May 9, 8:30 AM: Gender and Power in the Middle Ages

This conference brings together scholars who are among those currently doing the most exciting and ground-breaking work on the problem of the relationship between gender and power in the medieval world in a workshop-like setting, to discuss the state of the field. Each speaker will have a fifty-minute session, which they will structure as they wish: they may choose to deliver a paper and leave time for questions, or they may present a pre-circulated primary source, paper, work-in-progress, or theoretical piece about which they can lead a discussion. Topics addressed include: the role of charisma and personality; the use of rhetorics of sexuality; power and cultural production; power and human reproduction; friendship and power, and the role human networks play in the deployment of power. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, drawing from work in History, Literature, and Art History. Our goal is to move beyond the excellent descriptive work that has been done in recent years on the subject of gender and power in order to develop new frameworks and models. Tuesday, May 9 8:30am Breakfast 9:00am Miriam Shadis (Ohio U): Ivanka You Sit Right Here, or, The Three Teresas: mothers, daughters, proxy wives and legitimizing the state in early Portugal 10:00am Simon Doubleday (Hofstra): “Fine word, ‘legitimate’!” A natural daughter in thirteenth-century Iberia 11:00 Jennifer Thibodeaux (UW Whitewater): Masculinity, power and crisis in late medieval Normandy 12:00pm Lunch 1:30pm Valerie Garver (NIU): Gender, Textiles, and the Carolingian Imperial Title 2:30pm Cecily Hilsdale (McGill): Byzantine Things and the Aspirations of Sovereignty: Gender, Power, and Materiality 3:30-3:45pm Break 3:45pm Sean Gilsdorf (Harvard): Six Authors in Search of a Character: Brunhild and Gendered Power 4:45pm Irina Dumitrescu (Bonn): Ambivalent Charisma: Power, Vulnerability, and Legendary Women Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, the Nicholson Center for British Studies, and the Franke Institute.

Date: May 9, 2017
Time: 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM

See:https://voices.uchicago.edu/genderpower/