Friday, 29 May
10:15 – 10:45 Registration
10:45 – 11:00 Welcome
11:00-12:30 Session 1: Misogyny and Female Suffering (Chair: Anthony Vitt)
| Reading Rape: Medieval Insular Women’s Engagements with the Pastourelle Genre | Lillian Hammen (University of Notre Dame) |
| Courting catastrophe: When love meets death in the Ulster Cycle | Lára Ní Mhaoláin (Maynooth University) |
| Reflexive and Performative Misogyny In Response to Women’s Speech In The Ulster Cycle | Rory Yarter (Harvard University) |
12:30-13:30 Lunch
13:30-15:00 Session 2: Unstable Genders (Chair: Oli Wilkin)
| Metamorphosis and Mutable Gender in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi: Blodeuwedd, Gwydion, and the Ontology of Artificial Womanhood | Suchismita Ghoshal (Independent Scholar) |
| The Encomium of Hersdin Hogl: A defence of ‘manly women’ in the time of the Poets of the Nobility | Luke Blaidd (Aberystwyth University) |
| Unsexing the Prince, Queering the Thane: Fair Is Foul, Frailty Crowned—Gendered Bodies, Feminine Spectres, and Sovereign Crisis in the Northern Tragedies between Prophecy and Purgatory | Z. I. Mahmud (Independent scholar) |
15:00-15:30 Tea/Coffee Break
15:30-16:30 Keynote Speaker
| Translatio transvesti: Sanctity and Gender in/as Translation | Alicia Spencer-Hall (University College London) |
16:30-18:00 Reception
Saturday, 30 May
10:00-10:30 Arrival
10:30-12:00 Session 3: Imagining Medieval Masculinities (Chair: Anthony Vitt)
| Poet, Lover, Prince: Masculinities in the Poetry of Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd | Rhiannon Jones (Cardiff University) |
| The First Branch of Y Mabinogi: A Queer Approach | Cameron Langford Barlow (Bangor University) |
| The hero’s wife and charioteer: gender, class, and the queer possibilities of friendship in the later Ulster Cycle | Finn Longman (University of Cambridge) |
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-14:30 Session 4: Subversive Female Bodies (Chair: Ffion King)
| The Witches That Weren’t | Cheryl Morgan (Independent Scholar) |
| The Warrior Women of Tochmarc Ferbe | Rebecca Shercliff (University of Cambridge) |
| Poetic spellcasting: Reimagining Gwerful Mechain in historical fiction | Mari Dunning (Aberystwyth University) |
14:30-15:00 Tea break
15:00-16:30 Session 5: Gendered Sovereignty (Chair: Kit Kapphahn)
| Gendered Tragedy and Kingship: Crises of Masculinity in Togail Bruidne Da Derga and the Alliterative Morte Arthure | Anthony Vitt (Harvard University) |
| Suffering as Sovereignty: Deirdriu’s Voice and the Logic of Rule in Longes mac nUislen | Cara Roberge (Indiana University) |
| Kingship and Gender in Medieval Insular Literature | Simon Rodway (Aberystwyth University) |
16:30: Closing Remarks
18:00 Dinner (Details TBA)