CFP International Medieval Society – Paris

18th Annual Conference/ 18e colloque annuel
July  3-5, 2025
Medieval Communities”
Date limite pour les résumés de sessions ou de communications :
1er décembre 2024

Conférences plénières :
“Jehanne la Fouaciere: Parisian widow, linen merchant — and Beguine?”
Sharon Farmer, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Les chanoines de Saint-Hilaire de Poitiers et leur saint patron au XIe siècle :
une mise en images dans l’espace ecclésial de la communauté
autour du fondateur de l’Église locale “
Cécile Voyer, Centre d’Etudes supérieures de civilisation médiévale,
l’Université de Poitiers

Comment les gens au Moyen Âge définissaient-ils, créaient-ils et maintenaient-ils les communautés dont ils faisaient partie ? La Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris (IMS-Paris) appelle à recevoir des propositions de communication ou de session dans le cadre de son colloque de 2025 sur le thème des communautés dans la France médiévale. Le terme de « communauté » peut être compris au sens large : tout groupement de personnes partageant des caractéristiques, des valeurs affectives ou des intérêts particuliers, et se percevant comme distinct des autres. Qu’il s’agisse de communes, de monastères, de confréries, ou de rassemblements de guerriers, de lépreux ou d’aveugles, les femmes et hommes du Moyen Âge ont su tisser des liens affectifs étroits et créer de multiples rituels et autres pratiques communautaires. Nous espérons avec cette conférence mettre en valeur de nouvelles pistes de recherche pour mieux comprendre la conception médiévale de la communauté au Moyen Age.

La question de la communauté peut être explorée sous différents angles :

  • Par ses dimensions matérielles, par exemple via le bâti ou la culture matérielle (art, costumes, insignes, etc.)
  • Par l’utilisation de l’espace, y compris dans sa fonction performative. Par exemple, le rôle des rituels religieux et profanes, des processions urbaines, de la musique, du théâtre, des tournois et des fêtes qui ont contribué à l’établissement ou au renforcement de diverses communautés.
  • Par le biais des normes et règlements, qu’ils aient été mis par écrit (telles que les règles monastiques) ou non (telles que les coutumes), pour les communautés paysannes, les guildes, les regroupements commerciaux, les ordres militaires et autres communautés religieuses.
  • Par l’étude des communautés marginalisées de toute sorte, y compris celles de personnes handicapées, de minorités religieuses et de groupements ludiques.
  • Par une discussion des théories sur la communauté, telles celles de Victor Turner, Roberto Esposito, la « neighbor theory» et d’autres.
  • En s’interrogeant sur les hiérarchies au sein des communautés, les tensions entre l’individu et le groupe ou entre les membres d’une communauté donnée et ceux qui en étaient exclus, et en tenant compte des questions des origines ethniques, des conditions socioéconomiques, de sexe et d’âge.
  • En examinant les fondements intellectuels, spirituels ou économiques de l’idée de communauté. Comment l’appartenance à une communauté donnée a-t-elle été vécue et comment a-t-elle été envisagée ?
  • En examinant les communautés émotionnelles et leurs pratiques (voir entre autres le travail de Barbara H. Rosenwein).
  • En examinant la formation et le maintien de l’identité et des pratiques communautaires.
  • À travers des représentations textuelles et visuelles des communautés, aussi bien réelles qu’imaginées.

Les propositions doivent porter sur la France pendant le Moyen Age, mais  peuvent ne pas se limiter exclusivement à cette période ni à cette zone géographique. Nous encourageons les propositions de communication dans tous les domaines des études médiévales, y compris en anthropologie, archéologie, histoire, histoire économique et sociale, histoire de l’art, études de genre, études littéraires, musicologie et philosophie.

Les propositions de 300 mots ou moins (en anglais ou en français) pour une communication de 20 minutes doivent être envoyées par courriel (email) à imsparissymposium@gmail.com au plus tard le 1er décembre 2024. Chaque proposition doit être accompagnée des coordonnées complètes des personnes qui présenteront, leur CV et leur liste du matériel audiovisuel nécessaire.

Veuillez noter que l’examen des propositions de communications faites à l’IMS-Paris est un processus très compétitif qui se déroule à l’aveugle. Le comité de sélection informera les candidats de ses décisions par courriel avant le 31 janvier 2025.

