2026 Program Schedule
"Resistance and Refuge
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FRIDAY, 10 April
7:30 a.m. Registration begins, Convocation Hall
(Light breakfast and printed program available)
8:30 A.M. – 9:50 A.M.
SESSIONS 1-3
1. The Borderlands of Romance
Location: Torian Room
Chair: Emily Youree
Paper: Eremitic Refuge, the Apophatic Tradition, and Madness in Ywain and Gawain
Gayle Fallon, Rocky Mountain College
Paper: At the Borders of Emotional Identity: Love, Fortune, and Anti-Structure in the Eufemiavisor
Laura Hatch, Brigham Young University and Drew Swasey, The University of Wisconsin--Madison
Comment: Jeanne Provost, Furman University
2. The Violence of Conversion in Medieval Romance
Location: McGriff Alumni House
Chair: Claire Crow
Paper: A Cannibalistic Eucharist and the Pagan King’s Two Bodies
Joseph P. Derosier, Beloit College
Paper: Muslim Vikings: The Role of Violence in Converting Bodies in LaÓ¡amon’s Brut
Josh Pittman, Gardner-Webb University
Comment: Lynn Ramey, Vanderbilt University
3. Writing Early English Refuge
Location: Social Lodge
Chair: Joey McMullen
Paper: The Rebelliousness of Chastity: Wilfrid, Æthelthryth, and Finding Refuge in Apocryphal Tropes
Kevin Kritsch, McNeese State University
Paper: The Utopic Past in Ælfric’s Life of St. Swithun
Dylan McCollum, Indiana University Bloomington
Comment: Jordan Zweck, The University of Wisconsin--Madison
10:00 A.M. – 10:50 A.M.
SESSIONS 4-7
4. Marx's Medieval Metaphors
Location: Torian Room
Chair: R.D. Perry
Paper: Marx and Transubstantiation
Shoshana Adler, Vanderbilt University
Paper: The first time as orthodoxy, the second time as Foxe: Historicizing Wimbledon’s Sermon on redde rationem in Early Modern England
Megan Cook, Colby College
Paper: Metonymy Is Not Destiny
Mel Cowdery, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Comment: Jessie Hock, Vanderbilt University
5. Race, Resistance, and Encountering the Other
Location: Center for Teaching
Chair: Sydney Owada Welk
Paper: Between the English and the Welsh: The Conflicted Career of Sir Gruffydd
Madigan Swartz
Paper: Returning to the Prioress's Coral Prayer Beads: Christian Femininity, Jewish Labor
Claire Crow, Yale University
Paper: After the Historical Battle of 991 CE: The Battle of Maldon’s Use of Rhetoric and Material Signs as Emblems of Resistance and Refuge
Daniel Pigg, The University of Tennessee at Martin
Comment: Sierra Lomuto, Rowan University
6. Collective Communities of Resistance
Location: McGriff Alumni House
Chair: Jenny Bledsoe
Paper: Sanctuary and its Violation in Irish Law and the Lives of Irish Saints
Máire Johnson, Emporia State University
Paper: Women Resisting ‘Arrest’: Confronting Policing Authorities in 14th- and 15th-Century Florence
Lynn Laufenberg, Sweet Briar College
Paper: Syon Abbey in the Sixteenth Century: Medieval ‘Tactics,’ Refuge, and Resistance
Nancy Warren, Texas A&M University
Comment: Shannon Gayk, Indiana University at Bloomington
7. Fictions of Resistance and Refuge
Location: Social Lodge
Chair: Clint Morrison
Paper: Undead Outlaws: Resistance as Haunting in Perceforest
Brooke H. Findley, Penn State Altoona
Paper: False Refuge: Discordant Games in Malory’s Book of Sir Tristram
Sarah B. Rude, Augustana University
Paper: Christian Solidarity and the Rhetorics of Dehumanization in Capystranus
Jonathan F. Correa Reyes, Clemson University
Comment: Molly Martin, The University of Indianapolis
12:00 P.M.—1:00 P.M.
LUNCH, Convocation Hall
1:00 P.M. – 2:50 P.M.
