Institute for Medieval Studies

Session	1309
Title	Borders of Human Nature, Boundaries of the Imagination
Date/Time	Wednesday 6 July 2022: 16.30-18.00
Sponsor	Medieval Ecocriticisms / Oecologies Research Group
Organiser	Kellie Robertson, Department of English, University of Maryland
Moderator/Chair	Heide Estes, Department of English, Monmouth University, New Jersey
Paper 1309-a	Allegorical Gimmicks and Financial Monsters: Border-Fantasies of the Self in Late Medieval Literature (Language: English) Tekla Bude, School of Writing, Literature & Film, Oregon State University Index Terms: Economics - Urban; Language and Literature - Middle English
Paper 1309-b	The Mind-Machine: Psychology, Poetry, and the Crafted World in 12th-Century Neoplatonist Allegory (Language: English) Jonathan Morton, Department of French & Italian, Tulane University, New Orleans Index Terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan; Science
Paper 1309-c	The Weathered Self (Language: English) Kellie Robertson, Department of English, University of Maryland Index Terms: Gender Studies; Language and Literature - Middle English
Paper 1309-d	Human Nature: Rational and Mortal (Language: English) Karl Steel, Brooklyn College / Graduate Center, City University of New York Index Terms: Language and Literature - Middle English; Science
Abstract	The literary critic Barbara Johnson offers us a provocation: 'One of the most obvious assumptions we make is that the human 'self' is a person, not a thing. But might this assumption be more problematic than it appears?' This panel explores limit cases that test how human nature is constructed in relation to the experiential world. What pressures - material or metaphysical - are brought to bear on what we imagine to be a distinctively human nature? What strategies - allegorical, poetic, natural philosophical, or mathematical - make medieval selves legible?