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IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 1611: Stranger Things, II: Turn and Face the Strange - Change, Impersonation, and Anxiety

Thursday 4 July 2019, 11.15-12.45

Organisers:Geoffrey Humble, Department of History, University of Birmingham
Rose A. Sawyer, School of History / School of English, University of Leeds
Moderator/Chair:Kaan Vural Gorman, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Paper 1611-aA Wild Child Changeling?: Expressing Socio-Cultural Anxieties through the Medium of Two Strange Motifs
(Language: English)
Rose A. Sawyer, School of History / School of English, University of Leeds
Index terms: Folk Studies, Language and Literature - Comparative
Paper 1611-bChange Is Constant: The Shapeshifting Fox in Medieval Chinese Literature
(Language: English)
Justin Winslett, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Folk Studies, Language and Literature - Other, Sexuality
Paper 1611-cStrange Skins: Women as Contested Territory in Medieval Japanese Tales of the Fantastic
(Language: English)
Laura Nüffer, Department of East Asian Studies, Colby College, New York
Index terms: Folk Studies, Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Other
Abstract

This session focuses on the movement from normal to uncanny, and especially anxiety around change and transformation, agency and power, and the boundaries of the human and human form. Rose Sawyer interrogates the changeling phenomenon as an articulation of concerns around cuckoldry and parent child relations. Justin Winslett demonstrates that foxes in medieval Chinese narrative are best understood under the larger rubric of the shape-shifter - beings at once human and extra-human - with multiple parallels across literary traditions. Laura Nüffer analyses shifting concepts of female agency across versions of a skin-swapping tale from medieval Japan.