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 |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Kaan Vural Gorman, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds |
| Paper 1611-a | A Wild Child Changeling?: Expressing Socio-Cultural Anxieties through the Medium of Two Strange Motifs (Language: English) Index terms: Folk Studies, Language and Literature - Comparative |
| Paper 1611-b | Change Is Constant: The Shapeshifting Fox in Medieval Chinese Literature (Language: English) Index terms: Folk Studies, Language and Literature - Other, Sexuality |
| Paper 1611-c | Strange Skins: Women as Contested Territory in Medieval Japanese Tales of the Fantastic (Language: English) 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. |