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IMC 2012: Sessions

Session 717: Following the 'Rules' of Gender (or Not!) in the Middle Ages, I

Tuesday 10 July 2012, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship
Organiser:Liz Herbert McAvoy, Department of English Language & Literature, Swansea University
Moderator/Chair:Liz Herbert McAvoy, Department of English Language & Literature, Swansea University
Paper 717-aVexing Women of Saintly Stature: Catherine of Siena, Birgitta of Sweden, and Speaking Truth to Ecclesial Power
(Language: English)
June-Ann T. Greeley, Department of Philosophy, Theology & Religious Studies, Sacred Heart University, Connecticut
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Gender Studies, Geography and Settlement Studies, Hagiography, Women's Studies
Paper 717-bMaking up the Rules for Women: Female Succession in the Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Elena Woodacre, Department of History, Bath Spa University
Index terms: Gender Studies, Women's Studies
Paper 717-cFalse Knights and True Blood: Reading the Traitor's Body in Late Medieval England
(Language: English)
E. Amanda McVitty, School of History, Philosophy & Classics, Massey University
Index terms: Gender Studies, Social History
Abstract

These sessions aim to examine the many and disparate ways in which medieval women and men regularly and systematically broke the 'rules' of gender laid down by their culture and its epistemologies. Using a range of feminist, gender, and queer theories of selfhood, sexuality and identity, it will also scrutinise the ways in which rules could be both embraced and exploited in mimetic fashion, in order to bring about a subversion of inherited behavioural and literary norms.