SESSIONS 8-12
8. Dialects of Resistance and Refuge
Location: Torian Room
Chair: Mariah Min
Paper: Playing the King: Gaming as Refuge from and Reinforcement of Authority in the Codex Ashmole 61
Brooke Thomas, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Paper: Is it enough to 'Humanize'? Some Reflections on Medieval Cruelty
Karl Steel, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
Paper: No Refuge from the Rokkes: Limits of Resistance from Within and Without in The Franklin’s Tale
Lisa Koyuki Smith, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Comment: Megan Cook, Colby College
9. Labor, Migration, Text: Making Books and Communities
Location: Center for Teaching
Chair: Allison Edgren
Paper: Active Learning and the Active Life in Frances Chesterton’s Piers Plowman’s Pilgrimage: A Morality Play (1925)
Mimi Ensley, Flagler College
Paper: Scribes in Crisis: The Making of Books and the Hundred Years War
J. R. Mattison, The University of Georgia
Paper: (Re)Making History: The Compilation of Columbia University Plimpton MS 266 and the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle
E. Alice Grissom, Rutgers University
Comment: Jessica Brantley, Yale University
10. Refuge, Rebellion, and the Cultural Other
Location: Gailor 128
Chair: Claire Davis
Paper: Logistical Intimacies: Moving Bodies and Borders in The King of Tars
Sydney Owada Welk, Edmonds College
Paper: Peasant Speech: Linguistic Alterity in the Borderlands
Melissa Heide, Colby College
Comment: Jamie Taylor, Bryn Mawr College
11. Horror and the Witness
Location: McGriff Alumni House
Chair: Jessie Hock
Paper: Shuddering Witnesses
Benjamin Saltzman, The University of Chicago
Paper: Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale and Horror’s Limits
R.D. Perry, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Paper: Didactic Horror: Fear as Affective Devotion in The Dream of the Rood
Madeline Fox, The University of Michigan
Comment: Frank Grady, The University of Missouri--St. Louis
12. Dramatic & Satirical Fictions of Resistance and Refuge
Location: Social Lodge
Chair: Clint Morrison
Paper: Performing Queer Refuge in Queer Time: Queer Temporality in Castle of Perseverance
Jeffery Stoyanoff, Penn State Altoona
Paper: Lyric Resistance and Poetic Labor in the Hundred Years War
Sara Torres, The University of New Mexico
Paper: “in the monethe of Maye thies mirthes me tyde”: Dreaming and Hunting as Forms of Resistance in Parlement of the Thre Ages
Benjamin Yusen, Indiana University Bloomington
Comment: Harry Cushman, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
3:00 P.M.— 3:30 P.M.
BREAK and COLLABORATION
Convocation Hall
3:30 P.M. – 5:20 P.M.
SESSIONS 13-17
13. Marx's Medieval Materials
Location: Torian Room
Chair: Megan Cook
Paper: The Nightman Cometh: Metabolic Rift, Labor, Soil, and Scat in Mankind
H.M. Cushman, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Paper: Perpetual War Before the Nation State
Daniel Davies, The University of Houston
Paper: Marx, Mandeville, and the Economic Imaginary of the East
Mariah Min, Brown University
Comment: R.D. Perry, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
14. Gendered Care and Control in Late Medieval English Drama
Location: Center for Teaching
Chair: Joey Taylor
Paper: Failed Domestic Care Work in Lydgate’s Disguising at Hertford
Emma Lipton, The University of Missouri
Paper: Caregiving and Gendered Devotion in the York Cycle Death of Mary
Margaret Pappano, Queen’s University
