Women and Rulership in the Medieval Mediterranean

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Special Session

Organizer Name

Samantha Summers; Stacey Murrell

Organizer Affiliation

Univ. of Toronto; Brown Univ.

Presider Name

Lucy K. Pick

Presider Affiliation

Univ. of Chicago

Paper Title 1

Chronica concubinarum: Constructing the Royal Concubine in Medieval Castilla-León (ca. 1110-1350)

Presenter 1 Name

Stacey Murrell

Paper Title 2

Dangerously Beautiful: A Case of "Revisio Memoriae" in Twelfth-Century Constantinople

Presenter 2 Name

Carlo Berardi

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Univ. of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Paper Title 3

Queen Zabel of Armenia and Queen Alix of Cyprus, Crossed Queenships

Presenter 3 Name

Benjamin Bourgeois

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Centre d'Etudes Médiévales de Montpellier/Univ. Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3

Paper Title 4

Memory and Meaning: The Absentee Queenship of Maria of Montferrat

Presenter 4 Name

Samantha Summers

Start Date

12-5-2019 10:30 AM

Session Location

Fetzer 2040

Description

This panel will thus explore how women around the Mediterranean performed rulership from myriad positionalities. We aim to provoke discussion concerning the political impact of women who participated in rulership in distinct ways, as well as the means through which this was expressed over time. The panel will also take up the question of whether agency remains a useful category of analysis when approaching the roles of women who enacted many of the fundamental mechanisms of composite rulership. Samantha Summers