This panel is designed to be an exploration of the kinds of pressures that are brought to bear on medieval women's bodies--artistically, conceptually, economically, and materially--and the kinds of responses that women's bodies figure to these pressures, whether in the form of resistance, conformation, or transformation. Of special interest are those responses, or representations, that trouble boundaries, pollute categories, or blend distinctions in the way we understand the medieval monster to work. Papers will be considered that address the monstrous female body in any aspect or figuration--in art, architecture, medicine, philosophy, or narrative--in hopes of discovering how the medieval woman's monstrous body reveals the points of tension, conflict, and opportunity in the constructed ideas of gender, sexuality, and difference that treat 'women' first as a theoretical category and only secondarily as a social being.
If interested, please send a proposal or abstract along with a Participant Information Form (available from the conference website) by September 15 to:
Misty Urban
Assistant Professor of English
Humanities Division
Lewis-Clark State College
500 8th Avenue
Lewiston, ID 83501
208.792.2167
Fax 208.792.2324murban@lcsc.edu
