Medieval to Early Modern Students of the Pacific
(MEMSOP)
The Third Annual Conference
"SOMEBODIES, NOBODIES AND JUST BODIES":
Medieval to Early Modern Estates, Texts and Persons
October 17-19, 1997
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, B. C., Canada
Conference History and Information, Current Conference
Program, Registration Information
- Conference History and Information
The Medieval to Early Modern Students of the Pacific (MEMSOP)
organization holds annual conferences which are jointly organized
by graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley,
University of Washington, University of California at Los
Angeles, and most recently Simon Fraser University. This event
regularly brings together graduate students from all over the
West Coast and beyond to participate in an academic conference
which permits graduate students to present their work to
professors, colleagues, and members of the public. This
atmosphere fosters an exchange of ideas from scholars in
different disciplines attending a wide range of academic
institutions.
The first annual conference, entitled "Communities",
was held at the University of Washington, Seattle on February 17
- 19, 1995. That year there were thirty-eight graduate students,
representing sixteen North American universities, who presented
papers. The second conference, entitled "Cultures in
Conflict", was held at the University of California at
Berkeley. Once again, this was a well attended affair with
thirty-five graduate students who presented papers.
As a collection, the papers given at both of these conferences
facilitated interdisciplinary research as the range of subjects
discussed covered medieval to early modern history, science,
politics, British, European and Eastern literature, theology and
education. Substantial time was allowed for social interaction,
which permitted the exchange of intellectual ideas. It also
allowed participants to cultivate a sense of community amongst
members of universities dedicated to the research of medieval and
early modern culture.
"Somebodies, Nobodies and Just Bodies: Medieval to Early
Modern Estates, Texts and Persons" is the third annual
MEMSOP conference and it will be held at Simon Fraser University
(Harbour Centre) on October 17th to 19th, 1997. We have well over
forty people presenting papers this year. Although the MEMSOP
wishes to retain its focus of supporting the work of graduate
students, we have accepted proposals for papers from
post-doctoral academica and professors. There will be three
speakers over the weekend with Professor Iain Higgins presenting
a lecture called "Bodies of Evidence" on the first
evening. On Saturday, Professor Paul Dutton with deliver a paper
entitled "Charlemange's Moustache", to be followed on
Sunday by a paper on art in the High Middle Ages by Professor
Carol Knicely.
- Current Conference Program
Friday, October 17th, 1997
4:00 - 5:00 p.m. REGISTRATION and INFORMAL WELCOMING RECEPTION,
HarbourCentre Campus
5:00 - 6:00 p.m. Session 1
Panel 1: Women Incorporated
- ANKE PASSENIER, University of Utrecht (The Netherlands)
The Suffering Body and the Free Soul: The Body in
Medieval Women's Spirituality
KATHERINE HARRIS, New York University (USA)
The Sexual Empowerment of Marie de France's Women in the
Lais: Yonec, Eliduc, Laustic, Guigemar, and Lanval
Panel 2: Authorial Properties
- DON NICHOL, Memorial University (Canada),
"Dead-born from the Press: Books as Men's
Babies"
ANDREW S. MERCY, University of Colorado (USA),
"The Middle Parts of Milton's 1645 Poems:
'Comus'"
6:00 - 7:30 p.m. PLENARY 1: IAIN HIGGINS, Department
of English, University of British Columbia, Canada:
"Bodies of Evidence"
8:00 - 10:00 p.m. Banquet
Saturday, October 18th, 1997
7:30 - 8:30 a.m. - Continental Breakfast
8:45 - 10:15 a.m. - Session 2
Panel 1: Corruption
- MARTIN BLUM , University of British Columbia
(Canada), "Outing Cresseid: Robert
Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, Leprosy,
and the Social Construction of Blame"
CHRISTINE ROTH, University of Florida (USA),
"Infectious Sights/Sites: Staging the Early
Modern Body"
NADEANE TROWSE, Simon Fraser University (Canada),
"From Plethora to Abundance: Fighting for
Balance in Chretien de Troyes' Erec et
Enide"
Panel 2: Mangled and Mutilated
- BRENDAN PAUL MAHANEY, University of Oregon (USA),
"'What the [Mangled] Body Shows':
