The University of Pittsburgh hosted the 10th annual Vagantes: Medieval Graduate Student Conference, from March 3-5, 2011.This conference is aimed at allowing medieval student scholars present their research on a wide variety of topics. Vagantes is an annual conference that moves to a new location in North America each year – in this year’s meeting, 23 papers and two keynote addresses will be given.
Medievalists.net will be at the conference, reporting on the papers and interviewing participants
Conference Schedule
Session I: Performance and Ritual
The “Clothes of Righteousness” as a Move toward Outwardness in the Medieval Period - Trevor Babcock, Indiana University
The Performance of Separation at Escomb Church - Ashley Lonsdale Cook, University of Wisconsin
“Though he bere hem no breed”: Allegory, Altruism, and the Problem of Poverty in Langland’s England - Ben Utter, University of Minnesota
Keynote address
“Salvation, Sex, and Subjectivity” - Dr. Bruce Venarde, Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh
Session II: Reception and Identity
The Sign of Christ, the Sign of Salvation: an Exalted Cross in a Late Medieval Armenian Gospel Book - Orsolya Mednyánszky, Tufts University
The Mark of the Beast: Revisioning the Medieval Bestiary in the Twentieth Century - Raina Polivka, Indiana University
The Danes in Medieval Romance: Myth, Memory, Identity - Daniel Wollenberg
Session III: Knowing Women: Gender and Identity
The Role of Historian in the Encomium Emmae Reginae - Kristen Tibbs, Marshall University
Confrontation and Submission: Images of Peasant Women on English Misericords - Betsy Chunko, University of Virginia
The Loathly Lady and the Riddle of Sovereignty - Arwen Taylor, Indiana University
Session IV: Borderlands, Landscapes and Journeys
“Cette province frontière”: beside(s) France and Espagne in chanson de geste - Ann Topham, University of California, Los Angeles
Re-Framing the Marginalized: An Examination of Center-Periphery Relations in the Bayeux Tapestry - Lindsey Hansen, Indiana University
Circles of Contemplation in Pearl and Sir Gawain - Camin Melton, Fordham University
Session V: Seeing the Other
To See or Not to See in the Middle Ages: Blind Jews in Christian Eyes - Brooke Falk Permenter, Rutgers University
The Turk as a Tool of God: Augustinism and the Battle of Nicopolis - Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier, University of Pittsburgh
“Seeing is believing”: Ekphrasis, mythology, and Christian correction in the Eupolemius - Julian Yolles, Harvard University
Session VI: Medieval Masculinities
Debating Drengskapr: Theme and Meta-Theme in the Performance of Mannjafnaðr in the Icelandic Sagas - Jonathan Broussard, Louisiana State University
Reading ofermod in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - William Biel, University of Tennessee
‘Mine Honour is My Life:’ Dignity, Majesty and the Kingship Styles of Richard II and Charles I - Nile Blunt, University of Illinois
Session VII: Speech Acts and Orality in the Middle Ages
(Im) Potent Speech in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde - Timothy Adams, University of Pittsburgh
Toward a Historical Phraseology: the Medieval Lyric - Adam Oberlin, University of Minnesota
Beowulf 1553b: A Controversial Period - Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen, University of New Mexico
Session VIII: Spaces Real and Imagined
Guardian Angels in Romanesque Catalonia - Mark Summers, University of Wisconsin
gens Anglorum: Manufacturing a British Geography in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People - Cooper Childers, Marshall University
“Ful blissfully in prison maistow dure”: Pleasure and Imprisonment in the Knight’s Tale - Corey Sparks, Indiana University
Keynote address
“Medieval Texts and Postmodern Readers: Reading the Middle Ages in 2011” - Dr. Rosemarie McGerr, Professor of Comparative Literature and Chair of Medieval Studies, Indiana University
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