The International Marie de France Society proposes the sessions listed below for the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies. For more information or to submit an abstract, please check out the full CFP at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call
Traditional Paper Panels
Session Title: The Limits of the Human in the Works of Marie de France
Organizer: Joseph Johnson
Co-organizer: Karen Casey Casebier
Across the range of her literary output, Marie de France interrogates the limits of human identity. From the metamorphosing beings of the Lais to the ambiguously human/non-human animals of the Fables, Marie’s corpus invites reflection into what life looks like at the boundary of humanity – as well as what lies beyond. The International Marie de France Society welcomes proposals for papers addressing these questions in any of the works traditionally attributed to Marie de France (the Lais, the Fables, the Espurgatoire seint Patriz, and/or La Vie Seinte Audree).
Session Title: Session Title: In Search of Marie de France
Organizer: Joseph Johnson
Who was Marie de France – and perhaps more importantly, who has she become in the eyes of scholars today? The International Marie de France Society welcomes papers that address any of the following questions/themes: aspects of Marie’s works that seem to hint at the author’s voice and personality; the fraught question of Marie’s actual historical identity; modern speculative/imaginative approaches to Marie’s identity such as Lauren Groff’s Matrix; the question of the “politics” or ideological stances that crystallize within these works.
Roundtable
Session Title: Marie de France in the Classroom (A Roundtable)
Organizer: Joseph Johnson
Co-organizer: Tamara Caudill
The International Marie de France Society invites proposals for short talks (8-10 minutes) addressing approaches to teaching the works of Marie de France in the classroom. Potential topics might include the use of creative processes to make Marie more accessible to students, the pairing of Marie’s works with those of her contemporaries in other cultures, and the presentation of Marie’s works in ways that foreground their cross-temporal significance. We particularly encourage contributions that discuss pedagogical strategies for teaching Marie’s works in a global context.
Performance
Session Title: Global Medieval Performance: Performing Death in the Middle Ages
Organizer: Tamara Caudill
Co-organizer: Regula Meyer Evitt, Francis J. Valencia-Turco
This session will be a Global Medieval Languages collaboration, bringing together colleagues to perform medieval poetry or dramatic pieces in a spectrum of medieval languages. The focus of the session will be on responses to and readings of death. We encourage reflective as well as resistant approaches, serious as well as comic performances. We welcome presenters from medieval English, Continental European, and Mediterranean traditions (including Iberian, Hebrew, Arabic, North African, Byzantine). We seek proposals for original-language performances of texts of any form or genre. We anticipate 3-7 performances for the session with a guided discussion afterwards.
