Performing Piety and Poetry: Dance, Gender, and Poetic Form

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Special Session

Organizer Name

Lynneth J. Miller

Organizer Affiliation

Baylor Univ.

Presider Name

Max Harris

Presider Affiliation

Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison

Paper Title 1

The Dance of Salome: Dancing Women, Sin, and Salvation in Medieval Texts

Presenter 1 Name

Lynneth J. Miller

Paper Title 2

Discipline and Redemption: Dances of Penitence

Presenter 2 Name

Kathryn Dickason

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Stanford Univ.

Paper Title 3

Reenacting Form: Poetry and Dance in the Late Middle Ages

Presenter 3 Name

Seeta Chaganti

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Univ. of California-Davis

Start Date

12-5-2016 3:30 PM

Session Location

Schneider 1140

Description

The papers on this panel will suggest that literary, devotional, and ecclesiastical texts discussing dance offer the potential to construe medieval discourses on religion, gender, and poetic form in new ways. Dr. Seeta Chaganti argues that medieval poetic form was an experiential phenomenon that we can perceive most effectively by focusing on its many intersections with dance culture. Kathryn Dickason's study, drawing from penitentials, confessional texts, and treatises on vice and virtue, explores the moral psychology of medieval dance. Her work reveals that, in many cases, dance performance cannot be reduced to either sin or sanctity. Within the context of penitence, dance instead occupied the interstices of good and evil in theologically complex ways. Lynneth J.M. Stingley's work, based on vernacular religious texts, explores the way in which dance in the narrative of Salome and other related tales could be presented either as an allegory for salvation or as a sin, and the implications of each presentation on discussions of dance, women, and religion. In this panel, dance acts both as the impetus behind these analyses and as an anchor for these far-ranging explorations of medieval thought. By using dance to explicate medieval religious ideology and poetic form, this panel offers an innovative methodological approach to medieval studies.

Signed: Lynneth J. Miller

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May 12th, 3:30 PM

Performing Piety and Poetry: Dance, Gender, and Poetic Form

Schneider 1140

The papers on this panel will suggest that literary, devotional, and ecclesiastical texts discussing dance offer the potential to construe medieval discourses on religion, gender, and poetic form in new ways. Dr. Seeta Chaganti argues that medieval poetic form was an experiential phenomenon that we can perceive most effectively by focusing on its many intersections with dance culture. Kathryn Dickason's study, drawing from penitentials, confessional texts, and treatises on vice and virtue, explores the moral psychology of medieval dance. Her work reveals that, in many cases, dance performance cannot be reduced to either sin or sanctity. Within the context of penitence, dance instead occupied the interstices of good and evil in theologically complex ways. Lynneth J.M. Stingley's work, based on vernacular religious texts, explores the way in which dance in the narrative of Salome and other related tales could be presented either as an allegory for salvation or as a sin, and the implications of each presentation on discussions of dance, women, and religion. In this panel, dance acts both as the impetus behind these analyses and as an anchor for these far-ranging explorations of medieval thought. By using dance to explicate medieval religious ideology and poetic form, this panel offers an innovative methodological approach to medieval studies.

Signed: Lynneth J. Miller