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Intersectionality in the Early Global World
A conference organized by the officers of UCLA MEMSA: Chase Caldwell Smith (History), Richard Ibarra (History), and Stefanie Matabang (Comparative Literature); sponsored and hosted by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies.
Keynote Speakers: Roland Betancourt (UC Irvine) and Nicholas R. Jones (UC Davis)
Research on the premodern intersection of race, gender, and sexuality has steadily increased as a result of the efforts of a diverse group of scholars working across traditional periodization and geographic limits. Nevertheless, a great deal of work remains to be done to understand the many varieties of ways such aspects of identities intersected and were mobilized or challenged in the marking of difference. This two-day conference that will highlight the new and exciting work being undertaken with regard to these questions.
Register to attend the conference on Zoom.
FRIDAY, MAY 20, 2022 | |
9:00 am | Opening Remarks |
Session I: Bending Gender, Interchanging Sexuality | |
9:10 | Izzy Howard (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) “‘I kan nat glose’: Queering Illegible Signification in Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale“ |
9:30 | Sachini Seneviratne (Open University of Sri Lanka) “Race, gender and female sexuality in Webster’s The White Devil“ |
9:50 | Questions and Discussion |
10:20 | Break |
Session II: Keynote Lecture | |
10:45 | Roland Betancourt (University of California, Irvine) “The Case of Manuel I Komnenos: Gender, Sexuality, and Racialization in Byzantium” |
Session III:Text-turizing Constructions of Alterity and Power | |
11:30 | Patricia Martins Marcos (University 0f California, San Diego) “‘The Detestable Stain of the Other’: Imbecillitas, Race,and the Pathologies of Difference” |
11:50 | Chris Halsted (Washington & Lee University) “Waldrada the She-Wolf: Gendering the Steppe in Tenth-Century Europe” |
12:10 pm | Kathryn Smith (Auburn University) “From ‘The Great Whore’ to ‘The Virgin Queen’: An Analysis of Letters, Speeches, and Poems Within the Political Trials and Scandals of Queen Anne Boleyn and Queen Elizabeth I” |
12:30 | Questions and Discussion |
1:00 | Lunch Break |
Session IV: Art Articulating Blackness | |
2:00 | Tony Yanzhang Cui (University of Maryland, College Park) “So Many Things at Once, Yet No One at All: Black Eunuchs, Kunlun Slaves, and the Allure of Others” |
2:20 | Cait DiMartino (Northwestern University) “The Materiality of Race and the Black Madonna of Le Puy-en-Velay” |
2:40 | Dana Hogan (Duke University) “Artemisia Gentileschi and Bathsheba’s Black Maid: Intersectionality in Italian Baroque Art” |
3:00 | Questions and Discussion |
3:30 | End of Day One |
SATURDAY, MAY 21, 2022 | |
9:00 am | Morning Welcome |
Session V: African Intersectionalities in the Iberian World | |
9:10 | Eduardo Dawson (Notre Dame University) “African Experiences with the ‘slave of the slaves’ Pedro Claver: Black Religious Speaking in Early 17th-Century Cartagena de Indias” |
9:30 | Marina Schneider (University of Texas at Austin) “Staging Brotherhood: Confraternities and Processions in Early Modern Iberian Cities” |
9:50 | Zainab Cheema (Florida Gulf Coast University) “Performing African Intersectionalities from Lope de Vega’s Comedias“ |
10:10 | Questions and Discussion |
10:30 | Break |
Session VI: Keynote Lecture | |
10:45 | Nicholas Jones (University of California, Davis) “Cervantine Blackness” |
Session VII: Female Agency and (Defying) Political Authority | |
11:30 | Ella Schalski (George Washington University) “The Racial Politics of Gender and the Construction of White Women’s Englishness in Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam“ |
11:50 | Muhammed Salem (American University in Cairo) “Whiteness as a Standard of Colonial Patriarchy inThe Masque of Blackness and The Tragedy of Mariam“ |
12:10 pm | Hilde Neus (Instituut voor Maatschappijwetenschappelijk Onderzoek) “Intersectionality in 18th-Century Suriname” |
12:30 | Amanda Leong (University of California, Merced) “Re-thinking Medieval Race, Female Javānmardī and Class in Haft Paykar: An ‘Interracial’ Love Story Between a Persian King and His Chinese Musician Slave Girl” |
12:50 | Questions and Discussion |
1:20 | Closing Remarks |
1:30 | End of Conference |
Images – Top Left: Andrés Sánchez Galque, Los tres mulatos de Esmeraldas, 1599, Museo del Prado. Top Right: Mural in the Bezeklik Thousand Buddha Caves near Turpan, Xinjiang, China, 9th c. AD. Bottom Left: Farewells of Abu Zayd and al-Harith before the Return to Mecca, 1237 (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS. arab. 5847, fo. 22). Bottom Right: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1490-1500, Museo del Prado.