Thursday 9/18

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

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.