Our annual graduate student conference is a premier opportunity for emerging scholars to present papers, participate in discussions, and develop collaborations across all fields of medieval, Renaissance, and early modern studies.
Click here to see the full conference schedule, abstracts, and bios for all participants.
ALL-VIRTUAL PRE-CONFERENCE (JANUARY 17-20)
Tuesday, January 17
12:00-1:00pm CST - Virtual Coffee Hour and “Ask Me Anything” with CRS staff (via Zoom)
Featuring: Staff member TBD
Wednesday, January 18
12:00-1:30pm CST - Virtual Workshop : Affect, Agency, Alterity (via Zoom)
Leaders:
Moinak Choudhury (University of Minnesota)
Cassidy Short (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Participants:
Hamza Aziz, University of Aberdeen, "Physical and Mental Disturbances: Arabic Influences on Medieval Understanding of Excessive Emotions & Illness "
Stephanie Beauval, University of Illinois, Chicago, "Impression and authority in the treatise of Pierre Nicole"
Jessica Charest, University of Nevada, Reno, "Supernatural Vengeance: Lavinia and Tamora's Transformative Power in Titus Andronicus"
Delanie Dummit, University of California, Davis, "'This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine': Disability and Labor in Shakespeare's The Tempest"
Matt Farley, Miami University, "Characterizing Doubt Surrounding Death and Dying in Relation to Conceptions of Self in John Donne’s Holy Sonnets and Margaret Edson’s Wit"
Christina Kolias, Claremont Graduate University, "‘Mother of science’ : Reimagining Milton's Eve as an Ecofeminist"
Xuying Liu, University of California, Davis, "Westernizing Confucius: The Jesuits Imagination, Needs and Misconceptions"
Shiva Mainaly, University of Louisville, "Triangulation of Enlightenment, Self-Justification, and Argumentation in Maria Edgeworth’s 'An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification'"
Victoria Myhand, University of Nottingham, "Journey to the Italianate Englishman: How the Italian Language Impacted English Culture in the Early Modern Period"
Guillermo Pupo Pernet, University of Arkansas, "Remapping Orinoco: Joseph Gumilla and Noticia del principio y progresos del establecimiento de las missiones de gentiles (1750)"
Chiara Visentin, Cornell University, "Nations outside the homeland: theorizing an 'external' perspective on medieval ethnic identification"
Thursday, January 19
12:00-1:00pm CST - Virtual Coffee Hour and “Ask Me Anything” with CRS staff (via Zoom)
Featuring: Staff member TBD
Friday, January 20
12:00-1:00pm CST - Virtual Coffee Hour and “Ask Me Anything” with CRS staff (via Zoom)
Featuring: Staff member TBD
REGULAR CONFERENCE SESSIONS (JANUARY 26-28, 2023)
Thursday, January 26
10:00-11:00am - Organizers’ Meeting - Baskes Boardroom
11:00am - Check-in/Registration opens - Ruggles Hall
12:00-1:30pm - Panels 1 and 2
Panel 1: Defining Selves and Others (in person - Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Juan Fernando León, Northwestern University
Presenters:
Rebeca Ponce Ochoa, University of Kentucky, "Between jurisdictions: bodies, discourses, and female lives in the Viceroyalty of Peru"
Hannah Chambers, Emory University, "Shakespeare’s Dido: Race, Gender, and Absence on the Early Modern Stage"
Rebecca Lowery, University of Pittsburgh, "Artemisia Gentileschi’s La Pittura: A Statement of Self as Court Artist"
Panel 2: Spectacle and Violence (in person - Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Andrea Yang, University of California, Davis
Presenters:
Joshua Gomez-Ortega, University of Illinois, Chicago, "Rebel Rumors and Racial Violence in 17th century Mexico"
Rachel Kathman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, "Punishing the Authors of Their Suffering : Painless Torture and Readers as Spectators in Ooronoko and The Disenchantments of Love"
Melina Rodriguez, University of California, Davis, "Sycorax and Spillers’ Captive Body: Flesh, Blazon, and Dismemberment in The Tempest"
1:30-2:45pm - Interactive Book Session with Newberry collection materials (in person - ITW Seminar Room)
2:45-3:00 - Break/informal mingle
3:00-4:00pm - Meet a Newberrian professional development session (in person - Ruggles Hall)
Featuring: David Weimer, Curator of Maps and Director of the Smith Center for the History of Cartography
4:00-4:30 - Break/informal mingle
4:30-5:30pm - Keynote Conversation (in person; to be recorded for virtual-only participants - Location TBD)
Featuring:
Yasmine Hachimi, Newberry Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow
Molly G. Yarn, Newberry Long-Term Fellow
Moderator:
Rebecca L. Fall (Newberry Library)
5:30-7:00pm - Opening Reception (in person - Ruggles Hall)
Friday, January 27
9:00-9:30am - Coffee and light breakfast - Ruggles Hall
9:30-11:00am - Panels 3 and 4
Panel 3: Matters of Emotion (virtual via Zoom - in-person audience may attend in Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Andrea Yang, University of California, Davis
Presenters:
Nawel Cotez, University of Pittsburgh, "Navigating the Waters in the Carte de Tendre"
Grace LaFrentz, Vanderbilt University, "Spectral Ventriloquists in Shakespeare's Othello"
Angelica Verduci, Case Western Reserve University, "Reading Mors Triumphans as An Allegory of Plague"
Panel 4: Law, Nation, Sovereignty (in person - Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Megan E. Fox, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Presenters:
Eero Arum, UC Berkeley, "Machiavelli Against Sovereignty: The Case of the Decemvirate"
Michael Ray Taylor, University of Aberdeen, "'Ancient Natives': The Liberal Jacobite Defence of Indigenous Society"
