Medieval-Renaissance Conference
UVA Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXXIX (September 17-19, 2026) deadline for submissions: July 6, 2026 full name / name of organization: University of Virginia-Wise Center for Medieval-Renaissance Studies contact email: kjt9t@uvawise.edu
Sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference promotes scholarly discussion in all disciplines of Medieval and Renaissance studies. The conference welcomes proposals for papers and panels on Medieval or Renaissance literature, language, history, philosophy, science, pedagogy, and the arts. Abstracts for papers should be 300 or fewer words. Proposals for panels should include: a) title of the panel; b) names and institutional affiliations of the chair and all panelists; c) a 200-250 word description of the panel). A division of the University of Virginia, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise is a public four-year liberal arts college located in the scenic Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia.
Keynote Address
Arthur's Great Death in Malory and its Afterlives
Karen Cherewatuk, Saint Olaf College
Professor Cherewatuk's address examines Malory's use of a "great death” in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur and analyzes Arthur's demise as an example. She then discusses how later writers and artists respond to Malory's presentation of the king's death. The post-medieval works examined inlcude Tennyson's "The Passing of Arthur," Edward Burne-Jones' "The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon," T.H.White's The Once and Future King, and Catherine Donaldson's wood engravings for The Death of Arthur (1928).
Karen Cherewatuk is Professor Emeritus of English and Marie M. Meyer Distinguished Professor at Saint Olaf's College in Minnesota. She is the author of Marriage, Adultery, and Inheritance in Malory’s Morte Darthur (Boydell and Brewer 2006), co-editor of The Arthurian Way of Death (Boydell and Brewer 2009) and has written numerous articles on the works of Sir Thomas Malory and Arthurian Literature. She has a book forthcoming, titled Grief and Mourning Malory's Morte Darthur.
Program and Schedule of Events
Thursday, September 17
Sessions will be held in the Chapel of All Faiths with concurrent sessions held in the Rhododendron Room, Slemp Student Center, fifth floor (R). Speakers marked with an asterisk (*) will present remotely via Zoom.
12:00-3:00
Registration and Welcome, Chapel of All Faiths
3:10-4:10: Session I: Global Art and Architecture
“The Multifarious Temple-Art of Jayavarman
Punam Madhok, East Carolina University*
“A Smaller Hero: Bartolomeo Bellano’s David with the Head of Goliath”
Madison Carnahan, University of Alabama*
Chair: Amelia J. Harris, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
4:30-5:00: Performance, “A Sequence of Sequences”
Sten Maulsby, Independent Scholar, Flutes and Harp
5:00-7:00
WELCOME AND RECEPTION, Rhododendron Room, Slemp Center
Greetings from Gary Johnson, Provost, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
Friday, September 18
8:00-8:30
Coffee and Registration, Chapel of All Faiths
9:00-10:20
Session II: Manuscripts and Medicine
“Marwnad Cynddylan [Death Song of Cynddylan] in Context”
Daniel Helbert, Young-Harris College
“Healers and Holy Men wiþ Demons and Disease: Syncretism in Charms and Apocrypha”
Timothy Domzalski, University of Virginia
“Sixteenth-Century Dietaries and Literarity”
Micha’el Kabasele, University of York*
Chair: Kenneth Tiller, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
10:30-11:50
Session III: Adapting Shakespeare in Modern Literature and Film
“Anne or Agnes?: Imagining Mrs. Shakespeare in Literature and Film”
Christine Schott, Erskine College
“The Issue of Age in Shakespeare’s Plays and their Film Adaptations”
Richard Vela, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
“Getting Puckish with Medieval-Renaissance Classrooms: A Pedagogical Proposal”
David J. Bradshaw, Warren Wilson College
Chair: Benita Huffman-Muth, Middle Georgia State University
Concurrent Session: Undergraduate/graduate session 1: Dante’s Divine Comedy: Structural Principles, sponsored by the Appalachian Pre-Modernists
