“Body Matters! Disability in English Literature to 1800”
Friday, March 1st 2024
9:10am-9:20am Opening Remarks, Patricia Fumerton
9:20am-10:40am Keynote, Dr. Bradley Irish (ASU), “Early Modern Neurodiversity Studies: A Preliminary Research Agenda,” introduced by Dr. James Kearney
11:00am-12:00pm Panel, Defining Disability in Major Works (Moderator: Somak Mukherjee)
Henry Coburn, “Recognition and Sophocles’ Foot Fetish”
Avanika Gupta, “The Satirical Body: Exploring Disability, Imperfections, and Societal Expectations in Alexander Pope’s 18th-Century Works”
1:20pm-2:40pm Panel, Disability and Theories of Mind (Moderator: Dr. Jessica Zisa)
Olivia Henderson, “‘The Follies dance, which were twelve she-fools’: Neurodiversity in Ben Jonson’s Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly”
Avi Mendelson, “(De)racializing Epileptic Madness in Othello”
Timothy Welch, “‘I cried to dream again’: A Schizoanalysis of Caliban”
3:00pm-4:00pm Panel, Disability and Performance Studies (Moderator: Grace Kimball)
Olivia Bievenue, “‘Thou talks of things thou knowest not what’: Caring for Isabella in The Spanish Tragedy”
Melinda Marks, “That’s my Humour: Early Modern Performance, Rhetorics, and Autistic Theater-Making”
Saturday, March 2nd 2024
9:00am-10:20am Keynote, Dr. Rachael King (UCSB), “Care Networks in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Archives,” introduced by Dr. E. Heckendorn Cook
10:40am-12:00pm Panel, Medieval Disability Across Genre (Moderator: Olivia Henderson)
Jonathan Wilcox, “Disability as Image and Reality in Early Medieval England: Ælfric and Blindness”
Taylor Thompson, “On Losing Sight & Becoming Unseen: 15th Century Perspectives on Vision Impairment and Blindness”
1:20pm-2:20pm Panel, Disability, Queer Theory, and Trans Studies (Respondent: Dr. Daniel Reeve)
Alice Fulmer, “‘for suspicion / Of mennes speche evere” Animating Transmisogyny, Dysphoria, and Disability in the Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue”
Shaun Nowicki, “‘The Good Fellowship of Dust’: Deathly Bodies and Queer Resonance in George Herbert’s The Temple”
2:40pm-3:40pm Panel, Moral/Medical Theory and Maternity (Respondent: Dr. Andrew Griffin)
Madison Connaughton, “Of Her Seed: The Responsibility and Disabling of Moral Theory and Embryology in Pregnancy”
Joyce King, “To Latch and Latch Not: Eating Speech in Sir Gowther”
3:40pm-4:00pm Break4:00pm-5:20pm Keynote, Jos Charles, “Wylde Infirmitee: Readings from Vita Nova,” introduced by Alice Fulmer
Closing Remarks, Shaun Nowicki