Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies – 20-23 March 2019

Established in 2002, Vagantes is North America’s largest and most successful Medieval Studies conference for graduate students of medieval studies. Much like the clergy students and minstrels of the Middle Ages who adopted nomadic lifestyles, this conference adopts their wandering spirit by being hosted by a different unviersity each year. The event is organized entirely by graduate students and seeks to provide junior scholars from all disciplines the opportunity to discuss their reserach on any aspect of Medieval Studies.

In keeping with its ission, Vagantes never charges a registration fee, but you can register for the conference on their website.

All events will take place in the Great Hall of the Centre for Medieval Studies unless otherwise noted. (Lillian Massey Building, 3rd Floor, 125 Queen’s Park)

Thursday, March 21

8:30-9:00- Breakfast and Registration

9:00-9:30 – Introductory Remarks

9:30-11:00 – Session One: Imagined and Created Histories 

                    Moderated by Alison More

Imagined Pasts: Reconstructing Ottoman Harem Narratives

Kortney Stern (Indiana University, Bloomington)

Stories of the Maccabees in Nicholas Trevet’s Les Cronicles

Jonathan Brent (University of Toronto)

Identity and Reception of the Byzantine Croce degli Zaccaria 

Caitlin Mims (Florida State University)

11:00-12:00- Tour of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies Library

12:00-1:30- Mentorship Lunch, organized by Timothy Nelson (University of Arkansas)

1:30-3:00- Session Two: Rhetorical (Re)writings

                Moderated by Dan Brielmaier

Moor or Saracen? Translation as Propaganda in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, 1270-1284

Marlena Cravens (University of Texas, Austin)

Saxo and his younger cousin – principles used to make Gesta Danoruminto Compendium Saxonis

Marko Vitas (Brown University)

Emotional Rhetoric in Aelfric’s Letter to the Monks of Eynsham

Edith Cherrett (Carleton University)

3:00-3:15- Coffee Break

3:15-4:45- Session Three: Tradition Re-examined

                  Moderated by Erika Loic

Seeing Matter: The Materiality of Monstrance Reliquaries

Mark Summers (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

The Old English Judgement Day I and the Origins of the Submerged Earth Motif

Mark Doerksen (University of Saskatchewan)

Desert Islands: Evoking the Desert Fathers in Early Irish Monastic Art

Mya Eileen Frieze (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

4:45-5:00- Coffee Break

5:00-6:00- Keynote Lecture, given by Daniel Hershenzon (University of Connecticut)

“Captivated by the Mediterranean: Early Modern Spain and the Political Economy of Reason” 

6:00- 8:00- Welcome Reception, Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies Shook Lounge

Friday, March 22^nd

8:30-9:00- Breakfast and Registration

9:00-10:30- Session Four: Images of the Holy

                    Moderated by Adam Cohen

Meditatioand Visio in early fourteenth-century English stained glass and illuminated manuscripts

Roisin Astell (University of Kent)

The image of the cosmos unfolding between the alpha and the omega

Merih Danali (Harvard University)

Meditatio and the Margins: Marginalia as Tools for Meditation in the Macclesfield Psalter

Christine James Zepeda (University of Texas, Austin)

10:30-10:45- Coffee Break

10:45-12:15 – Session Five: Time

                       Moderated by Kara Gaston

Salvational Space and the Case for Medieval Russian Literature

Taylor Thomas (Indiana University, Bloomington)

Running Out of Time: Situating Readers in The Book of John Mandeville

Emily Lowman (University of Rochester)

Petrarch’s Net and the Lyrical Poetics of Time

Peerawat Chiaranunt (Yale University)

12:15-1:15- Lunch

1:15-2:45- Session Six: Teaching (in) the Middle Ages

                 Moderated by Alice Sharp

Carolingian networks of exegetes: an examination with cluster analysis

William Mattingly (University of Kentucky)