Paper: Aging Artisans and Care in Late Medieval Chester: The Wrights’ Nativity play
Nicole Rice, St. John’s University
Comment: Sasha Pfau, Hendrix College
15. Spiritual Refuge, Identity, and Travel
Location: Gailor 128
Chair: Claire Davis
Paper: Traveling Not Undocumented: Narrative Orders and Ecclesiastical Norms in The Book of Margery Kempe
Arvind Thomas, UCLA
Paper: From Brewing to Beseeching: Prayer Practices as Social Boundaries in The Book of Margery Kempe
Krista Telford, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Paper: At the Edge of Sleep: The Liminal Dream Space in Pearl
Lindsay Ragle-Miller, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Comment: Claire Waters, The University of California, Davis
16. Authorizing Abjections
Location: McGriff Alumni House
Chair: Amada Leary
Paper: Marguerite Porete's Annihilation of the Soul: Resisting Male Theology
Anne Spear, The University of Alabama
Paper: The Bishops' Refuge: Runaway Bishops in Merovingian Hagiography
Phyllis Jestice, The College of Charleston
Comment: Hannah Matis, The University of the South
17. Ludic & Popular Fictions of Resistance and Refuge
Location: Social Lodge
Chair: Jonathan F. Correa Reyes
Paper: Internal Refuge, External Resistance: Margery Kempe's Textual Heart
Beka Castro, The University of California, Irvine
Paper: Racialized Robin Hood and the American South
Emily Youree, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Paper: Medievalists Design Games, a Report: Representation, Critique and Public Medievalisms in Analog Play
Thomas C. Sawyer, The University of Chicago
Comment: Betsy McCormick, Mt. San Antonio College
5:45 P.M. PLENARY SESSION
Brinley Rhys Memorial Lecture
Naylor Auditorium
(Gailor Hall)
“Exposure”
Elizabeth Allen, The University of California, Irvine
7:00 P.M. COCKTAILS AND DINNER
Convocation Hall
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SATURDAY, 11 APRIL
7:30 A.M. Registration continues, Convocation Hall
(Light breakfast and printed program available)
8:30 A.M. – 9:50 A.M.
SESSIONS 18-20
18. Defying Death: Losing and Locating Saintly Bodies in Early Medieval Texts
Location: McGriff Alumni House
Chair: Jordan Zweck
Paper: Writing Bodies and Labeling Relics: Resisting Oblivion in Old English Hagiographies
Jill Hamilton Clements, The University of Alabama in Birmingham
Paper: Resisting Bodies: The Lives, Deaths, and Memorializations of Three Abbess Saints
Lori Ann Garner, Rhodes College
Comment: Christina Heckman, Augusta University
19. Saints' Lives and Feminine Resistance
Location: Gailor 110
Chair: Máire Johnson
Paper: The Refuge of St. Brigid's Mystic Resistance
Brianna Davis, The University of Washington
Paper: ‘The se bigan to flowen, and the wawves for to arise’: Childbirth as Passion in The South English Legendary’s Life of Mary Magdalen
Cullin Arn, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Comment: Jenny Bledsoe, Northeastern State University
20. Embodied Religion: Death, Resistance, and the Transformation of Urban Space
Location: Gailor 128
Chair: Lucy Barnhouse
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Paper: Consecration as Desecration? How Religious Cemeteries Become Spaces of Care and Control in Urban Medieval Portugal
Trent Trombley, Augustana University
Paper: ‘I’d Rather Kill Myself’: Discursive, Corporeal, and Affective Recalcitrance During the ‘Abbasid Inquisition
Stephanie Yep, Appalachian State University
Comment: Abigail Balbale, New York University
10:00 A.M. – 11:50 A.M.