Les titres des communications qui ont été acceptées seront mentionnés sur le site web de la Société IMS-Paris. Les conférenciers seront responsables de leurs dépenses pour leurs déplacements et leur logement à Paris, ainsi que du coût d’inscription à la conférence. Celui-ci s’élève à 50 euros ; pour les étudiants, les personnes à la retraite, les sans-emplois, et ceux en position précaire, il est de 35 euros.

IMS-Paris est un organisme interdisciplinaire et bilingue (français/anglais) dont l’objectif est de favoriser les échanges entre médiévistes français et étrangers. Pour déjà plus d’une décennie, l’IMS aide les médiévistes venant en France pour le travail, les études ou la recherche. Pour plus d’information sur l’IMS-Paris, voir le site web :  https://imsparis.hypotheses.org/

Call for Papers
The International Medieval Society-Paris / Société internationale des médiévistes de Paris
18th Annual Conference/ 18e colloque annuel
July  3-5, 2025
Medieval Communities”
Deadline for Abstracts: December 1, 2024

 Keynote Addresses :
“Jehanne la Fouaciere: Parisian widow, linen merchant — and Beguine?”
Sharon Farmer, Department of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Les chanoines de Saint-Hilaire de Poitiers et leur saint patron au XIe siècle :
une mise en images dans l’espace ecclésial de la communauté autour du fondateur de l’Église locale “
Cécile Voyer, Centre d’Etudes supérieures de civilisation médiévale,
l’Université de Poitiers

How did people in the Middle Ages define, create, and maintain a sense of community?  The International Medieval Society, Paris (IMS-Paris) invites abstracts and session proposals for our 2025 symposium on the theme of Communities in Medieval France.  The word “community” may be defined as a group of people with shared characteristics, emotional values, or interests who perceive themselves as distinct from others.  From communes, monasteries and confraternities to soldiers, lepers, and the blind, medieval people formed close emotional ties and created rituals and other practices that constituted community. This symposium invites new lines of investigation that will deepen our knowledge of the medieval sense of community, broadly defined.

The question of Community can be explored in innumerable ways:

  • Through its material dimensions, such as different forms of architecture and material culture (art, costumes, badges, etc.)
  • Through uses of space and their performative function.  For instance, the role of religious and secular rituals, urban processions, music, theater, tournaments, and feasts that contributed to the establishment or solidification of community.
  • Through rituals, texts (such as rules), or oral regulations (such as customs), for peasant communities, guilds, trade groups, military orders, and other religious communities.
  • Through the study of a wide range of marginalized communities, including communities of the disabled, religious minorities, and gaming communities.
  • Through a discussion of theories of community, such as those of Victor Turner, Roberto Esposito, “neighbor theory,” and others.
  • Through an interrogation of the presence of hierarchies within communities, tensions between the individual and the group and between insiders and outsiders, and a consideration of class, gender, age, and race.
  • Through an examination of the intellectual, spiritual, or economic underpinnings of the idea of community. How was community experienced and how was it envisioned?
  • Through an examination of emotional communities and their practices (as in the work of Barbara H. Rosenwien, among others).
  • Through an examination of the formation and maintenance of communal identity and practice.
  • Through textual and visual representations of communities, both real and imagined.

Proposals should focus on France during the Middle Ages, but do not need to be exclusively limited to this period and geographical area. We encourage proposals and papers from all fields of medieval studies, such as anthropology, archeology, history, economic and social history, art history, gender studies, literary studies, musicology, philosophy, etc.

Proposals of 300 words or less (in English or French) for a 20-minute paper should be e-mailed to imsparissymposium@gmail.com  no later than December 1, 2024. Each should be accompanied by full contact information, a short bio, and a list of required audiovisual equipment.

Please be aware that the IMS-Paris submissions review process is highly competitive and is carried out on a strictly blind basis. The selection committee will notify applicants of its decision by e-mail by January 31, 2025.

Titles of accepted papers will be made available on the IMS-Paris website. Authors of accepted papers will be responsible for their own travel and lodging costs and conference registration fee (50 euros, 35 euros for students, retirees, adjunct faculty and the unwaged; free for members of partner institutions and groups).

