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]