Zoë Townsend, University of Arkansas, “'Allosemitism' and Replacement Theology in Spenser’s 'The Faerie Queen'"
11:00-11:30am - Break
11:30am-1:00pm - Panels 5 and 6
Panel 5: Sound and Song (in person - Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Yibing Bai, Claremont Graduate University
Presenters:
Hillary Loomis, Southern Illinois University, "Waulking the Tweed: Sensory Analysis of Cloth Fulling in 18th Century Scotland"
R.L. Spencer, University of Texas at Austin, "Sounding Death in Marlowe’s Edward II"
Alvise Stefani, Indiana University Bloomington, "Tuning Laughter: The Relationship Between Music and Mockery in Folengo’s Baldus"
Panel 6: (Re)Situating Texts (in person - Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Thelma Trujillo, University of Iowa
Presenters:
Justin Fragalà, Western Michigan University, "La Vie de Saint Brice: Cultural and Societal Adaption of a Saint in Medieval France"
Michael Vaclav, University of Texas at Austin, "Middleton’s Wayward Witches: Macbeth and the Specter of the Overbury Scandal"
Lenora Wannier, Claremont Graduate University, "The Textual Mobility of Cervantes' Don Quixote: A Journey Towards Goethe's Weltliteratur"
1:00-2:00pm - Lunch (in person - Ruggles Hall)
2:00-3:00pm - Meet a Newberrian (in person - Ruggles Hall)
Featuring: Keelin Burke, Director of Fellowships and Academic Programs
3:00-3:30pm - Break
3:30-5:00pm - Panels 7 and 8
Panel 7: Transnational Islam (in person - Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Juan Fernando León, Northwestern University
Presenters:
Zehra Ilhan, University of California, Davis, "Pre-16th Century Discourse on Muslim Women and Female Youth In Epic Stories of Old Anatolian Turkish"
Joshua Keown, University of Louisville, "Unwelcome Neighbors: Byzantine, Norman, and Muslim Relations in Medieval Sicily"
Rafael David Nieto Bello, The University of Texas at Austin, "Specters of Islam in the Caribbean Gentes Alborotadas: Archival traces of Muslimness in the Spanish Conquest"
Panel 8: Material Cultures (in person - Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Megan E. Fox, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Presenters:
Kristina Kummerer, University of Notre Dame, "Franciscan Liturgy and Book Production in Late Medieval Italy: Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, W211, 213, & 216"
Rose Prendergast, Kent State University, "The Stationers’ Company: Censorship, Copyright, and England’s Transition to the Early Modern Period"
Lucien Sun, University of Chicago, "A Print in Flux: Rethinking the Print of Guan Yu from Khara-Khoto"
Saturday, January 28
9:45-10:15am - Coffee and light breakfast - Ruggles Hall
10:15-11:45am - Panels 9 and 10
Panel 9: Medievalism Weaponized (in person - Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Thelma Trujillo, University of Iowa
Presenters:
Maggie Hawkins, University of Texas at Austin, "The Perverted Angelcynn: From Alfred’s England to White Nationalism"
Spencer Kunz, University of Chicago, "Medievalism, Historical Misappropriation, and the "Crusader Persona" in 21st Century Christian Nationalism"
Chad White, University of Louisville, "Medieval History in the Military Imagination"
Panel 10: Nature and Mutability (in person - Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Claire Ptaschinski, University of Pittsburgh
Presenters:
Daniel Gettings, University of Warwick, "‘That water is esteemed to bee the best’: The production and impact of drinking water typologies in early modern England"
Summer Lizer, Claremont Graduate University, "'A Pernicious Highth': Verticality and Distortion in Paradise Lost"
Sarah Olson, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “'Spirits to Enforce, Art to Enchant': Ariel as Living Prosthesis in The Tempest"
12:00-1:30pm - Panels 11 and 12
Panel 11: Symbolisms (in person - Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Anneliese Hardman, University of Illinois, Chicago
Presenters:
Sarah Burt, Saint Louis University, "Transducing, Transforming, and Transposing the Ouroboros in the Middle Ages"
Elisha Hamlin, University of Chicago, “'Eating the Flesh that She Herself Hath Bred': Tamora’s Eucharistic Children in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus"
Molly Murphy Adams, Oklahoma State University, "The Pomegranate Entering the Modern Era: From feminine fecundity to projection of royal power"
Panel 12: Sex Unbound (in person - Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Sarah-Gray Lesley, University of Chicago
Presenters:
Sydnee Brown, University of Iowa, "Misremembering Sappho in John Donne’s 'Sappho to Philaenis'”
Siyun Fang, University of Mississippi, "Comparison between Male Writers Writing in A Female Voice in the Tang Dynasty and Medieval Period"
Lauren Van Atta, Miami University, "It’s an Androgyne!: The Unsexed Embryo of Helkiah Crooke’s Mikrokosmographia"
ORGANIZERS
Andrea Yang, University of California-Davis
Sarah-Gray Lesley, University of Chicago
Thelma Trujillo, University of Iowa
Moinak Choudhury, University of Minnesota
Juan Fernando Leon, Northwestern University
Megan E. Fox, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Anneliese Hardman, University of Illinois at Chicago
Claire Ptaschinski, University of Pittsburgh
Yibing Bai, Claremont Graduate University
Cassidy Short, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
REGISTRATION
Registration for the conference is free, but required for all participants and attendees (both virtual and in-person). Some conference sessions are limited to confirmed participants and organizers only.
REGISTER HERE
