Program/Schedule of sessions

You can download and print the program here for convenience: https://dhmedievalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2025-IAS-EMES-Conference-Program-2.pdf

“Defining Ourselves”

International Anchoritic Society & Early Middle English Society Conference

Brandeis University

September 18-20, 2025

I would like to thank the Brandeis Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies program, the Medieval and Renaissance Studies program, the Department of Classics and Early Mediterranean Studies, the Department of English, the Mandel Humanities Center, the Rahv Hughes Fund, for their generous support of this conference. A special thanks to Kyle Moore, Aurora Soriano, and Jack Wiegand for help in organizing the program.

Brandeis University Locations

Faculty Center

  • The Faculty Club Main Dining Room
  • Epstein Building
  • Women’s Studies Research Center (WSRC) Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall
  • 537 South St., Waltham, MA 02453

Sachar International Center

  • Wasserman Cinematheque (Room 117)
  • 415 South St., Waltham, MA 02453

All scheduled events are in Eastern Standard Time

Thursday, September 18

8:30-9:00am (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Registration
  • Coffee & Light Breakfast

9:00-9:30am (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Welcome from Brandeis University Administration
    • Sabine Von Mering, Chair of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Director
      for the Center of German and European Studies (Brandeis University)
  • Welcome from IAS and EME Presidents
    • Michelle M. Sauer and Carla María Thomas
  • Welcome from Conference Organizer
    • Dorothy Kim

9:30-10:45am (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 1: Sex & Saints in Early Hagiography
Presider: Kersti Francis

  • Self-Conversion in the Lives of St. Mary of Egypt
    • Margaret Cotter-Lynch, Southeastern Oklahoma State University
  • Defining the Harlot Saint: Thais Inside and Outside Enclosure
    • Alicia Smith, University of Bergen
  • (Mis)Uses of the Erotic: Black Female Flesh in the Old English “Life of Saint Mary of Egypt”
    • Thelma Trujillo, University of Iowa

10:45-11:00am (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Coffee Break

11:00-12:15am (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 2: Comparative Religious Discourse
Presider: Margaret Cotter-Lynch

  • Imagining Egypt and North Africa in Merovingian Francia
    • Gregory Halfond, Framingham State University
  • Intimacy with the Divine in Christian and Islamic Hagiography
    • Ayoush Lazakani, University of Oxford
  • Intimacy to No-Body: Disembodied Asexual Union in The Cloud of Unknowing and The Essence of Reality
    • Tasrif (Aivan) Mahmud, University of North Dakota

12:15-1:45pm

  • Lunch on own
    or
  • The Faculty Club, Faculty Center Main Dining Room
    Must have pre-purchased Thursday lunch ticket when registering

1:45-3:25pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 3: Creatures, Sex, & the Supernatural
Presider: Susannah Mary Chewning

  • Which Witch is Witch: Feminist Erasure of Old English Wiccecraeft
    • Emily Gerace, New York University
  • Abnormal Bestiaries: Unusual Manuscripts and Creative Adaptations
    • Ilya Dines, Independent Scholar
  • “A Wolf with the Mind of a Man:” Ingenium and Identity in Arthur et Gorlagon
    • Kersti Francis, Boston University
  • I am Creatur. Hear me Roar!: The Animality and Edibility of Margery Kempe
    • Victoria Wamsley, University of Kansas

3:25-3:40pm (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Coffee Break

3:40-4:55pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 4: Gender, Desire, & Margery Kempe
Presider: Aimee A. Galloway

  • Medieval Love or Convenience and Romantic Desire in The Book of Margery Kempe and the Paston Letters
    • Elizabeth Talbert, Winthrop University
  • Margery Kempe’s Desire for Reassurance through Anchoress Julian of Norwich
    • Rachel Scoggins, Lander University
  • The Passion of Margery Kempe: Language and Defining the Concept of Originality
    • Josephine Koster, Winthrop University

5:16-6:30pm

  • Wine Reception at Dorothy Kim’s house/garden. Directions and address will be given at the conference.