The IMS-Paris is an interdisciplinary, bilingual (French/English) organization that fosters exchanges between French and foreign scholars. For more than a decade, the IMS has served as a center for medievalists who travel to France to conduct research, work, or study. For more information about the IMS-Paris, please visit our website:  https://imsparis.hypotheses.org/

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CFP Extension – Global Medieval Performance

Call for Performances: ICMS Kalamazoo, May 8-10, 2025
Global Medieval Performance: Performing Death in the Middle Ages

CFP EXTENSION: Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Sponsoring Organizations: International Marie de France Society; La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS)

Global Medieval Performance: Performing Death in the Middle Ages. 

We welcome proposals for performances In this global performance session at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS, May 8-10, 2025, Western Michigan University).

This session will include three to seven performers of medieval narrative. Performers will present works that offer culturally intersectional responses to/readings of death. This performance session brings together performed texts from a diverse geographic and linguistic range: French, Iberian, Italian, English, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Byzantine, North African narratives. With mortality as their shared cultural concern, these texts read aloud or performed will enhance our modern understanding of the linguistic richness and intersectional cultural experience of medieval narratives of death.

Please send your brief description (50-100 words) of a scene from a work that you are interested in performing by Wednesday, October 30, 2024 to Regula Meyer Evitt [rmevitt@coloradocollege.edu], Tamara Caudill [tcaudil1@ju.edu].

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CFP – Kalamazoo 2025

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.

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Talks of Interest at Kalamazoo (2024 edition)

Going to Kalamazoo this year? The International Marie de France Society proposes three panels and a business meeting.

S346, Saturday 10am, Sangren Hall 1750
Marie de France and the Medieval Fable Tradition: Text, Image, and Context
Sponsor: International Marie de France Society
Presider: Simonetta Cochis, Transylvania Univ.
Organizer: Joseph R. Johnson, Georgetown Univ., Karen Casey Casebier, Univ. of Tennessee–Chattanooga

  • The Fox in Marie de France’s Fables and in the Kalila wa Dimna
    Anna D. Russakoff, American Univ. of Paris
  • Les Fables de Marie de France and the French Bestiary Tradition
    Karen Casey Casebier
  • Gender and Genesis: Marie’s “The Man and the Serpent” in its Manuscript Contexts
    Joseph R. Johnson

International Marie de France Business Meeting
Saturday, 12-1pm, Student Center 3205

396, Saturday 1pm, Sangren Hall 1750
Monstrosity, Madness, and Marie de France
Sponsor: International Marie de France Society
Presider: Tamara Bentley Caudill, Jacksonville Univ.
Organizer: Joseph R. Johnson, Georgetown Univ.; Leslie Anderson, Washington and Lee Univ

  • Marie de France and the Hermeneutics of Dismemberment
    Vesta Pitts, Stanford Univ.
  • The Werewolf, the Wildman, and the Mad Warrior in Marie de France’s Bisclavret
    Erin Cadenhead, Independent Scholar
  • Bisclavret to Barker: The Werewolf Always Returns
    Jake Brewer, Tarleton State Univ

S443, Saturday, 3:30 pm, Sangren Hall 1750
Women and Knowledge in the Works of Marie de France (A Roundtable)
Sponsor: International Marie de France Society
Presider: Joseph R. Johnson, Georgetown Univ.
Organizer: Joseph R. Johnson; Leslie Anderson, Washington and Lee Univ.

A roundtable discussion with Ellen M. Thorington, Ball State Univ.; Kathryn Elizabeth Sanford, Univ. of Miami; Jillian Kern, Univ. of North Carolina–Chapel Hill; Laine E. Doggett, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

S485, Saturday, 7pm, Sangren Hall 1750
Performances of Marie de France
Sponsor: International Marie de France Society
Presider: Regula Meyer Evitt, Colorado College
Organizer: Joseph R. Johnson, Georgetown Univ.; Tamara Bentley Caudill, Jacksonville Univ.

A performance by Joseph Brantley, Univ. of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music; Alexander Volokh, Emory Law School; Tamara Bentley Caudill; Yvonne LeBlanc, Independent Scholar; Simonetta Cochis, Transylvania Univ.


