Description
This annual graduate student conference, organized and run by advanced doctoral students, has become a premier opportunity for emerging scholars to present papers, participate in discussions, and develop collaborations across all fields of classical, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern studies. Participants from a wide variety of disciplines find a supportive and collegial forum for their work, meet future colleagues from other institutions and disciplines, and become familiar with the Newberry and its resources.
The 2025 conference program will include sessions relating to career diversity, professionalization, and rare book presentations in addition to the workshops and conference panels.
Organizers
Amber Bird, University of Alabama
Nathan Bonar, Claremont Graduate University
Sydnee Brown, University of Iowa
Katelyn Buis, University of Minnesota
Rebekkah Hart, Western Reserve University
Sam Holguin, Oklahoma State University
Sarah Sabol, Indiana University
Vivian Teresa Tompkins, Northwestern University
Emily White, Florida State University
Sharon Zhang, University of Pittsburgh
Schedule
Thursday, January 30, 2025
12:30-1:30 pm Registration (Ruggles Hall)
1:30-3:00 Session 1
Panel 1: Cultural Power of Satire (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Amber Bird
Zainab Aldaoseri (University of Arkansas), “Mockery in Verse: A Comparative Stylistic Study of Pre-Islamic and Medieval English Satirical Poetry”
Lily Cate Gunther-Canada (University of Minnesota), “Performing Monarchy: The Relationship of London Theatre to the Reception of Mary II”
Camila Micán Rondón (University of Kansas), “Resignification of Sociopatriarchal Relationships in Ana Caro's 'Valor, Agravio y Mujer'"
Panel 2: Difference as Disability (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Nathan Bonar
Sharbaditya Bandopadhyay (Miami University), “Pathogens of Morbidity and Insomnia: The Nemesis of Power and Sovereignty in Macbeth and Maqbool”
Julia Salkind (Marquette University), “Aidez le loup: Bisclavret’s Discussions on Disability’s Existence in Non-Accommodative, Ableist, and Classist Environments”
Andrew Buchheim (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Narrative Compulsions: Disability, Siege Time, and the Failures of Supersessionism in the Alliterative Siege of Jerusalem”
Panel 3: Claiming Agency through Feeling (Classroom B-82)
Chair: Kate Buis
Heather O’Leary (Illinois State University), “Invoking Gods and Man to Enact Revenge: Female Agency in Early Modern English Writing”
Maneesha Sarda (Claremont Graduate University), “Lucrece’s Anxiety and Agency in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece: A Kierkegaardian Reading”
Hannah Lee (Indiana University), “Homogenizing Difference in Hester Pulter’s The Unfortunate Florinda”
3:00-4:00 pm Meet a Newberrian (Rettinger Hall)
Elizabeth Neary, Associate Director of Fellowships
4:30-5:30 pm Keynote Conversation (Ruggles Hall)
Speakers:
Hayley Cotter (University of Massachusetts-Amherst)
Josefrayn Sanchez-Perry (Loyola University Chicago)
Christopher Fletcher (Newberry Library)
5:30-7:00 pm Reception (Ruggles Hall)
Friday, January 31, 2025
9:00-9:30 am Light Breakfast (Ruggles Hall)
9:30-11:00 am Session 2
Panel 4: Watery Worlds (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Vivian Thompkins
María José Cornejo (Northwestern University), “Neptune’s Governance: Humanist Culture and Colonial Engineering in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Neptuno alegórico”
Elizabeth Purnell (University of Mississippi), “King Lear of the Bogs: Landscape and Identity in William Shakespeare’s King Lear”
Kitt Westerduin (Indiana University), “Echoes of a Sacred Ecology: Reconstructing Sounds of Pre-colonial Water Management Rituals in Tenochtitlan”
Panel 5: Crafting Feminine Literary Identities (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Sydnee Brown
Sara Price (University of Louisville), “Worthy of Being Crowned with Laurel: The Early Poetic Authorship and Authority of Christine de Pizan”
August Rickard (Saint Louis University), “Gender, Authority, and the Portraits of 17th-Century Medical Writers”
Stephanie Beauval (University of Chicago), “Gender and Sublimity in Dacier’s Literary Identity”
Panel 6: Visual Landscape of Faith (Classroom B-82)
Chair: Sam Holguin
Jingyi Dai (Northwestern University), “Commemorating the Distant: Medieval Tombstones of the Dominican Church of San Paolo in Genoese Galata”
Sarah Frisbie (Case Western Reserve University), “'One God, One Light, One Cause:' Materialities of Stained Glass in an Auvergnois Trinity”
Theresa Marks (University of Oklahoma), “The Cathedral of San Cerbone (C.1150-1325); an Exegesis of its Hagiographic Sculptural Program”
11:00-11:30 am Break
11:30 am-1:00 pm Session 3
Panel 7: From Conversing to Conversion (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Sharon Zhang
Halil Burak Iri (University of Notre Dame), “Missionary Strategies and Cultural Conquest: The Conversion of Muslim Children in Jacques de Vitry's Fifth Crusade Letters”
Aimee Shulman (Wayne State University), “'Their Cursed Tenets:' Jacobites & Whigs in Religious Conversation Through Song”
