Subtheme:
Anti-Jubilee: Feminist Killjoys,
When the Party Ends

On June 24, 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to  abortion and explicitly invoked medieval common law as precedent, Texas Attorney General Ken  Paxton’s office published a press release titled “AG Paxton Celebrates End of Roe v. Wade;  Announces Abortion Now Illegal in Texas” proclaiming the establishment of a new annual agency  holiday to commemorate the legal denial of reproductive self-determination to everyone in the  country’s second most populous state. This thread invites papers which capaciously consider the  intersections between festivity and violation: how, it asks, do we account for the ways that  celebration, feasting, and exultation are often accompanied by, enable, or celebrate interpersonal  violence, inequality, marginalization, or constraint? Papers might explore this subject  straightforwardly, considering accounts of medieval parties that precipitated violence, such as  pregnancy laments, for example, which identify holiday celebrations as occasions for sexual violence  and exploitation, or examine texts like Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale or the story of Lot’s daughters, which  link intoxication and assault perpetration. Or, papers might tap into intersectional feminist concerns  with power and violation by unearthing the “parties” that emerge in response to violence exposing  lines of domination–as when Isabella Gronowessone and her daughters joined together to castrate  Roger of Pulesdon in an act of potential retributive justice for rape in 1305. We welcome proposals  that consider how these communal networks unsettle the institutional curtailment of corporeal liberty  for marginalized individuals when participants become “party to” legal pursuit for their shared acts,  such as when Elizabeth Crippen was summoned before Canterbury’s ecclesiastical court to answer  charges that she had assisted Ellen Tressar in terminating her pregnancy in 1527. We are particularly  interested in papers which investigate ways “Jubilee” itself, as a celebration that marks duration or a  tradition of power ossifies domination and violence as enduring historical constants that are worthy of  celebration through their very endurance–and papers which seek new traditions of feminist autonomy  in which medieval studies might jubilate, 50 years in the future.