UPDATE: With the cancellation of the 2020 International Congress on Medieval Studies due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Pearl-poet Society has taken the ICMS organisers’ invitation to re-submit this year’s panels for the 2021 Congress; all participants who were to present this year are automatically accepted for May 2021. We ask, however, that participants contact our VP, Ashley Bartelt, so that we know if we have any openings to fill during the summer proposal season.

(original post below)

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With the team at Western Michigan University posting the sneak preview of the schedule for the 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies, the International Pearl-poet Society is pleased to announce our line-up of six sponsored sessions for the 2020 gathering, including a co-sponsored session with the Medieval Association of the Midwest.

Always insightful, lively, and collegial, the Society’s sessions this year explore a wide range of topics, from the materiality of the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript to gender issues, the mystical tradition, and modern adoptions adaptations of Sir Gawain across several genres.

All our sessions are organised by the brilliant Ashley E. Bartelt (Northern Illinois University). A PDF of the info posted below is available here.

The Pearl-poet Society is looking forward to yet another exciting and thought-provoking year at Kalamazoo!

(Cotton Nero A.x, ff. 94v-95r)

Friday @ 3.30 PM (Session 270)

Bernhard 209

Form and Structure in MS Cotton Nero A.x. (A Roundtable)

Presider: Kimberly Jack, Athens State Univ.

‘More New Light on the Gawain-Manuscript: Multispectral Imaging and British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x.’

Murray McGillivray, Univ. of Calgary

‘Manicules and More: Scribal Ordinatio in British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x.’

Kenna L. Olsen, Mount Royal Univ.

‘“Wer I as hastif as Þou”: Protrepsis and Audience Identification in Patience’

Caleb Molstad, Univ. of Minnesota–Twin Cities

 

Saturday @ 10.00 AM (Session 332)

Bernhard 210

Ain’t Misbehaving: Medieval English Women Doing Good Works by Nefarious Means

co-sponsored with Medieval Association of the Midwest (MAM)

co-organised with Mickey Sweeney

Presider: Alison Langdon, Western Kentucky Univ.

‘The Midwife in Lay Le Freine: The Misuse of Power for the Preservation of Souls’

Kimberly Tate Anderson, Wittenberg Univ.

‘Good Women, Bad Men: The Cost of Saving Souls’

Mickey Sweeney, Dominican Univ.

‘Malory’s Dame Brusen: Good or Evil?’

Katharine Mudd, Northern Illinois Univ.

 

Saturday @ 12.00 PM

Fetzer 1060

 International Pearl-poet Society Business Meeting

 

Saturday @ 1.30 PM (Session 408_

Schneider 1235

The Final Frontier: Embodied Space in the Works of the Pearl-poet

Presider: Matthew Boyd Goldie, Rider Univ.

‘What Happens on the Frontier . . . : Morgan LeFey, Feminist Outreach, and Agency in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’

Kara Larson Maloney, Canisius College

‘Dancing in Place: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Arthurian Dance Spaces’

Clint Morrison Jr., Ohio State Univ. (Karrer Travel Award Winner)

‘Penance, Labor, and the Land in Cleanness and Pearl’

Rafael Jaime, Univ. of California–Los Angeles

 

Saturday @ 3.30PM (Session 459)

Schneider 1235

The Pearl-poet: Modern Connections, Adaptations, and Evolutions

Presider: Lisa M. Horton, Univ. of Minnesota–Duluth

‘Young Brightblade and the Green Knight: An Appropriation of the Pearl-Poet in Modern Fantasy Fiction’

Carl B. Sell, Oklahoma Panhandle State Univ.

‘Women’s Presence and Power in Children’s Versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’

Amber Dunai, Texas A&M Univ.–Central Texas

‘The Mysterious Affair at Camelot: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Whodunit Narrativity’

Celine Vezina, Yale Univ.

 

Sunday @ 8.30 AM (Session 485)

Bernhard 208

Acceptance and Resistance: Emotional Tension in the Pearl-poet

Presider: Amber Dunai, Texas A&M Univ.–Central Texas

‘“In a Stonen Statue Þat Salt Sauor Habbes”: Anger and the Lithic Body of Lot’s Wife in Cleanness’

Christopher David Queen, Univ. of California–Riverside

‘Virtue and Activity in Patience’

Joseph Turner, Univ. of Louisville

‘“Suffering Sele”: Jonah and the Worm’

Jo Nixon, Univ. of Chicago

‘Chivalric Performance and Hollow Faith: Gawain’s Three Confessions in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’

Elise Robbins, Purdue Univ.

 

Sunday @ 10.00 AM (Session 508)

Bernhard 208

“In aventure þer mervayles meven”: The Mystical Tradition in the Pearl-Poet and Analogues

Presider: Kristin Bovaird-Abbo, Univ. of Northern Colorado

‘The Pearl-Poet in the Platonic Mystical Tradition’

Matthew W. Brumit, Univ. of Mary

‘Teaching the Ineffable: Mysticism and Instruction in the Pearl-Poems’

Rachel A. Shunk, Univ. of Dallas

‘“Hit is to dere a date”: Mystical Language and Its Limits in Pearl’

André Babyn, Univ. of Toronto

Respondent: Ann F. Brodeur, Univ. of Mary