Vagantes: Medieval Graduate Student Conference (2011)

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

Click here to see the Conference Website