6:30pm

  • Dinner
    We are organizing dinner groups for this evening. This is an idea that has previously used at Babel Conferences and it allows people to get together in groups of 4-5 and go to dinner together. Please fill out the form. We will announce the groups on Thursday at the conference. We will appoint a group leader to take the group (through public transit, carpool, etc.) to the chosen local restaurant. We will also try to keep it fairly inexpensive. Please fill out this form (https://forms.gle/aLRcgHKtEstb7wCAA) by the evening of September 17th at 8pm.

Friday, September 19

8:30-9:00am (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Pastries & Coffee

9:00-10:15am (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 6: Gender, Sexuality, & Medicine
Presider: Alicen Davis

  • The Miraculous Abortive Churching within the Liminal Space of the Nun of Watton
    • Aimee A. Galloway, University of North Dakota
  • Yvette of Huy’s Imitatio Magdalenae and the Female Life-Course
    • Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, Shizuoka University and Meiji University
  • Margery Kempe’s Trans Thermality
    • Micah Goodrich, Boston University

10:15-10:30am (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Coffee Break

10:30-11:30pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 6: Gender & Mysticism
Presider: Josephine Koster

  • Marguerite Porete and the Queer Art of Mysticism
    • Elizabeth Hubble, University of Montana
  • Julian of Norwich and the Anchoritic Imagination: Beholding the Ineffable in Word and Image
    • Raphaela Rohrhofer, University of St. Andrews

11:30-1:00pm

  • Lunch on own
    or
  • The Faculty Club, Faculty Center Main Dining Room
    Must have pre-purchased Thursday lunch ticket when registering

1:00-2:15pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Plenary
Presider: Dorothy Kim, Brandeis University

  • Postmedieval Anchorites: Nostalgia and the Art of Scholarly Attachment
    • Michelle M. Sauer, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor of English, University
      of North Dakota (USA)
    • Liz Herbert McAvoy, Professor Emerita of Medieval Literature, Swansea
      University (UK)

2:15-2:30pm (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Coffee Break

2:30-3:45pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 7: Religious Medievalism & the Americas
Presider: Samuel M. Amendolar

  • Defining a Recluse in Colonial North America: Jeanne LeBer and Early Modern Montreal
    • Laura Moncion, Eberhards Karls Universität Tübingen
  • Martyrdom and Sainthood in Everyone Knows I am a Haunting
    • Bailey Ludwig, Wellesley College
  • Waxy Figures and Tactical Sainthood: Relics and Saints in Latin America
    • Will Rogers, University of Louisiana, Monroe

3:45-4:00pm (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Coffee Break

4:00-5:15pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 8: The Body & Sexuality in Medieval Christian Literature
Presider: Micah Goodrich

  • Body/Horror: Un-Feeling Torture in the Katherine Group
    • Alicen Davis, University of Texas, Austin
  • A Woman’s Sin: Sloth, Passivity, and Female Spirituality in Ancrene Wisse
    • Kyle Robert Moore, University of North Dakota
  • Found Selves: Self-Writing Divine Union in Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Flowing Light of the Godhead and Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls
    • Catherine Introcaso, The City University of New York

5:15-5:30pm (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Coffee Break

5:30-6:45pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 9: The Body & The Wooing Group
Presider: Michelle M. Sauer

  • ‘Ah ouer alle oðer þinges makes te luuvewurði to me þa harde atele hurtes’: Disability and the Abject in the Wooing Group
    • Susannah Mary Chewning, Union College of New Jersey
  • ‘Mi bodi henge wið þi bodi’: Alternate Temporalities and Dying with Christ in Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerd and Richard Rolle’s Meditation B
    • E. Alice Grissom, Rutgers University
  • Beauty As Mysticism
    • Eleanor Forestell, Boston College

7:30pm

  • Conference Dinner at Peppino’s Dosa, 434 Moody St, Waltham, MA 02453
    Must have pre-purchased tickets when registering

Saturday, September 20

8:30-9:00am (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Coffee & Pastries

9:00-10:00am
Session : Reading Manuscripts: Past & Present
Presider: Carla María Thomas

