Visions of Empire Conference Program

6th Annual Medievalists @ Penn Graduate Conference

Friday, February 28, 2014   8:30am – 5:30pm

Class of 1955 Conference Room

Van Pelt Library, Second Floor, 

University of Pennsylvania

8:30-9:00         Registration and breakfast

9:00-9:15         Welcoming Remarks; Jacqueline Burek, University of Pennsylvania

9:15-10:45     Foundations of Imperial Power

Chair: Samantha Pious, University of Pennsylvania
Respondent: Emily Steiner, Associate Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

Christina Virok, Villanova University
Constructing and Legitimizing National Identity: A Brief Comparison of 
Virgil’s Aeneid and Wace’s Roman de Rou

Nicholas A. Pelullo, Villanova University
Knights and the Res Publica: The Role of the Warrior in the Geopolitics of 
Christendom

Jonathan Stavsky, University of Pennsylvania
"Susanna figuram Ecclesiae habet": Negotiating Spiritual and Temporal Power through 
Biblical Typology

10:45-11:00     Coffee Break

11:00-12:30     Eastern Alterity in European Imaginaries

Chair: Marie Turner, University of Pennsylvania
Respondent: Kevin Brownlee, Professor of Romance Languages, University of
Pennsylvania

Nicole Slipp, Queen's University
Marco? Polo! Finding Merchants' Value in the Devisement dou monde

Sierra Lomuto, University of Pennsylvania
Between the Great Khan and Prester John: Legacies of the Mongolian Empire
in Mandeville's Travels 

Sarah Townsend, University of Pennsylvania
Familiar Distance: Medievalism and Colonialism in Richard Francis Burton's 1885
Translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night

12:30-1:45       Lunch Break

1:45-2:15         Manuscript Exhibit, Lea Library

 2:15-3:45        Imperial Subjects and the Construction of Empire

                        

Chair: Erika Smith, University of Pennsylvania

Respondent: Ann Matter, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Daniel Davies, University of Pennsylvania

The Nonsovereign Exception: The Kingis Quair and the Negativities of Courtly Love

Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh, University of California, Berkeley

Visualizing the Saracen: Contradiction between Text & Image in the Auchinleck's King of Tars

Sylvia Grove, University of Pittsburgh

Appetites to Inspire an Empire: Food and the Failure of France in Honoret 

Bovet’s L’Apparicion maistre Jean de Meun

3:45-4:00         Coffee Break

4:00-5:30         Keynote Address

Maud McInerney, Haverford College

Crooked Greek: Genealogy and Prophecy in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Aeneid VI

5:30                 Reception

Conference is free and open to the public. To register, please email pennmedieval@gmail.com with your name and institutional affiliation. 

        

Medievalists @ Penn is grateful to the generous support of our conference sponsors: School of Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Government, Department of English Graduate Studies, Program in Comparative Literature & Literary Theory, Department of French Studies, Department of Classical Studies, Department of History