Trauma (Classroom B-82) Chair: Alexandra Butterfield
Veronica Arntz (Marquette University), “Artwork, Architecture, and Textiles and the Liturgical-Ritual Culture of Nuns: Marienberg bei Helmstedt as Case Study”
Fiona O’Brien (Fordham University), “In Rerum Natura: Was Abortion Felony at Medieval and Early Modern English Common Law?”
Mengze Wei (University of Pennsylvania), “Bodies of Knowledge: The Visual Representations of Placenta in Tokugawa Japan”
4:00 - 4:30 pm – Break
4:30 - 5:30 pm – Keynote Conversation: Archival Research and Materiality in the Digital Age (Ruggles Hall)
Moderator: Lia Markey
Malachi Bandy (Pomona College)
Brian Brege (Syracuse University)
Alcira Dueñas (Ohio State University)
5:30-6:30 pm – Reception (Ruggles Hall)
Friday, January 30
9:00–9:30 am – Coffee and Donuts (Ruggles Hall)
9:30-11:30 am – Session 2
Panel 4: Taming Nature (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Jingyi Dai
Bunny Hayes (University of Louisville), “From Chaos to Caritas: Ovid, Hildegard, and Marder on Creation, Responsibility, and the Ethics of the Cosmos”
Rebecca Kilroy (University of Minnesota), “Into the Bog: Misconceptions of Meaning in Popular Reception of British and Irish Iron Age Bog Bodies”
Laura Lestani (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), “Nature, Ruins, and the Pastoral Vision in Nicoletto da Modena’s Engravings”
Rong Lin (University of Illinois at Chicago), “Root Representation in Pre- and Post-Conquest Central Mexico: Reconsidering Plant Roles in Indigenous Mesoamerica”
Panel 5: Animals, Beasts, and the More Than Human (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Lance Pederson
Cristian Figueroa (University of Colorado, Boulder), “Interpreting Comca’ac Ceramic Figurines as Materialized Non-binary Identities”
Eduardo Gorobets Martins (The University of Texas at Austin), “Nahuas and More-than-humans in Sahagún’s Sermons (Ms. 1415, Ayer Collection)”
Chloe Ponzio (DePaul University), “The Beast Inside: Human-Animal Transformations in Medieval French Literature and Art”
Panel 6: Blinded by the Light: Christianity's Far-Reaching Forms (Classroom B-82)
Chair: Caleb Allen
Quentin Clark (Florida State University), “Depicting a Theology of Light: The Dolphin in Early Byzantine Christian Culture”
Deirdre Klena (Saint Louis University), “Exemplary Encounters: Transference of Sacred Presence in Early Modern Italy and Colonial Latin America”
Laura Rybicki (Northwestern University), “Sanctified Silk: Industry, Nation, and Religion in a Gothic Revival Woven Prayer Book”
11:30 am-12:30 pm - Meet a Newberrian (Rettinger Hall)
Sophia Croll, Assistant Director of Teacher Programs
12:30 - 1:30 pm – Lunch (Ruggles Hall)
1:30-2:30 pm - Collection Presentation (Baskes Boardroom)
2:30-4:00 pm - Session 3
Panel 7: “Fashion Fades, Style is Eternal.”: Clothing’s Identities, Perceptions, and Self-Fashionings (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Julia Salkind
Emily McKenna (The University of Alabama), “‘Y cladd in mightie armes and silver shielde’: An Examination of Armorial Symbolism in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Muiopotmos”
Rachel Salem-Wiseman (University of Pennsylvania), “The Construction of the Monstrous Body: Making and Wearing Ruffs in Early Modern Europe”
Liz Villamizar (University of Arkansas), “Intermedial Dialogues between The Count Lucanor, Charles V and the Fury, and The Emperor’s New Clothes”
Panel 8: Conversion in the Far Lands: Christianity in Its Periphery (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Zixiao Huang
Amy Bernick (Northern Illinois University), “From Pagan Monsters to Christian Men: Language, Gender, and Cultural Transitions in Beowulf”
Celia Cruz-Arce (Texas Tech University), “Seeing, Tasting, Believing: A Performance of Conversion, Sensoriality, and Kinesic Intelligence in Cantigas de Santa María”
Siying Li (Indiana University-Bloomington), “‘Henkama’ in the Acta Pekinensia: Hidden Voices of Manchu Catholics during the Chinese Rites Controversy, 1705–1708”