SESSIONS 21-25
21. Resisting Tyranny, Reframing Compassion: Medieval Literature and the Possibilities of Alternative Sovereignties
Location: Torian Room
Chair: Shannon Gayk
Paper: ad modum tyranni: Tyrant Violence and Parochial Sovereignty in Bewnans Meriasek and Bewnans Ke
Benjamin Hoover, Indiana University Bloomington
Paper: Form, Voice, and Resistance: Reevaluating Compassion in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale
Evelyn Reynolds
Paper: Resisting Damnation: Refrigeria and Refugia as Apocryphal Motifs
Stephen Hopkins, The University of Virginia
Comment: Joey McMullen, Indiana University Bloomington
22. The Uses of Chaucerian Textuality
Location: McGriff Alumni House
Chair: R.D. Perry
Paper: Proverbs as Forms of Resistance to Communal Ethics
Johanna Kramer, The University of Missouri
Paper: Romantic Devotion as Spiritual Refuge in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
Roark Wilson, The University of Kentucky
Paper: ‘The Dogge for to Plese’: Exchange and Desire in The Prologue and Tale of Beryn
Walter Wadiak, Lafayette College
Comment: Bobby Meyer-Lee, Agnes Scott College
23. Corporeal Violence and Care: Reproductive Justice 1
Location: Gailor 110
Chair: Sara Petrosillo
Paper: (Non)Consent to Care: Mediating Reproductive Agency in the Insular Pregnancy Laments
Sarah Baechle, The University of Mississippi
Paper: Suicide, Bodily Sovereignty, and the Unborn Child of Chaucer’s Dido
Nat Rivkin, Vanderbilt University
Paper: Configurations of Care: Wench Mothers and Urban Inns in Fifteenth-Century London Ecclesiastical Court Archives
Carissa Harris, Temple University
Comment: Nicole Rice, St. John’s University
24. Resistance in the Medieval Roman (Byzantine) World
Location: Gailor 128
Chair: Francisco J. Cintrón Mattei
Paper: Military Resistance, Agricultural Power, or Defensive Refuge?: Standalone Towers in the Byzantine Landscape of Western Asia Minor
Tyler Wolford, The University of Notre Dame
Paper: Historical Truth by Historiographical Contradiction: Accounts of Local Resistance in Fourteenth Century Byzantium
Ian Storey, The University of Notre Dame
Paper: (New) Rome Is Burning, What Should We Study? The Life of the Mind in Fifteenth-Century Constantinople
Justin Michael Smith, The University of Notre Dame
Comment: Romulus Stefanut, The University of the South
25. Animal Natures
Location: Gailor 130
Chair: Sara Torres
Paper: ‘And Her Little Dog, Too!’: Christine de Pizan Using the ‘Humanist’s Portrait’ as Rebellion Against Courtly Convention
Dominique Hoche, West Liberty University
Paper: Rest and Roaming: Chaucer and Gower’s Moralized Medieval Bird Transformations
Leighton Griffin, The University of Mississippi
Paper: Animal Enjoyment: Resistance through Compassion and Pleasure in Henryson’s Beast Fables
Jeanne Provost, Furman University
Comment: Brian Gastle, Western Carolina University
12:00 P.M.-
1:00 P.M. LUNCH, Convocation Hall
1:00 P.M.—2:50 P.M.
SESSIONS 26-30
26. Curiosity as Refuge: Innovation, Genre, and Social Entanglement in Later Medieval England
Location: Torian Room
Chair: Joey McMullen
Paper: ‘Call me Mother’: Fantasies of the Sodomitic Maternal in The Greene Knight
Zachary Engledow, Indiana University Bloomington
Paper: Medieval Urban Legends: Old Warnings in New Stories
Katie Peebles, Marymount University
Paper: Magical Objects, Chastity Tests, and Female Resistance in The Wright’s Chaste Wife
Emma Gorman, Indiana University Bloomington
Comment: Randy Schiff, The University at Buffalo
27. Delivering Survival: Reproductive Justice 2
Location: McGriff Alumni House
Chairs: Carissa Harris and Sarah Baechle
Paper: Iam volo surgere: Medieval Reproductive Miracles as Communal Care
Kate Bush, The College of the Holy Cross
Paper: Delivered: Diachronic Refuge Across Marian Lyrics, 'Back Alleys,' and the OR
Sara Petrosillo, The University of Evansville
Paper: Animation, Animorphism, and Brute Care in Medieval Pearl Lore
Adin E. Lears, Virginia Commonwealth University
Comment: Lucy Barnhouse, Arkansas State University
28. Refuge and Fugitivity: Visions of Order at their Limits
Location: Gailor 110
Chair: Matthew Irvin
Paper: Crying Sanctuary: Modes of Imperialism in the Vox Clamantis
Alexa Climaldi, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Paper: Engineering Intimacy: Technologies of Refuge in the Medieval Hunt
Andrew Stone, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Paper: Magic Images, Numinous Sounds: The Production of Desire in the Liber iuratus Honorii
Chris Buonanno, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Comment: Karl Steel, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
29. Medieval Studies as Refuge
Location: Gailor 128
Chair: Heather McRae
Paper: The Medieval Origins of Western Culture: An Argument for Relevance
Katelynn Robinson, Eastern New Mexico University
Paper: Alpha and Omega: Temporality and Illumination in the Cloisters Apocalypse Manuscript
Marshall Woodward, The University of Houston
Paper: Postcolonial Medieval Philosophy: A Metanarrative Refuge
Cyrus Zargar, The University of Central Florida
Comment: Heather McRae, et al.