“The Rise and Fall of a Virgin-Whore Complex: Dante’s Cultivated Complexity Towards Real Women and Their Representations as the Pathway to Salvation Through Love”
Ruby Purgason, East Tennessee State University
“Sinful Appetites: Count Ugolino as the Culmination of Hell’s Hungers”
Suzi Peter, East Tennessee State University
“Where Numbers Fail: Mathematics and Transcendence in Dante’s Divine Comedy”
Sydney Gnoth, East Tennessee State University
Chair: Josh Reid, East Tennessee State University
12:00-12:50: LUNCH, Smith Dining Commons, Private Dining Room
1:00-2:20
Session IV: Shakespeare in Context
“Rhetoric, Captivity, and Virtue: The Interplay of Influence in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Milton’s Comus, and Lewis’s The Silver Chair”
Benita Huffman-Muth, Middle Georgia State University
“Fluid Bodies, Leaky Empires: Humoral Imbalance and the Pathologization of Peace in Antony and Cleopatra”
Trisha D. Gupta, New York University*
“‘Will’t please you eat?’: Cannibalism as Denouement in Titus Andronicus”
Jack Earlenbaugh, Northern Virginia Community College
Chair: Richard Vela, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
Concurrent session: Undergraduate session 2: Medieval Literature, Religion, and Philosophy
“The Righteous Judge of Man: The Eschatological Hermeneutic in ‘The Dream of the Rood’”
Levi Rose, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
“Militaristic Christianity in Song of Roland”
Aidan Vrazel, Young Harris College
“The Deliberation of Sound: Chaucer’s House of Fame as a Warning Against the Toils of Fame and Rumor”
Emma Lyall, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
Chair: Donald Leech, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
2:30-3:50
Session V: Dante’s Divine Comedy: Christian Poetics, sponsored by the Appalachian Pre-Modernists
“Dante’s Baptism of Statius: Poetry and Will in Purgatorio”
Grant Bivens, East Tennessee State University
“Anti-Papal Rhetoric and Imagery in Dante’s Commedia and Early Protestant Writing”
Zephaniah Wells, East Tennessee State University
“ ‘How man makes himself eternal’: Salvation and Literary Redemption in Inferno Canto XV”
Rebekah Saulsbury, East Tennessee State University
Chair: Verónica Rodriguez, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
Concurrent Session: Undergraduate Session 3: Shakespeare
“Women in Shakespeare: Transgressive or Passive?”
Ralph Elver, Young Harris College
“Perception vs. Reality: Epistemology in Othello”
Kianna Pierson, Erskine College
“Hamlet’s Acceptance of Death: A Philosophical Process”
Abigail Browning, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
Chair: Madison Smith, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
4:00-5:20
Session VI: Arthurian Literature
“At the Court of Hermann of Thuringia: Wolfram’s Parzival and the Restorative Power of Marriage”
Michael Pagel, Northeast Tennessee Community College
“The Sublime Politics of Arthur's Death in Malory's Morte Darthur”
Jordan Hoyos, East Tennessee State University
“Programmed Agency and Material Discourse in Malory's Sword-Trial”
Evan Webster, Independent Scholar*
Chair: Louis J. Boyle, Carlow University
5:30-6:30
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Karen Cherewatuk, Saint Olaf College
“Arthur’s Great Death in Malory and Its Afterlives”
6:30: DINNER Cantrell Dining Hall
Saturday, September 19
8:30-9:00 Coffee, Chapel
9:00-10:20
Session VII: Robin Hood in Tradition and Popular Culture
“The Weight of History: Jousting Performances in McDade and Montblanc”
Youkyung Lee, University of Texas at Austin
“John Mair's Reinvention of Richard”
Isabella Neubauer, University of Texas at Austin
“The Leadership of Robin Hood”
Macklin Cowart, University of North Georgia, Gainesville
Chair: Christine Schott, Erskine College
10:30-11:50
Session VIII: Gossip and Fama in Medieval and Early Modern Literature
“Literary Materialisms in Chaucer’s House of Fame”
Nathanial B. Smith, Central Michigan University
“Sins of the Tongue: Gossip and the Construction of Monarchical Power in Late Medieval Iberia”
Samuel Sánchez y Sánchez, Davidson College
“Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur: Fama, Talk, and Romantic Love”
Louis J. Boyle, Carlow University
Chair: John Cull, University of Virginia’s College at Wise
12:00 LUNCH, Chapel, and Closing Remarks