MARGERY KEMPE STUDIES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD
5th -7th April 2018
We are grateful for the support of:
The John Fell Fund, Oxford University
University College, Oxford
Society for Medieval Languages and Literatures
Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship
THURSDAY 5TH APRIL
09.30-10.00 Registration and coffee
10.00-10.15 Welcome and opening remarks
10.15-11.15 Plenary 1: Professor Anthony Bale: “Whose Margery Kempe?”
Chair: Diane Watt
11.15-11.45 Coffee
11.45-13.15 Panel 1: Space and Self
Chair: Laura Varnam
Alicja Kowalczewska: Kempe and Glück: Performance of Transgressive Self
Ruth Evans: Margery Kempe’s Internal Reality
Juliana Dresvina: Creating a Margery-Sized Space: Margery Kempe’s Psychological Defences and Offences
13.15-14.15 Lunch
14.15-15.45 Panel 2: Care and Cure
Chair: Annie Sutherland
Ivan Day (food historian): Medieval Food and the Medicinal Use of Sugar
Laura Kalas Williams: The Swetenesse of Confection: A Recipe for Spiritual Health in London, British Library, Additional MS 61823
Michael Leahy: The Intimacies of Care: Margery Kempe and her Patients
15.45-16.15 Coffee
16.15-18.00 Panel 3: Sights, Sounds, Senses
Chair: Hannah Lucas
Rachel Moss: Falling in Love and Crying: Academic Culture and What Margery Can Teach Us
Laura Varnam: Framing The Book of Margery Kempe: How the Good Mystic Taught her Readers
Katherine Lewis: ‘And þerfore sche dede no þing wryten but þat sche knew ryghth wel for very trewth’: Margery Kempe, Oral History, and the Value of Subjective Memory
Einat Klafter: ‘Boldly take me in the armys of thi sowle’: The Eschewing of Somatic and Erotic Language in Margery Kempe’s Unio Dei
18.00-19.30 Wine reception (sponsored by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship) and Poster session. A toast will be proposed by Clarissa Atkinson, author of Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe.
Posters will be presented by: Charlotte Knight, Martin Laidlaw, William Storm, Meagan Khoury, and Eva Sanchez.
FRIDAY 6TH APRIL
09.15-10.45 Panel 4: Dialogues
Chair: Liz Herbert McAvoy
Clarck Drieshen: The Fourteenth-Century Christi Leiden in einer Vision geschaut as a Source for Margery Kempe’s Visions of the Passion
Diana Denissen: Social Exclusion as Self-Representation in Margery Kempe’s Book and Alijt Bake’s Boecxhen
Godelinde Perk: Channel-Hopping Saints: Margery Kempe as Modern Devout Mystic
10.45-11.15 Coffee
11.15-12.45 Panel 5: Historicity
Chair: Laura Varnam
Susan Maddock: ‘Comyn hom into Lynne’: The Historicity of Margery Kempe’s Book in Relation to her Home Town
Pat Cullum: Monitoring, Mentoring, and Admonition: Margery Kempe and the Prelates
Vincent Gillespie: The Latin Margery Kempe
12.45-13.45 Lunch
13.45-14.45 Plenary 2: Dr Sarah Salih: “Margery and Marina: The Book of Margery Kempe as Performance Archive”
Chair: Vincent Gillespie
14.45-15.15 Coffee
15.15-17.15 Panel 6: Performances
Chair: Laura Kalas Williams
Margaret Sheble: Queer Eye for God: Reading Margery Kempe as Female Masculine
Hannah Lucas: Clad in Flesch and Blood: The Sartorial Body and Female Self-Fashioning in The Book of Margery Kempe
Tara Williams: Revisiting Margery and Julian’s Holy Dalyawns
17.15-17.30 Comfort break and move to college chapel
17.30-19.30 Marge & Jules performance
19.30 Conference dinner (University College dining hall)
SATURDAY 7TH APRIL
09.30-11.00 Panel 7: Devotions and Receptions
Chair: Pat Cullum
Sue Niebryzdowski: ‘Wolcomyd and mech made of in dyvers placys’: The Shared Piety of the Citizens of York and Margery Kempe
Josephine Koster: ‘I cry the mercy, blisful Lord’: The Prayers of Margery Kempe and the Construction of Orthodoxy
Sarah Macmillan: Margery in Print: Asceticism and Imitatio
11.00-11.30 Coffee
11.30-13.00 Plenary 3: Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy and Professor Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa: “Many a good boke of hy contemplacyon . . . & swech oþer: The Intertextual Dialogue and Conversational Theology of Mechthild of Hackeborn and Margery Kempe”
Chair: Katherine Lewis
13.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00-15.30 Panel 8: Theorising Identity
Chair: Einat Klafter
Christina Hildebrandt: The Book of Margery Kempe, Disability, and the Power of Discourse
Johannes Wolf: Margery Kempe as De-Facement: Pathology, Autobiography, and ‘this Creatur’
Dorothy Kim: Margery Kempe in Jerusalem: Sonic Wars, Religious Soundscapes, and Christian Noise
15.30-16.00 Coffee
16.00-17.15 Plenary 4: Professor Diane Watt: “Growing Old With Margery Kempe: Reflections and Responses”
Chair: Laura Kalas Williams
17.15-17.30 Reflections
A PDF of the provisional programme can be downloaded here: Updated MK Programme 18.3.18
