IMC 2015: Sessions
Session 831: (Re)Forming Women: Fluid Femininities and Socio-Religious Reform, II
Tuesday 7 July 2015, 16.30-18.00
| Sponsor: | Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship |
|---|---|
| Organiser: | Liz Herbert McAvoy, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University |
| Moderator/Chair: | Roberta Magnani, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University |
| Paper 831-a | Reforming Abbesses: The Fontevraudian Reform (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Monasticism, Religious Life, Women's Studies |
| Paper 831-b | Alijt Bake: Literacy, Reform, and Resistance in the Low Countries (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Dutch, Religious Life, Women's Studies |
| Abstract | In her more recent writings, Luce Irigaray posits issues of sexual difference as the philosophical basis for cultural reform: legal, political, religious and linguistic. The extent to which sexual difference was implicated in the various movements for reform that punctuated the Middle Ages is yet to receive full attention, however. Whilst scholars have begun to address this question in the contexts of queenship and female patronage or religious women’s visionary activities during periods of upheaval and reform, there is clearly more to be said about the relation between medieval women, medieval femininities and socio-cultural/religious/linguistic reform. Both sessions I and II therefore seek to examine some of the ways in which medieval women effected/affected reform or the ways in which they were themselves repeatedly subject to imposed measures aimed at reforming – or re-forming – their bodies, behaviours, identities and subjectivities. |