CFP: Panel proposal for the Southeastern Medieval Association Conference, Charleston, SC, November 15-18, 2017
Panel Title: “Gender and Holy City/Spaces”
Panel Sponsor: The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship
Panel Organizers: Melissa Ridley Elmes and Amy Vines
Panel Chair: Melissa Ridley Elmes
The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship seeks 15-20 minute papers that consider the theme of “Gender and Holy City/Spaces” in its myriad aspects. Papers might explore the juxtaposition of enclosure versus uncircumscribed movement – i.e., we think a lot about gender (women) and holy spaces as enclosed spaces (the anchorhold), but Margery Kempe was peripatetic and very often in an urban space. Papers might also consider questions such as, “Can urban spaces be read as a kind of “enclosed” space?”; “Can more traditionally “secular” enclosure (as, for instance, with the Temple of Love which the jealous husband places right outside the wife’s bedroom in Marie de France’s Guigemar) also be read as a kind of holy space of sorts?”; “How might cities/holy spaces conceived, described, explored, and/or explained in medieval dream visions reflect, challenge, or reconsider questions of gender?” We encourage papers that think expansively about enclosure and creatively about the concept of “holy” space.
200/300-word abstracts and brief bio to anvines@uncg.edu and MElmes@lindenwood.edu by June 2, 2017.
Melissa Ridley Elmes 