Panel 9: Read Between the Lines: Knowledge and Book History (Classroom B-82)
Chair: August Rickard
Shannyn Bald (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), “The Domostroi: Discerning the ‘Who’s’ and the ‘Why’s’ of a Sixteenth-Century Muscovite Guidebook”
Darcy Chanin (Princeton University), “‘Vaticinium’ Narrative Between Cultures: Prophecy as Translation in Sefer Ha-Ma’asim”
Giovanni Minicucci (University of Chicago), “Language, Colonial Authority, and Mediation in Antonio Pigafetta’s Relazione del primo viaggio attorno al mondo (1522)”
Saturday, January 31
9:00–9:30 am – Coffee and Donuts (Ruggles Hall)
9:30-11:00 am - Session 4
Panel 10: Meet Her in the Comments: Women Writing in Early Modern Social Networks (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Maneesha Sarda
Rachel Miller (Texas A&M University), “Kateryn Parr’s Network: Women and the English Protestant Reformation, 1543-1553"
Chrystina Ochsankehl (Western Michigan University), “Religious Dissent: Cathar Women in 12th-Century Languedoc and Esclarmonde de Foix”
Arzoo Thakar (University of California, Davis), “Words as 'Voice' in Lettres portugaises and Lettres d'une Péruvienne"
Panel 11: Disrupting Empire: Alternative Readings on Colonial Resistance in New Spain (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Camila Micán Rondón
Juan Rivera (University of Chicago), “Reimagining the History of Music Theory in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Mexico: Juan Antonio Vargas y Guzmán’s Explicación para tocar la guitarra”
Saul Sanchez Gonzales (The University of Texas at Austin), “Use of Religious Archives to Reconstruct Indigenous Political Connections in Sixteenth-Century New Spain: Case Study of San Salvador Quauhyahualolco”
Mariana Sarkis Olson (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Love, Violence, and Community: Amancebamiento and Legal Negotiation in Seventeenth-Century New Spain.”
Panel 12: Labor, Politics, and the State (Classroom B-82)
Chair: Maureen McCord
Zachary Cho (Michigan State University), “Configuring Coercive Labor Regimes in Spanish Florida”
Zach Crutchfield (Cornell University), “Ummayyad and Abbasid Power through Adab”
Emma Whaley (University of Nebraska Lincoln), “Prosthetics and Propaganda: A Larum for London’s Stump as a Warning to England”
11:00-11:30 am – Break
11:30 am-1:30 pm – Session 5
Panel 13: Stuff Matters: Reading the Material Archive (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Lance Pederson
Ja’Licia Gainer (University of Missouri), “The Drake Jewel: Art and Race in the Elizabethan Era, Decoding Messages within Jewelry”
Mia Jackson (Northwestern University), “Bringing an Export Back to Cairo: Khawand Fāṭima’s Royal Patronage of Inlaid Brassware”
Oswin Orellana (University of California, San Diego), “A Badge of Dishonor La Leyenda Negra Forged in Metal”
Panel 14: Weird Science (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Caleb Allen
Sonia Beltz (Loyola University Chicago), “A World of Monsters and Virgins: The Feminization of Illness in Donne’s Bodies-as-Worlds"
Liberty Huther & Rachel Walker (University of Missouri Columbia), “Monsters in the Garden: Words and Images of the Old English Genesis B”
Raigen Sumrall (Florida State University), “Animating Geometry: Lorenz Stoer’s Corpora Regulata et Irregulata and Lines that Link with Ink”
Panel 15: Difference and Diversity in the Premodern World (Classroom B-82)
Chair: Alexandra Butterfield
Chloé Glass (Art Institute of Chicago), “Etching Empire: Stefano della Bella’s Equestrian Series and the Politics of Early Modern Europe”
Yubidixi Jimenez-Castañeda (Virginia Tech), “Deconstructing ‘Heathens’: Indigenous Refutation of Monolithic Theories on Mexica Human Sacrifice”
Chase Smith (University of California, Los Angeles), “Nahuatlizing the Eucharist: Reflecting on Translation and/as Transubstantiation in Colonial Mexico”
Zahra Syed (University of Chicago), “Architectures of Migration in Early Modern Venice: The Jewish Ghetto and the Fondaco dei Turchi”