CFP: Society for the Study of Anglo-Saxon Homiletics at the 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI)
May 11-14, 2017
Preach It, Sister! A Roundtable about Women and Homiletics
Hildegard of Bingen receiving a vision and dictating to her scribe and secretary. From the Rupertsberger Codex Scivias.
For over ten years at the ICMS, the Society for the Study of Anglo-Saxon Homiletics (SSASH) has thrived in its aims to promote scholarship related to the sources, compositions, appropriations, and early studies of Anglo-Saxon homilies. In 2016, the session sponsored by SSASH gathered nearly 40 attendees, providing evidence for continued relevance and support. The session proposed for 2017 seeks to continue this presence at the ICMS, as well as the vibrant scholarship and collaborative discussions that Anglo-Saxonists have come to expect from the Society, with a specific focus on the work of women in the field.
2017 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of Dorothy Bethurum’s edition of The Homilies of Wulfstan (1957), which remains a monument in the field. Yet this publication is just one representative of how women have been integral to the study of Anglo-Saxon preaching. For example, we also have the recent work of Mary Clayton, Mechthild Gretsch, Joyce Hill, Clare Lees, Joyce Tally Lionarons, Mary Swan, Elaine Treharne, Dorothy Whitelock, and Samantha Zacher. The past decade has brought about the publications of major books discussing sermons, such as Zacher’s Preaching the Converted: The Style and Rhetoric of the Vercelli Book Homilies (2009); Lionarons’s The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan (2010); and Treharne’s Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020-1220 (2012). The proposed roundtable, then, will feature a celebration of the work of women on Anglo-Saxon homiletics, allowing for not only showcasing past scholarship but also a forum for lively discussion of future possibilities within the field. Toward this end, the roundtable to be an all-female panel, in order to foreground women’s voices.
Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words with a completed Participant Information Form (available here) to Brandon Hawk by September 15, 2016. For more general information about the ICMS, please visit the conference website here.