Can We Recover the Lost Glosses of Peter Lombard?: Revisiting the Biblical Lectures of the Parisian Master’s Successor

David Foley (University of Toronto)

Rebranding “Darkness” – Teaching and Advertising Medieval History in British Columbia 

Jovana Andelkovic (Simon Fraser University)

2:45-3:00- Coffee Break

3:00-5:00- Professionalization Panel: Elisa Brilli, Kara Gaston, Shami Ghosh 

5:00-7:00- Reception, Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies Shook Lounge

6:30-8:30- Board of Directors Meeting at the Centre for Medieval Studies

Saturday, March 23^rd

8:30-9:00- Breakfast and Registration

9:00-10:30- Session Seven: Transformation of Women

                    Moderated by Emily Blakelock

(Un)Clothe the She-wolf: Problematise the Female Body in the Bisclavret Triad         

Minjie Su (University of Oxford)

Female Empowerment Through Adornment in the Middle English Judith and Joan of Arc’s Trial

Maitlyn Reynolds (California State University)

Approaching Warrior Women: Amazons in The Shahnameh and Alexandreis

Catherine Albers (University of Connecticut)

10:30-10:45- Coffee Break

10:45-12:15- Session Eight: Spiritual Literary Spaces

                      Moderated by David Townsend

The Virgin Mary in the Cantigas de Santa Maria

Carmen Denia (Yale University)

 ‘He hadde a spirit of trewe prophecye’: Amphiorax and the Undermining of Truth in The Siege of Thebes

Jennifer Easler (University of Minnesota)

Outliving Death: Cemeteries as Spaces of Immortalization in Medieval French Quests

Kirsten Lopez (University of Chicago)

12:15-1:15- Lunch

1:15-2:45- Session Nine: Law and Gender in the Mediterranean

                 Moderated by Kirsty Schut

They shall be very loyal and very wise: Almogavares in Castilian Law 

Marcos Perez Canizares (Cornell University)

Being Your Best Self: An Examination of the Pisan Consumer Culture through the Female Elect on the Last Judgement Fresco

Tania Kolarik (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Le plus dreit heir: Maria of Antioch and the crown of Jerusalem 

Charlotte Gauthier (University of London, UK)

2:45-3:00- Coffee Break

3:00-4:30- Session Ten: Social Standing, Community, and Legality

                   Moderated by Jessica Lockhart

Precariously Human: Bare Life, Paternal Recognition, and Animal Transformation in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi

Mead Bowen (University of Rochester)

Contextualizing Resistance to Sexual Violence in Le Bone Florence of Rome

            Mariah Luther Cooper (Memorial University of Newfoundland)

Langland’s Mirror: Self-Understanding among the Multa  

Audrey Saxton (Pennsylvania State University)

4:30-4:45- Coffee Break

4:45-5:45- Keynote Lecture, given by Alexandra Gillespie (University of Toronto)

                “The Printer and the Pardoner”

5:45- 6:00- Concluding Remarks

6:00-9:00- Final Banquet

Sponsors

Many thanks to the Centres, Colleges, Departments, and other Organizations that have made the 18th Vagantes Conference possible

• Centre for Medieval Studies
• Centre for Medieval Studies’ Student Committees
• Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies
• An Anonymous Donor
• Centre for Comparative Literature
• Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
• Department of English
• Department of French
• Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
• Department of History
• Department of History Intellectual Community Committee
• Department of History of Art
• Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
• Department of Philosophy
• Dictionary of Old English
• Emmanuel College
• Emilio Goggio Chair in Italian Studies
• Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
• Jackman Humanities Institute
• Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy
• The Medieval Academy of America/Graduate Student Committee Grant for Innovation in Community Building and Professionalization
• Milestones and Pathways Initiative of the Faculty of Arts and Science
• St. Michael’s College
• Student Initiative Fund, Division of Student Life
• Trinity College
• University College
• University of Toronto Press
• Victoria College
• Wycliffe College