Charting the Future and the Unknown in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Barnard College, Columbia University, Saturday December 1, 2012.
Website: http://medren.barnard.edu/annual-conference
Online registration: http://www.regonline.com/medren
REGISTRATION AND MORNING COFFEE
9.30-10.00AM
PLENARY SPEAKERS
10.00AM-12.00noon
Rebecca Bushnell, U. of Pennsylvania
Laura Ackerman Smoller, U. Arkansas at Little Rock
FIRST SESSION
12.15pm-1.45pm
I. The Unknown Region of Hell (Moderator: Rachel Eisendrath, Barnard C.)
Juliette Bourdier, Colorado U. “Charting Hell to Make it Real in Medieval Infernal Literature”
Meredith Bacola, Durham U. “The hand of God and fiery Erebus: the uses of vision in the legend of St. Guthlac”
Andrew Majeske, John Jay C., CUNY. “Galileo’s Lecture on Dante: Plagiarism and Deception in the Accademia Fiorentina”
II. Transmitting the Unknown: Spectacle and Archive (Moderator: Christopher Baswell, Barnard C.)
Joshua M. Blaylock, Brown U. “Deadly Confidants: The Mediated Secret as Tragic Spectacle in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron”
Sarah Novacich, Rutgers U. “Disappearing Archive”
Cyrus Mulready, SUNY New Paltz. “Imagined Empires: Romance Geography and the Early Modern Stage”
III. New Lands and Unknown Peoples (Moderator: Phillip John Usher, Barnard C.)
Carla Lois, Institute of Geography, U. of Buenos Aires. “Quinta pars or terra incognita? Verisimilitude in the Cartographic Representation of the Unknown”
Gavin Hollis, Hunter College, CUNY. “Time’s Indian”
Nicolas Medeville, William and Mary C. “Of Spiritual and Earthly Riches: The Dieppe Maps of the 1540s-50s and the Three Indies”
LUNCH
1.45-3.00pm
SECOND SESSION
3.00pm-4.30pm
IV. From Creation to Apocalypse (Moderator: Joel Kaye. Barnard C.)
Chet van Duzer, Library of Congress, “Mapping the End of the Earth: Apocalyptic Mappaemundi in a Fifteenth Century Manuscript”
Kathryn Banks, U. of Durham. “’I Speak like Saint John about the Apocalypse’: The Future and the Unknown in Propechy and Fiction”
Thomas Lawrence Long, U. of Connecticut. “Mapping the Millenium: Dispensational Charts and the Visual Discourses of Early Modern Science”
V. Sciences: Magic, Astrology, Demonology (Moderator: Timea Szell)
Kathryn LaFevers Evans, Pacifica Graduate Institute. “Natural Magic: Imaginal Mythopoetics in De Magia naturali and The Red Book”
Ovanes Akopyan, Moscow State U. “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Astrology: from scientia naturalis to the criticism of predictions”
Virginia Krause, Brown U. “Dark Truth: The Auricular Regime of Demonology in Early Modern France”
THIRD SESSION
4.45pm-6.15pm
VI. Divination and the Future (Moderator: Laurie Postlewate, Barnard C.)
Frederic Clark, Princeton U. “Chronicles, Codices, and the Uses of Continuation: Fixing Past and Future in Early Modern Textual Culture”
Alex Stuart, Cambridge U. “No Future For You: Divination and Sacrifice in Old French Texts of the Twelfth Century”
James Ross Macdonald, Yale U. “Mapping the Social Structure of Milton’s Creation”
VII. Beyond World Limits (Moderator: Peter Platt, Barnard C.)
Phillip John Usher, Barnard C. “Golden Apples and Female Orbs: On the Tragedy of Discovery in the French Renaissance”
Katharina Natalia Piechocki, New York U. “Marginal Discoveries: Cartography, Translation, and the Early Modern Boundaries of Europe’s East”
Emily Burnham, New York U. “Locating the Edges of the Known World in Medieval Islamic Geographies”
VIII. Prophecy and the Unexpected (Moderator: Anne Lake Prescott, Barnard C.)
Antonio Cordoba, Connecticut C. “From the Muse to the Count: The Promise and Cancellation of Prophecy in Góngora’s Soledades”
Denis Robichaud, U. of Notre-Dame. “Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s De rerum praenotione: Rhetorical and Philosophical Inquiry into Divination, Foreknowledge, and Prophecy”
Leanna Bridge Rezvani, MIT. "An Unexpected Heroine in a Hostile Land: Two Renaissance Versions of Marguerite de Roberval’s Marooning"
Ameer Sohrawardy, Rutgers University. “Amending Shadows: Dual Roles and Compossible Futures in A Midsummer Night's Dream.”
RECEPTION
6.15pm-8.00