In addition to the panels above, here are some additional talks to mark in your program.

  • S143 Thursday, 3:30 pm
    Defying Feminine and Masculine Expectations in Marie de France’s Lanval, Katarina M. Rexing, Western Michigan Univ.
  • S232 Friday, 1:30 pm
    Teaching Marie de France’s Bisclavret in a Men’s Prison: Masculinity, Monstrosity, and Mediation, Karen J. Taylor, Morehead State Univ.
  • S235 Friday, 1:30 pm
    Reinventing the Scene: The Role of Reciprocity in Marie de France’s “Correction” of Courtly Love in Lanval, Emily Eikost, Ohio State Univ
  • S359 Saturday, 10 am
    Space, Place, and the Promise of the Convent in Eliduc, Katherine Kong
    Implications of Lay Piety in the Vie Seinte Audrée as Told by Marie de France, Christina Marie Virok, Independent Scholar


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Call for Papers – “Marie de Trans”

From the Editors:

Meg Cornell and Sara Petrosillo are seeking abstract proposals for chapter contributions to an edited collection titled Marie de Trans: Tranimality, Translation, and Transformation in Marie de France’s Lais.  

black and white image

Guigemar; Equitan; Le Fresne; Bisclavret; Lanval; Deus Amanz; Yonec; Laüstic; Milun; Le Chaitivel, ou Quatre Dols; Chevrefoil; Guildelüec et Guilliadun, ou Eliduc appear together or separate in manuscripts, anthologies, or syllabi. They entertain and they teach, but they resist moral approaches in their depictions of open borders between bodies and outside of or around binaries. Inspired by the Lais’inherent dissolution of borders between languages, genders, sexes, classes, or species, this collection seeks to center Trans Studies first and foremost. How might we attend to all that is not hetero and cis within the lais, and luxuriate in their expanded trans studies possibilities? Evan Hayward and Jami Weinstein preface their 2015 “Tranimalities” special issue of TSQ with the claim: “tranimals have the transformative power to interrupt humanism and its sexually differentiated legacy by challenging the boundaries between, and existence of, differentiated, essential kinds” (201). We ask, how do animals stand out within the medieval genre of the lai to lend form to trans approaches in ways that fables or allegories might not? How does tranimality interact with cisnormative time/space in the lais, and what queer reorientations might it provide audiences then and now? 

In their proposals, contributors might: 

  • engage in the productive tension between Trans Studies and Queer Studies 
  • use the lais to explore ecofeminism or Anthropocene and Trans Studies together 
  • take a Trans Studies comparative and/or intercultural approach to translations of the lais into another language (i.e. Middle English, Old Norse) 
  • employ diachronic Trans Studies approaches to the lais (i.e. 19th century American collection The Old-fashioned Fairy Book by Mrs. Burton Harrison
  • connect other works that intersect with tranimality and transformation within the lais 
  • offer trans readings across the lais, within the transitions and/or through the Prologue  
  • consider spaces of transformation, confinement, or movement as loci for tranimality within the lais 
  • consider trans affect, think with “trans maladjustment,” and postulate lai models of trans disability 
  • consider the lais and diachronic models of trans education, trans inclusive librarianship, and trans-centered pedagogy

These are just some of the possible approaches contributors might take; we are open and eager to receive proposals that draw from this list or go in different directions. We especially encourage trans scholars and new voices in trans studies to submit. Please circulate widely!

Scholars who wish to collaborate may also send multi-author proposals. Please send a 250-300-word abstract along with a brief bio to this form by January 12, 2024. Decisions will go out by February 2, 2024.  

Please email Meg Cornell at meganec3@illinois.edu or Sara Petrosillo at sp220@evansville.edu with any questions.  

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Call for Papers – ICMS 2023

The International Marie de France Society invites submissions for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held May 8-10, 2023 at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. All submissions are due via the Congress’ Confex web interface by September 15, 2023. Click here for access.

