Trans-gressive Bodies: A Queer Perspective on Ovid in the Middle Ages

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Medieval and Renaissance Center (MARC), New York Univ.; Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Interdisciplinary Network (MARGIN), New York Univ.

Organizer Name

Katherine Travers

Organizer Affiliation

New York Univ.

Presider Name

Christopher T. Richards

Presider Affiliation

New York Univ.

Paper Title 1

Bloodwriting: Reading the Hands That Wrote Philomena

Presenter 1 Name

Joseph R. Johnson

Presenter 1 Affiliation

New York Univ.

Paper Title 2

"Thus He Sat Her on His High Throne": Queering the Queen through a Coronation of the Virgin in the Ovide moralisé

Presenter 2 Name

Juliana Amorim Goskes

Presenter 2 Affiliation

New York Univ.

Paper Title 3

Retranslation: Pygmalion and the Shifting Shape of Shame in Early Modern Art

Presenter 3 Name

Sarah Mallory

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Institute of Fine Arts, New York Univ.

Paper Title 4

The Sex Life of Pearls: Pygmalion, Pearl, and Objectumsexuality

Presenter 4 Name

James C. Staples

Presenter 4 Affiliation

New York Univ.

Start Date

11-5-2018 1:30 PM

Session Location

Schneider 1325

Description

Ovidian reception in the Middle Ages has long provided scholars with many fruitful and creative avenues for study. We would like to offer a panel that takes a queer approach to the history of Ovid’s reception, which considers Ovid as a prompt for medieval considerations of non-normative bodies and non-normative desires. We suggest that Ovid helped Medieval culture think queerly about bodies and identity. We hope to position Ovid as a touchstone for conceptualizing (possibly justifying) bodies which are transgressive, bodies that resist, that defy categorization, that defy boundaries or those bodies which are “trans-”; bodies that act transgressively, that enact desires which are “perverse.”

Katherine Travers