Corporeality, Semiotics, and Politics in
Shakespeare's First Tetralogy"
KATHERINE WILLEMS, University of British Columbia
(Canada), "The 'Heart' of the Spectacle:
Punishment and the Female Body in T'is a Pity
She's a Whore"
MELISSA THOMPSON, Oregon (USA), "Mutilated
Martyrs: The Female Body in Osbern Bokenham's Legendys
of Hooly Wummen
Panel 3: Voices from the Periphery
- JIM DAEMS, Simon Fraser University (Canada),
"Spenser's A View: "more
troublous matters of discourse"
ROBERT GRIFFITHS, University of Victoria
(Canada), "Villain or Victim: The
Unauthorized English Biography of Wingina, Lord
of Roanoke"
DIANE M. KORNGIEBEL, University of Wales, Cardiff
(UK), "Saving Face: The Use of the Body in
Medieval Welsh Texts
10:30 - 12:00 p.m. - Session 3
Panel 1: Transgression
- MARY ANN PETERS, University of Oregon (USA),
"Embodying Heresy: Contamination and
Lollardy in the Morality Mankind"
WILLIAM WHITE TISON PUGH, University of Oregon
(USA), "Christian Inversion and the Body of
Same-Sex Desire in the Poetry of Marbod of
Rennes"
PATRICIA REYNAUD, University of Oregon (USA),
"Divided Religious Bodies: The Cathars and
the Catholic Church"
Panel 2: The Masque and the Monstrous
- BRENT WHITTED, University of British Columbia
(Canada), "The 'honourable Inthronization':
The Princely Body in/of Gesta Grayorum"
ROBERT LUBLIN, Providence, Rhode Island (USA),
"Monsters on the Early Modern Stage:
Anti-Theatricality, Effeminization, & Epicoene
SHERYL BROEDEL, University of Washington (USA),
"On Deeds and Language Such As Men Do Use:
Monstrous Humour in Jonson's Every Man in His
Humour"
Panel 3: Bodies under Seige
- DERRICK HIGGINBOTHAM, Simon Fraser University
(Canada), "Poverty, Power and Charity: The
Memory of Christ's Body in Fifteenth-Century
Drama"
GEOFFREY HUDSON, The Wellcome Institute for the
History of Medicine (London, UK), "The Body
and the State in Early Modern England"
SEAN LAWRENCE, University of British Columbia
(Canada), "Robert Watsons's The Swisser"
12:00 - 1:45 p.m. - Lunch
1:45 - 3:15 p.m.PLENARY 2: PAUL EDWARD DUTTON,
Department of History, Simon Fraser University,
"Charlemagne's Mustache"
3:30 - 5:00 p.m. - Session 4
Panel 1: Inversion
- MILES TAYLOR, University of Oregon (USA),
"Class Cross-Dressing and Early Modern Prose
Fiction: Pandosto, The Old Arcadia and the
Ideology of Body Difference"
MYRA SEAMAN, Claremont Graduate University (USA),
"Disembodying the Knight's 'Manly Voys' in
The Wife of Bath's Tale"
MADHAVI MENON, Tufts University (USA),
"Elizabeth I and the Hymen at Tilbury"
Panel 2: Rhetoric of Hauntology
- ANISSA L. CRAGHEAD, Springfield, Virginia (USA),
"Absorbing the Body: The Role of the
Handkerchief in Shakespeare's Plays"
ELIZABETH M. STURGEON, Northwestern University
(USA), "Performing England's Past: Bodies
Beheld in the Mirror for Magistrates"
HANS PETER BROEDEL, University of Washington
(USA), "Disembodied Spirits: Visions and
Revisions of Women's Nocturnal Experience"
Panel 3: Dissecting Bodies of Knowledge
- ADAM MCKEOWN, New York University (USA), "'I
am not this assemblage of limbs': the liminal
body anatomized"
CASHMAN KERR PRINCE, Stanford University (USA),
"The Mad Epistemology of Erasmus' The
Praise of Folly
ANDREW N. CARPENTER, University of California,
Berkeley (USA), "Kant's Body: Kant's Early
Metaphysics and the Embodiment of Cognition"
Sunday, October 19th, 1997
7:30 - 8:00 a.m. Continental Breakfast
8:00 - 9:30 a.m. - Session 5
Panel 1: Embodiment of Religious Ideals
- ELIZABETH SMITH, California State University,
Fresno (USA), "Fleeting Glimpses:
Interpreting Beatrice in the Divine Comedy"
GRETCHEN MINTON, University of British Columbia
(Canada), "Spectacle and the Spectacular in
Christus Triumphans, An Apocalyptic Comedy by
John Foxe of England"
SHARON-RUTH ALKER, Simon Fraser University
(Canada), "Lantern of the Soul: Thomas
Traherne and the (Re)Visioning of the Human
Body"
Panel 2: Performance and Representation
- HELEN DEPTA, University of California, San Diego
(USA), "Disruption and Destabilization: The
Appropriation of Authority in The Knight of
the Burning Pestle"
SANDRA LOGAN, University of California, San Diego
(USA), "Representation and Negotiation:
Processional and the Theatrical Production of
Power"
BEVERLY REDMAN, University of California, Irvine
(USA), "Signs of Identity: Physical and
Verbal Disguise in King Lear"
Panel 3: Creative Chronicling
