The Symposium is part of Project ARWEN (Amatory and Romantic Language in Welsh Panegyric), an MSCA-funded project which explores the the motif of the poet as spouse of the patron in medieval Welsh praise poetry and seeks to challenge established ideas of gender homogeneity in the middle ages.
Keynote Speaker
Dr Alicia Spencer-Hall (she/they)
University College London
Alicia specializes in comparative analyses of medieval literature and modern critical theory. They are an expert in medieval hagiography, with her work foregrounding interrogations inflected by contemporary visual, media, and cultural studies. Alongside this research strand, Alicia works in the field of medieval disability studies, exploring representations of chronic pain in the Middle Ages in terms of contemporary crip theory.
Information about her publications and outreach work can be found at the link above.
Organisers
Dr Kit Kapphahn (she/her)
Kit is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions post-doctoral fellow in the Welsh department at Aberystwyth University and the PI of ARWEN. This current project explores the origins and development a trope found in medieval Welsh praise poetry in which the court bard writes about his noble patron in the language of marriage and love. Her recent publications situate the figure of the bard as a liminal and inherently genderfluid figure; her research broadly deals with gender, genre, and the reception of medieval texts by their contemporary audiences.
Oli Wilkin (he/they, they/he)
Oli is a postgraduate research student at Swansea University, currently in the final year of his PhD project. His thesis, ‘“I am not what I am”: Transness in English Literary Discourse from the Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries’, surveys genderqueerness and nonconformity in late medieval and early modern drama, poetry and satire, alongside didactic and medical texts. During their time at Swansea, they have worked as a Senior Teaching Assistant and with the University’s Centre for Academic Success as a Peer Writing Advisor. In the coming years, they are expecting to be awarded Associate Fellowship and publish research exploring trans representation during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Tony Vitt (he/him)
Tony is currently a second-year PhD student of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard. He previously achieved an MPhil in Welsh from Aberystwyth University with an edition and translation of the Peniarth 7 and 14 versions of Historia Peredur vab Efrawc, and a BA in Celtic Studies and Economics from UC Berkeley.
Ffion King (she/her)
Ffion is a Masters student in the Welsh department at Aberystwyth University with an interest in trans and genderqueer subjects in medieval and early modern literature.