Marie de France and the Medieval Fable Tradition: Text, Image, and Context
The Fables of Marie de France stands as the first vernacular collection of Aesopian fables; it was also Marie’s most popular work among medieval audiences, surviving in 25 manuscripts. This panel seeks to revisit Marie de France’s Fables in their original, manuscript context by inviting papers that highlight the relationship between the written word and images or other paratextual material. Proposals are also invited by scholars working on the wider medieval fable tradition with which Marie’s Fables connect, including but not limited to the Romulus Nilantii and the Hebrew fables of Berechiah ha-Nakdan. Proposals are encouraged from any discipline(s).

Women and Knowledge in the Works of Marie de France
Marie de France is an author who asserts her knowledge and who creates women and female animal characters that embody and impart forms of wisdom, care-giving, medicine, and savoir-faire. We seek contributions that examine the role(s) of feminine forms of knowledge, wisdom, mysticism, and medicine in the œuvre of Marie de France. Interdisciplinary and intertextual approaches are welcome.

Monstrosity, Madness, and Marie de France

This panel examines encounters with monstrosity, madness, isolation, identity, and alterity. We seek contributions that explore the themes of disability, deformity, illness, mental health, transformation, and more in the works of Marie de France (the Lais, the Fables, the Espurgatoire seint Patriz, and/or La Vie Seinte Audree). Intertextual and interdisciplinary approaches that connect Marie’s œuvre to the larger medieval world are welcome.

“Performances of Marie de France”
In this performance session, three to five performers of medieval narrative will present a lai and/or fables of Marie de France. In the past, these performances have involved period music, new translations, and/or dramatic readings in the original language; we expect this tradition to continue. Hearing a text read aloud or watching its performance both mirrors the way the work would have been consumed in the Middle Ages and enhances our modern understanding. Attendees regularly report that their perception of the work changes over the course of the session.

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Call for Papers – SEMA 2023

2023 Conference of the Southeastern Medieval Association
12-14 October at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC
https://semarockhill2023.com/

In her exquisite Lais and delightful Fables, as well as in her other writings, Marie de France shows characters who construct and even reconstruct their identities, who remake their situations or their lives, whether for good or ill. Marie herself continues to be constructed and reconstructed, as scholars attempt to discover her identity and novelists create and recreate the Marie de France they believe or want her to be.

In keeping with the 2023 conference theme of the Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA), “Construction and Reconstruction,” the International Marie de France Society invites paper proposals for a session titled “Marie de France: Making and Re-Making.”  SEMA 2023 will be in-person in Rock Hill, South Carolina, 12-14 October.  Please send a 150- to 250-word abstract or proposal on any aspect of making and/or re-making in the works of Marie de France or the writer herself to Sherron Lux at sherron_lux@yahoo.com by Thursday 8 June 2023, with any technology requests.

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Talks of Interest at Kalamazoo

S159 | Friday, 10:00 AM
“Interpreting the Feminine in Marie’s Vie Seinte Audrée,” Christina Marie Virok, Independent Scholar

S183 | Friday, 10:00 AM
“The Ace Knight: Asexuality, Deviance, and Knighthood in Marie de France’s
Guigemar,” Paige Daniela Banks, Trinity College Dublin, Univ. of Dublin

IMFS Business Meeting | Friday noon | Fetzer 1045
Join us for our annual business meeting

S234 | Friday, 1:30 PM
“Marie de France in Popular Culture I: Interdisciplinary Approaches (A Roundtable)” with Mounawar Abbouchi, Univ. of Georgia; Julie Human,
Univ. of Kentucky; Katharine Margot Toohey, Independent Scholar; Mary C. Pullen
Deacon, Independent Scholar; Gail Kathleen Borrow, ExploreTheArch; and H. M.
Cushman, Univ. of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

S258 | Friday, 3:30 PM
Multidisciplinary Marie de France
“Making Space for Marie de France in Lower Division Literature Courses,”
Dianna J. Blake, Iowa Western Community College
“Marie’s Lesbian Infrastructure,” Jason Jacobs, Roger Williams Univ.
“Reading Scivias in the Lais and Fables: Did Hildegard of Bingen Influence Marie
de France?” Ellen M. Thorington, Ball State Univ.