- SCOTT PERCHALL, Simon Fraser University (Canada),
"Conspiratio and the Peace': Oaths and the
1112 Laon Commune"
EDDIE VULIC, University of California, Berkeley
(USA), "Matthew Paris and the Foreign"
ANNE LATOWSKY, University of Washington (USA),
"Reconciliation at Saint Gilles: The
Creative Chronicling of Ceremony in Pierre Vaux
de Cernay's Hystoria Albigensium"
9:45 - 11:15 a.m. - Session 6
Panel 1: Women's Appetites
- SANDIE GROW, Portland State University (USA), The
Erl of Tolous: Empress Beulybon's Bodily
Struggle"
AIMEE ELIZABETH ROSS, University of Oregon (USA),
"Alimentary Consumption and the
Commodification of Female Bodies in Middleton's Women
Beware Women"
ERIN EILEEN MULLALLY, University of Oregon (USA),
"May the Best (Wo)Man Win: Class and Gender
in Le Berangier au Lone Cul"
Panel 2: Physical Aspects of Performance
- JOSEPH M. TATE, University of Washington (USA),
"The Motion of Emotion: The Physical
Responses of Early Modern Playgoers"
CARL PETERS, Simon Fraser University (Canada),
"Revelations of a Divine Poetics: Mother
Julian's "Modernity" in her Book of
Showings"
ELIZABETH BRODOVITCH, Simon Fraser University
(Canada), "The Singing Body in the Poetry of
the Troubadours"
Panel 3: A King, A Cross-Dresser and the Devil
:
- MARIE FISK, California State University (USA),
"The Sorrows of an Exile: Ovid's Influence
on Marlowe's Edward II"
ANNA KNOWLSON, Simon Fraser University (Canada),
"Is that a pair of hands praying under the
sheets, or are you just happy to see me?
Elizabethan camp in a tale of serious gender fun
in Marlowe's incarnation of Hero and
Leander"
LINN CARPENTER, Havertown, Pennsylvania (USA),
Body and Book: The Re-rite-ing of Doctor Faustus
11:30-12:30 p.m PLENARY 3: CAROL KNICELY, Department
of Fine Arts, University of British Columbia, Canada:
"High Medieval Art"
12:30 p.m. Lunch, Planning Session, 1998 Fourth Annual
MEMSOP Conference. All participants are encouraged to
attend.
Registration and Accommodations Information
There will be a five (5) dollar registration fee for
the conference which should be sent to the organization
with your confirmation of attendance. This money will be
used to pay the expense for the added security needed for
our conference site. On Friday evening, there will be a
banquet from 8:00pm to 10:00pm at the Holiday Inn (1110
Howe St) in the Capilano Room. Prof. Iain Higgins and
other speakers for the conference have been invited to
attend. Any participant wishing to attend this banquet
needs to indicate this on their Registration form (which
will come with the acceptance letter). There will be a
twenty dollar fee for this banquet, which can be paid
either ahead of time or at the conference site. Any money
sent to the organization needs to be in cash or in a
money order. All money orders should be made out to:
"Department of English, Simon Fraser University,
MEMSOP Conference". Remember that all money has to
be converted into Canadian funds. Please return the
registration form as soon as possible.
For accommodations we have arranged for a group rate
at the Holiday Inn (the same hotel at which the banquet
will happen). A block of twenty rooms will be held for
participants until September 17, 1997. After this date,
any rooms not yet reserved will revert to the hotel for
resale. These rooms can be either single or double
occupancy. Anyone who wishes to share a room with another
participant should indicate this on their registration
sheet and ensure that the form is mailed back to us by
September 5, 1997. At that point we will match people up
and confirm a room for the participants. Otherwise,
reservations will be made on an individual basis.
Reservation requests at to be accompanied with a deposit
for the first night or with a credit card number (VISA,
American Express, Mastercard, EnRoute, Diners Club, JCB).
The deposit will be returned if the reservation is
canceled two days prior to the date requested. In order
to ensure that you obtain the special accommodation and
room rates, the following code must accompany your
booking: CODE: 2 -MEM. The telephone to make reservation
is: 1-800-663-9151.
The cost of the rooms under this group rate is: #89.00
+ tax for a single or double occupancy. If you have any
questions about this group rate or about other
accommodations, please feel free to e-mail Holly Nelson, hnelson@sfu.ca
, or Derrick Higginbotham, dhigginb@sfu.ca
.
[JBL August 16, 1997]