30. Performance as Resistance
Location: Gailor 130
Chair: Jeffery Stoyanoff
Paper: The Risks and Rewards of Performing Resistance
Carolyn Coulson, Shenandoah University
Paper: 'Friends, not customers': Medieval Drama as Modern Resistance
Heather Mitchell-Buck, Hood College
Paper: Resistive Choreographies: Dancing Counter Publics in Late Medieval Germany
Tamara McCarty
Comment: Theresa Coletti, The University of Maryland
3:00 P.M.— BREAK and COLLABORATION
3:30 P.M. Convocation Hall
3:30 P.M. – 5:20 P.M.
SESSIONS 31-35
31. Medieval Geographies and the Technologies of Resistance
Location: Torian Room
Chair: Shannon Gayk
Paper: Traumatic Repetition and Resistance to Assimilation: Balin-Balan Stories in the Suite and Malory
Randy P. Schiff, The University at Buffalo
Paper: Orientalem Oxonie: Inside the Jewish Ghetto East of Oxford
Miriamne Krummel, The University of Dayton
Paper: New News
Anthony Bale, Cambridge University
Comment: Patricia Ingham. Indiana University Bloomington
32. Gender(ed/and) Resistance
Location: McGriff Alumni House
Chairs: Sarah Baechle and Carissa Harris
Paper: Castration as 'Vigilante Justice' in Medieval England
Anna K. Davis, The Ohio State University
Paper: ‘You Should Have Nothing to Do with a Woman Like Me’: Solidarity and Strategic Gender Transgression in Medieval Wager Tales
Caitlin G. Watt, Indiana University Bloomington
Paper: Abolish the Medieval Family?: Evidence of Resistance to Patriarchy in French Legal Records
Aleksandra "Sasha" Pfau, Hendrix College
Comment: Cathy Sanok, The University of Michigan
33. The Craft of Medievalism, Then and Now
Location: Gailor 110
Chair: Mimi Ensley
Paper: Resistance, Refuge, and Beowulf in the Great War-Era Writings of Sarah L. O’Ferrall
Britt Mize, Texas A&M University
Paper: Arts and Crafts Material Medievalism as Queer Refuge: The Guild of Women Binders’ Dresden-Modelled Bindings
J.D. Sargan, The University of Georgia
Paper: The Responsibility of Medievalists: Resistance and Revolution in the Classroom
Anne Crafton, The Mississippi University for Women
Comment: Bobby Meyer-Lee, Agnes Scott College
34. (Un-) Safe Spaces
Location: Gailor 128
Chair: Adin E. Lears
Paper: Seluerles in a Somur Garnement
Cristina Maria Cervone, The University of Memphis
Paper: Gimme Shelter, Gothic Style: Piers Plowman and Architectural Space
Jim Knowles, North Carolina State University
Paper: Forging Refuge for the Piers Plowman Trajan
Chelsea Parsons, The University of Michigan
Comment: Will Rhodes, The University of Iowa
35. Resistance and Refuge through Performance
Location: Gailor 130
Chair: Jeffery Stoyanoff
Paper: Resisting Repentance: Mankind, Mercy, and Play Making
Ann Hubert, St. Lawrence University
Paper: Comic Relief and Sacred Resistance in English Holy Innocents plays
Anne Llewellyn Morgan, The University of Alabama
Paper: Claire Sponsler, John Lydgate, and the Refuge of Speculation
Clint Morrison, The University of Texas and Texas State University
Comment: Julie Paulson, San Francisco State University
5:45 P.M. PLENARY SESSION
Edward King Memorial Lecture
Naylor Auditorium
(Gailor Hall)
“Authority and Resistance at the Origins of Medieval Germany: The Accession of Otto 1 (c. 936-73) Revisited”
Levi Roach, The University of Exeter
7:00 P.M. COCKTAILS AND DINNER
Convocation Hall
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