Complicit: White Women and the Project of Empire

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS)

Organizer Name

Shyama Rajendran

Organizer Affiliation

Univ. of California-Davis

Presider Name

Shyama Rajendran

Paper Title 1

"Who myghte hir body save?": White Femininity and the Rhetoric of Victimhood from Colonial Custance to Dynastic Daenerys

Presenter 1 Name

Thomas Blake

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Austin College

Paper Title 2

Grooming Love: The Conversion and Complicity of Ydoine in Les Enfances Renier

Presenter 2 Name

Anne Le

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Univ. of California-Los Angeles

Paper Title 3

Emma of Normandy and the Body of Empire

Presenter 3 Name

William E. Arguelles

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Graduate Center, CUNY

Paper Title 4

Versions of Belesent: Depictions of the Complicit Princess in the Three Middle English Otuel Romances

Presenter 4 Name

Elizabeth Melick

Presenter 4 Affiliation

Columbus State Community College

Start Date

9-5-2019 10:00 AM

Session Location

Bernhard Brown & Gold Room

Description

Women in medieval texts are often read as oppressed, powerless, and without agency. This panel asks how our readings of women, such as Constance in Chaucer’s Man of Law's Tale or the Princess of Tars from The King of Tars, change when we view these women as not simply acted upon, but as complicit in the scenes of conversion and imperial power that dominate these narratives. This panel seeks papers that move beyond reading women in narratives of imperial dominance as solely victims of patriarchal structures of power, and asks what it means to recognize complicity with the project of empire alongside patriarchal oppression. The goal of this panel is to offer intersectional analyses of the project of patriarchy alongside the project of empire through a reexamination of how we define and understand women’s agency.

Organizer: Shyama Rajendran