S352 | Saturday, 10AM (VIRTUAL)
“Marie de France in Popular Culture II: Marie and Lauren Groff’s Matrix (A
Roundtable)” with Irina Dumitrescu, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Univ. Bonn; Kimberly Fonzo, Univ. of Texas–San Antonio; Elisabeth Herbst Buzay, Univ. of Connecticut; and Andrea Whitacre, Eureka College

S459 | Saturday, 7:00PM
“Performances of Marie de France” by Yvonne LeBlanc, Independent Scholar; Tamara Bentley Caudill, Jacksonville Univ.; and Simonetta Cochis, Transylvania Univ.

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Marie in the Margins – Talk with Gail Borrow

The Portrayal of a Female Cultural Workforce: A Talk by Gail Borrow
Thursday, September 22, 2023 | 9:00-10:30 am EDT | Online, Bexhill Museum
Free and Open to the Public | Registration Required!

About this event

Marie in the Margins video installation director Gail Borrow discusses how she has approached this portrayal of a female cultural workforce. Exploring Marie de France’s collection of twelfth-century lai stories through the lens of modern cultural innovators, she considers portrayal of women writers and the symbolism they seek for their female characters.

Marie In the Margins: Inspired by the work of England’s earliest known female adventure writer Dame Marie, also known as Marie de France, and a forgotten workforce of twelfth-century female scribes & illustrators. In this ExploreTheArch video installation by Gail Borrow, three women artists working in the creative industries in Hastings explore the life & works of their cultural forebears within their own practices

Register here for free! https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-portrayal-of-a-female-cultural-workforce-a-talk-by-gail-borrow-tickets-417907471497

This booking is for the online talk only. In person audiences for the live talk at Bexhill Museum must book separately, via the Hastings Book Festival, here: https://www.hastingsbookfest.org/marieinthemargins

The Hastings Book Festival celebrates writers and lovers of the written word – a welcoming and open place for everyone. Our first festival took place in August 2018 and has now become a regular and welcomed event on the local calendar.

About Dame Marie

England’s earliest known female writer, twelfth-century adventure author Dame Marie, lived in a rapidly changing historical period partly triggered by successive waves of migration across the channel to England after the Norman conquest of 1066.

Dame Marie pioneered an innovative writing style. Female illustrators were her contemporaries, working to illuminate manuscripts with exquisite margins.

Which house or abbey Dame Marie lived and worked in is not known. She lives on in the minds of female innovators inhabiting live-work spaces in Hastings today – a cultural town on the fertile margins.

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Call for Papers – Kalamazoo 2023

The International Marie de France Society is pleased to announce that we will sponsor three sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held in hybrid format, May 11-13, 2023 at Western Michigan University. For more information on the Congress, visit the Congress website.

All proposals must be submitted through the Congress Portal by September 15, 2022. That link will appear here as soon as it is made available.

Queries for these panels should be directed to Tamara Bentley Caudill.


PAPERS: Multidisciplinary Marie de France
(Open Topic) This paper panel highlights the multidisciplinarity of Marie’s works. Papers may address any of the known works by Marie de France (the Lais, the Fables, the Espurgatoire seint Patriz, and/or La Vie Seinte Audree) or her imitators and draw connections with various trends in contemporary scholarship. The objective is to provide a space for Marie de France scholars to come together (rather than being scattered across thematic panels at the Congress) and to stimulate discussion regarding the ways that Marie can be incorporated into articles or monographs dealing with issues beyond Romance Studies.

ROUNDTABLE: Marie de France in Popular Culture
This roundtable will bring together scholars, artists, writers, and performers to talk about projects—past, present, and future—that connect Marie de France with the general public. Topics may include Lauren Groff’s New York Times bestseller Matrix (2021); interdisciplinary, public-facing projects, such as those from Explore the Arch (Gail Borrow) and Line and Language (Mary Pullen Deacon); fan fiction and artwork; film; and/or any number of future or imagined projects that connect Marie with a modern audience of non-specialists. 

PERFORMANCES: Performances of Marie de France

In this performance session, three to five performers of medieval narrative will present a lai and/or fables of Marie de France. In the past, these performances have involved period music, new translations, and/or dramatic readings in the original language; and we expect this tradition to continue. As Joyce Coleman, Evelyn Birge Vitz, and others have shown, hearing a text read aloud or watching its performance both mirrors the way the work would have been consumed in the Middle Ages and enhances our modern understanding. Attendees regularly report that their perception of the work changes over the course of the session.

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