Ianick Takaes de Oliveira (Columbia University), “Apocalypse, Colonial Epistemicide, and Salvation in José López de los Ríos’s Postrimerías (1684)”
Panel 8: Order in the Court! (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Emily White
Sonia Beltz (University of Minnesota), “A Home Made and Wrecked: Historical Speculation and the Role of Alice Arden in Arden of Faversham”
Ronny Azuaje (Texas Tech University), “Until the Master Do Them Part: The Marital Defense of María Marcela Monsalve, an Afro-descendant Woman from 18th-Century Caracas”
Lance Pederson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), “An Italian Poison in the Château de Saint-Cloud: Sexuality and Conspiracy in Early Modern France”
Panel 9: On and Beyond the Page (Classroom B-82)
Chair: Nathan Bonar
Alexandra Butterfield (Emory University), “The Strasbourg Manuscript’s Purgatory: A Burnt-up Text’s Take on Being Body-less”
Savannah Hunter (Oklahoma State University), “Sacred Illuminations: The Visual Analysis and Historical Emphasis of Jewish and Islamic Holy Texts”
Cate Kurtz (Oklahoma State University), “Ornament or Repair: Parchment Production, Embroidery, and Cistercian Nun Involvement in crafting a Fifteenth-Sixteenth Century Hymnal””
1:00-2:00 pm Lunch
2:00-3:00 pm Collection Presentation (Baskes Boardroom)
3:30-5:00 pm Session 4
Panel 10: There’s Actually Much To Do About “Nothing” (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Sydnee Brown
Melanie Landsittel (University of Iowa), “Examining Labors of the Month: A Divine Right to Wintertime Leisure”
Morgan Thomas (University of Alabama), “'Can this be true?': Assessing the Narrative Value of Hero in Much Ado About Nothing”
Hannah McClain (University of Texas-Austin), “'A Sweet and Gentle Rule': Roman Convertite and the Failure of Monastic Reform”
Panel 11: (De/Re)Constructing Identity (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Vivian Thompkins
Andrea Armijos Echeverría (Ohio State University), “Buy, Sell, Claim, Flee: The Legal Margins of Being a Woman, Urban, and Indian in the 17th/18th-century Andes”
Nicholas Molinary (University of Arizona), “Banishing the Animal Image: Iconoclasm and Inscription in the New World”
Thomas Prime (Western Ontario University), “Lady Eleanor Davies in Drag: Using Symbolic Female-to-Male Crossdressing to Claim Authority as a Biblical Antitype”
Panel 12: Oh, When the Saints.... (Classroom B-82)
Chair: Rebekkah Hart
Sophia Spralja (Yale University), “Revealing the Hidden Hands: The Intersection of Science, Restoration, and Accessibility in Exhibiting Religious Art at the Vatican Museums”
Haley Turner (University of Aberdeen), “Aspiring to be Catherine: Relics, pilgrimage practice, and the Feminine Ideal in Medieval France “
Isabel Brady (Florida State University), “St. George, Relics, and the Myth-Making of Venice’s Maritime Empire”
Saturday, February 1, 2025
9:00-9:30 am Light Breakfast (Ruggles Hall)
9:30-11:20 am Session 5
Panel 13: The Before- and After-Lives of Creation Narratives (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Amber Bird
Margarita Buitrago (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), “Mapping Boccaccian Literary Geographies in Lope de Rueda’s La Tierra de Jauja: The Hispanicization of the Cockaigne Legend through the Calandrino Novellas”
Ryan Kachnowski (Michigan State University), “Revisiting the Reconquista: Medieval Narratives and Modern Extremism in Spain”
Cecelia Swartz (University of Notre Dame), “Crones, Crowns, and Crows: Images of the Sovereignty Goddess in Howl’s Moving Castle”
Patrick Lindsey (Northern Illinois University), “'Must Be a Devil between Us': Demonic Consciousness and the Self-Fashioning of the Fallen Angels”
Panel 14: The Western Gaze on the East (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Sharon Zhang
Zixiao Huang (University of Pittsburgh), “In Search of the Asian Magus: Rereading Andrea Mantegna’s Adoration”
Prapti Panda (Northwestern University), “Assembling Land in the Western Indian Ocean: A Cartographic Exploration of Early Modern Iberian Visions of Empire”
Arka Maitra (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), “The Orientalist Dilemma: Charles Wilkins’ Bhagvad Gita”
Maureen McCord (University of Chicago), “The Bombay Theater of the Anglo-Mughal War and the Crisis of Monopoly, c. 1686-1708”
11:20-11:30 am Break
11:30 am-1:00 pm Session 6
Panel 15: Staging Legitimacy (Baskes Boardroom)
Chair: Kate Buis
Francisco Rivera (Western Michigan University), “Fernández de Oviedo: His Criticism on Chivalric Romance”
Abigale Luber (Tulane University), “Imperial Apollo: Augustus, Louis XIV, and Divine Rulership”
Sophia Moyers (Western Michigan University), "Soundscapes of Tudor Pageantry: Trumpets, Bells, and Horse Clops”
Panel 16: All the World’s a Stage (Rettinger Hall)
Chair: Sarah Sabol
Sara Subotić (Loyola University Chicago), “'Here, cousin, seize the crown': Power and Legitimacy in Shakespeare’s Richard II”
Elene Peña Argüeso (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), “Rebellious Subjects: The Dutch in Lope de Vega’s Theatre”
Madeleine Trepanier (Yale University), “‘Behold!’: Theatricality and Sacrament in The Tempest”