Beginnings and Endings

Ma fin est mon commencement
Et mon commencement ma fin

Guillaume de Machaut

Round I
12 October, Thursday, 1:00-2:30

 

1. Premodern to Modern Humanisms: Beginnings

Organizer: The BABEL Working Group

Chair: Eileen Joy, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

Co-Respondent: Myra Seaman, College of Charleston

Co-Respondent: Nelljean Rice, Coastal Carolina University

Discussants

Deirdre Joy, National Institutes of Health
(population genetics and malaria research)

Betsy McCormick, Mt. San Antonio College
(medieval literature)

Teresa Reed, Jacksonville State University
(medieval literature and feminist theory)

Michael Harper, Mt. San Antonio College
(20th-century American literature)

Valerie Vogrin, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
(novelist and memoirist)

 

2. Defining the Middle Ages

Chair and Respondent: Lester L. Field, Jr., University of Mississippi

Keith N. Knapp, The Citadel
“Did the Middle Kingdom Have a Middle Period? The Problem of ‘Medieval’ in China’s History”

John H. Newell, College of Charleston
“Seeking the Beginnings and Endings of Humanism
in Medieval and Renaissance Interpretations of Classical Myths”

 

3. Anglo-Saxon Religious Themes

Chair: Fred C. Robinson, Yale University

Andrew Rabin, University of Louisville
“Testimony and Conversion in Anglo-Saxon England: The Reader, the Narrator, and the Witness in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica”

Teresa Hooper, College of Charleston
“ ‘Bad’ Philology and Interpretation in the Medieval Phoenix Tradition”

Johanna Kramer, University of Missouri-Columbia
“ 'Thes Hælend the nu up from eow astag, he eft cymeth on domes dæg'— Judgment Day and the Ascension of Christ in Old English Literature”

 

4. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Chair: D. Thomas Hanks, Jr., Baylor University

Minghan Xiao, Hunan Normal University
“Real Tests in Real Life in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Sir Gawain’s Spiritual Quest”

Carl Larrivee, Wayne State University
“Morning, Noon, and Nighttime too: Time and Temptation in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”

Bernard Lewis, Murray State University
“Chaffer and Cheuisaunce in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”

 

5. Chaucer I: The Canterbury Tales 1

Chair: John F. Plummer, Vanderbilt University

Mary Flowers Braswell, University of Alabama-Birmingham
“Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale and Mary Eliza Haweis (1852-1898)”

Joseph E. Marshall, Catholic University of America
“ ‘The devel have part on alle swiche rekenynges’: The Shipman’s Tale as Monetary Enthymeme”

Jeremy Byars, Murray State University
“Chaucer’s Responsive Nun’s Priest: Similarities, Coincidences, and Recurrences in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale”

 

6. Art History I

Chair: Nancy L. Wicker, University of Mississippi

Annette Lermack, Illinois State University
“The Janus Head and Time in the Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg”*

Sarah Glover, Bradley University
“Happy Endings: The Virgin Mary as Empress of Hell”*

Shira Schwam-Baird, University of North Florida
“The Letters of Lucrecia and Euryalus in Text and Image: An Illuminated Manuscript of Piccolomini’s Story of Two Lovers”*

 

7. The Middle Ages and Modern Novelists

Chair: Joan Wylie Hall, University of Mississippi

Patricia Lee Yongue, University of Houston
“In Defense of Marian Forrester: Medievalism in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady”

Natalie Grinnell, Wofford College
“ ‘An Honest, Hard-working Devil’: Charlotte Haldane’s Melusine”

Cynthia A. Gravlee, University of Montevallo
“The Medieval St. Cecilia Resurrected in Louise Erdrich’s The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse”