Institute for Medieval Studies

Session	832
Title	Transgressing Boundaries, II: Women's Agency in Medieval Literature
Date/Time	Tuesday 5 July 2022: 16.30-18.00
Organiser	Emily McLemore, Department of English, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Moderator/Chair	Emily McLemore, Department of English, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Paper 832-a	Re-Evaluating Rædwald's Wife: A Queen, Confidant, and Teacher? (Language: English) Abigail Williams, School of English, University of Nottingham Index Terms: Gender Studies; Language and Literature - Old English; Religious Life; Women's Studies
Paper 832-b	That's All (S)He Wrote: The Boundaries between Gender and the Page in London, British Library, MS Additional 37790 (Language: English) Helen A. Lawson, St Chad's College / Department of English Studies, Durham University Index Terms: Gender Studies; Language and Literature - Other; Manuscripts and Palaeography; Religious Life
Paper 832-c	Fabric of Feud: Material Culture and Female Identity in Laxdæla Saga (Language: English) Grace Elizabeth O'Duffy, St John's College, University of Oxford Index Terms: Gender Studies; Language and Literature - Scandinavian; Women's Studies
Abstract	This session explores medieval women's transgression of traditional gendered boundaries by examining the ways in which women are confined to set of sociohistorical expectations and highlighting how women in literature of the period push against the standards that strive to define and limit them. The women analyzed in this series of papers express agency in ways that extend beyond heteronormative configurations of power. The papers displace pervasive treatments of women in medieval literature as passive and pliant, a long-standing narrative that reduces the scope of women's counterhegemonic activity and their procurement of power.