  • Gregorian Books, Roman Foundations, and the Formation of Ecclesiastical Identity in Medieval England
    • John Gallagher, University of St. Andrews
  • Marguerite Porete’s post-medieval philosophical afterlives: Simone Weil, Luce Irigaray, and the hermeneutics of reclamation
    • Emily Griffiths, University of Antwerp

10:00-10:15am

  • Coffee Break

10:15-12:00am
Session 11A: Creative Writing Workshop (online only via Zoom)
Presider: Aurora Soriano

  • A workshop on using medieval devotional texts as stimuli for creative writing. Recent examples include Matrix by Lauren Groff and For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie.
  • Artemis Writers (Sophia Adamowicz and Heather Clark-Hope)

Session 11B: The Monastic Archaeology Field School at Lindores Abbey (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Presider: Victoria Yuskaitis

  • Field Training in Monastic Archaeology: The Monastic Archaeology Field School at Lindores Abbey
    • Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, Brandeis University
  • Using Estuarine Physical Oceanography as a Tool to Understand Water use in the Lindores Abbey
    • Sally Warner, Brandeis University
  • ‘With Common Pasture for Animals’: An Archeological and Textual Analysis of Food Sources at Lindores Abbey
    • Allison Gentry, Brandeis University
  • A Case for Getting History Students into the Dirt
    • Natalie Greenfield, Brandeis University

12:00-1:00pm (Women’s Studies Research Center)

  • Lunch provided in the Women’s Studies Research Center

1:00-2:00pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 12: Anchoritic Digital Humanities
Presider: Kyle Robert Moore

  • Geospatial Inquiry & the Medieval Anchorhold: Mapping Enclosure in the Islands of the North Atlantic
    • Michelle M. Sauer, University of North Dakota
    • Justin Wigard, University of North Dakota
  • An Open Ancrene Wisse Corpus Project with AI and Data Visualization
    • Dorothy Kim, Brandeis University

2:00-2:15pm (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Coffee Break

2:15-3:30pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 13: Anchorites & Space
Presider: Barbara Zimbalist

  • Anchorites and the City: Archaeological Interpretations and Lived Experience, Then and Now
    • Victoria Yuskaitis, DigVentures
  • Three Days Beyond a Cell: Connecting an Anchorite with His Times
    • Clare M. Dowding, King’s College London
  • Merging Living Spaces: Aligning Performances and Spatial Practices in Goscelin of St. Bertin’s Liber Confortatorius
    • Samuel M. Amendolar, University of North Dakota

3:30-3:45pm (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Coffee Break

3:45-5:00pm (Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)
Session 14: Approaches to Julian of Norwich
Presider: Bailey Ludwig

  • Female Modesty and the Vernacular in the East and West: The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu and Julian of Norwich
    • Fumiko Yoshikawa, Hiroshima Shudo University
  • Wounds that Heal: Julian of Norwich’s Theology of Productive Pain
    • Josi Carder, Brooklyn College
  • Keep this Precious Stone in the Nest of your Heart: Defining the Eucharist in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love
    • Eduardo de Oliveira Correira, Kings College London

5:00-6:15pm (Outside of Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall)

  • Dinner, Snacks, & Beverages provided in Women’s Studies Research Center

6:15-6:30pm

  • Walk to Sachar International Center

6:30-8:30pm (Wasserman Cinematheque, Room 117)

  • Film Screening of Revelations of Divine Love
    Ticket included in conference registration or purchased separately for non-conference attendees

8:30-8:40pm (Outside of Wasserman Cinematheque)

  • Break
  • Snacks & drinks available

8:40-9:30pm (Wasserman Cinematheque, Room 117)

  • Film Q&A with Director Caroline Golum
    • Caroline Golum is a filmmaker and writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She is a contributing editor and occasional podcast co-host for Screen Slate. Her debut feature, A Feast of Man, is streaming on Amazon Prime, Vimeo, and Tubi. Revelations of Divine Love, is her second feature.
    • Read an interview with Caroline from the Spring 2023 International Anchoritic Society newsletter here: https://commons.und.edu/ias-newsletter/