CFP for sessions sponsored by the International Christine de Pizan Society, North American Branch

and

International Alain Chartier Society/Société internationale Alain Chartier 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 9-12, 2019

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1. International Christine de Pizan Society, North American Branch:

Female Authority in Word and Image: A Session in Memory of Mary Weitzel Gibbons Landor

2. International Alain Chartier Society; International Christine de Pizan Society, North American Branch:

The Anxiety of Influence

Deadline: September 15, 2018
Contact: Benjamin M. Semple, Gonzaga University
Email: semple@gonzaga.edu

CFP for a Session Sponsored by

the International Christine de Pizan Society,  North American Branch 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 9-12, 2019

Female Authority in Word and Image:
A Session in Memory of Mary Weitzel Gibbons Landor

In spring 2018, the art historian Mary Weitzel Gibbons Landor passed away. Mary Weitzel Gibbons Landor was a fixture in the circle of Christine de Pizan scholars going back more than two decades. An art historian by training (with a specialization in early Renaissance Italian art), she was one of the pioneers in recognizing the central place of images in Christine de Pizan’s works. From the research of Mary Weitzel Gibbons Landor and others, such as Sandra Hindman and Christine Reno, we know that Christine de Pizan highly valued the contribution of images to her works. She supervised the production of her books, was herself the scribe for a significant number of her texts, and “closely oversaw the design as well as the subject matter of the images in her manuscripts.”1 A recurring theme in Mary Weitzel Gibbons Landor’s scholarship was the integration of word and image, which led her to a deep appreciation of the need to coordinate medieval literary studies with the research of the art historian specializing in medieval illuminations. In addition, her scholarship frequently explored how Christine de Pizan established authority in an intellectual and artistic environment largely dominated by men. In an article on the Fountain of the Muses in the Chemin de Long Estude, she analyzed how the illumination of the naked Muses “literally embodies authority in the female nude”2, thus converting the traditional erotic association of the nude into a source of female intellectual empowerment. In memory of Mary Weitzel Gibbons Landor, this session will invite papers exploring the nexus of word and image in the writings of Christine de Pizan or her contemporaries, as well as the construction of female authority in a male-dominated late medieval culture.

Deadline: September 15, 2018
Contact: Benjamin M. Semple, Gonzaga University
Email: semple@gonzaga.edu

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1. Mary Weitzel Gibbons. “Christine’s Mirror: Self in Word and Image.” pp. 366-396 in Contexts and Continuities: Proceedings of the IVth International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan (Glasgow 21-27 July 2000), published in honour of LILIAN DULAC. Ed. Angus J. Kennedy. Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 2002.
2. Mary Weitzel Gibbons. “The Bath of the Muses and Visual Allegory in the Chemin de long estude.” pp. 128-145 in Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference. Ed. Marilynn Desmond. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.