Meeting of the International Piers Plowman Society
University of Washington, Seattle
23-26 July 2015
Conference Program (revised draft, 31 March)
Thursday, 23 July
Registration
Piers Plowman Electronic Archive Workshop: contact Jim Knowles jrknowle@ncsu.edu
4:30-6:00 PM Opening Plenary: C. David Benson
6:00 PM Opening Reception; dinner on our own
Friday, 24 July
9:00-10:45 AM: Session I
A. Manuscripts and Books I
Karrie Fuller, University of Notre Dame, “`Makynge’ England: A Scribal Meddler in San Marino,
Huntington Library MS HM 114”
Simon Horobin, University of Oxford, “John But: Making a Good End or Silly Scribbling?”
Michael Madrinkian, University of Oxford, “Regional Circulation, Coteries, and Scribal Collaboration in
the Piers Plowman Manuscripts”
Chair: Christine Rose, Portland State University
Respondent: Wendy Scase, University of Birmingham
B. Session: Theologies I
Ryan McDermott, University of Pittsburgh, “What is Theology?”
Jack Harding Bell, Duke University, “Theology and Confession: Reflections on Theological Form”
Mariah Min, University of Pennsylvania, “Blood Brothers: Martyrdom, Conversion, and Christian
Community-building in Passus 15 of Piers Plowman B”
Chair: Ed Craun, Washington and Lee University, Emeritus
C. Langland’s Poetics I
Paul Megna, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Shame, Trauma And Existential Therapy In Piers
Plowman B.11 And C.13”
Justin Lynn Barker, Purdue University, “The Craft of Nature and the Nature of Craft in Mum and the
Sothsegger”
Sarah Townsend, University of Pennsylvania, “Sexual-Salvific Poetics in Piers Plowman”
Chair: Emily Steiner, University of Pennsylvania
10:45-11:15 AM: coffee break
11:15 AM-1:00 PM: Session II
A. Personification in Piers Plowman
Katharine Breen, Northwestern University, “The Metaphysics of Personification”
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Julie Orlemanski, University of Chicago, “Animation, along Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles”
Masha Raskolnikov, Cornell University, “Personifying the Apologetic Self in Piers Plowman”
Chair: James Knowles, North Carolina State University
B. Piers Plowman, Community, and the Law
Arvind Thomas, University of California, Los Angeles, “From Naming to Enacting the Usury –
Prohibition Across the B and C Versions of Passus 3”
Moira Fitzgibbons, Marist College, “‘Comune’ Conversation in Piers Plowman and MS Longleat 4”
William Storm, Marquette University, “The Construction of Parliamentary Spaces in Piers Plowman”
Chair: Colette Murphy, University of Washington
Respondent: Jennifer Jahner, California Institute of Technology
C. The Rokeles: In Honor of Lister Matheson
Peter Sutton, “The Life of Langland: An Alternative View”
Michael Johnston, Purdue University, “William Langland and John Ball”
Andrew Galloway, Cornell University, “Why Are We Having this Conversation? Piers Plowman and the
Problems and Prospects of a New Biographia Literaria”
Chair: Tess Tavormina, Michigan State University
Respondent: Rob Adams, Sam Houston State University
1:00-2:15 PM: Lunch break & International Piers Plowman Society Business Meeting
2:15-4:00 PM: Session III
A. Theologies II: Theology and Literary Practice
Curtis Gruenler, Hope College, “The Poetics of Enigma and the Theology of Participation in the Fifth
Vision of Piers Plowman C”
Gaelan Gilbert, St. Katherine's College, “Langland's Theologies of Personification”
Cristina Maria Cervone, The University of Memphis, “Rechlesnesse and the Grain of Wheat”
Chair: Ryan McDermott, University of Pittsburgh
B. Metrical Form I: Alliterative Metre and Its Neighbors
Nicholas Myklebust, Regis University, “Overlapping Magisteria? Final -e as a Bridge between
Alliterating and non-Alliterating Fourteenth-Century Meters”
Noriko Inoue, Otaru University of Commerce, “-ly and -liche/lych(e Suffixes and the A-Verse Rhythm”
Kristin Lynn Cole, Pennsylvania State University, “The Meter of the Alliterating Harley Lyrics”
Chair: Eric Weiskott, Boston College
Respondent: Donka Minkova, University of California, Los Angeles
C. Editing Piers Plowman: A Roundtable
Míċeál Vaughan, University of Washington
A.S.G. Edwards, University of Kent
Michael Calabrese, California State University, Los Angeles
Elizabeth Robertson, University of Glasgow, and Stephen H. A. Shepherd, Loyola Marymount
University
Chair: Lawrence Warner, King’s College London
4:00-4:30 PM: coffee break
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4:30-6:15 PM: Session IV
A. Piers Plowman: A Collection of Tales
Alastair Bennett, Royal Holloway, University of London, “Langland’s Sermons and Their Narrative
Contexts”
Stephanie Batkie, University of Montevallo, “Narrating Consolation in Piers Plowman and the Limits of
Patience”
Mary Raschko, Whitman College, “Telling Christ’s Story: The Role of Narrative in the Four Daughters’
Debate”
Pamela King, University of Glasgow, “Dramatic Langland and his Exclusive Audience”
Chair: Robyn Malo
B. Piers Plowman and Sensation
Tekla Bude, University of Cambridge, “Feeling Pain and Pursuing Lechecraft in Piers Plowman”
Rawitawan Pulam, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, “The Poetics of Langland’s Ethical Soundscape”
R. James Goldstein, Auburn University, “Kynde Knowynge”: Langland and Aesthetic Experience’
Marco Nievergelt, University of Lausanne, “Sensation, Cognition and Self-Knowledge: Scholastic
Models and Poetic Experience”
Chair: Maura Nolan, University of California, Berkeley
C. Political Langland: 1381
Daniel Davies, University of Pennsylvania, “Vox Dei and the Literatures of 1381”
Katherine Woodason Jager, University of Houston, '“Grounden smal, smal, smal': Sound, Somatic
Reception and the Rebel Letters of 1381”
Adin Lears, Cornell University, “Words that Quicken and Grow: Feeling, Fellowship, and Langland's
Political Afterlives”
Chair: Thomas Goodmann, University of Miami
Dinner on our own.
Saturday, 25 July
9:00-10:45 AM: Session V
A. Material Piers Plowman
Ellen K. Rentz, Claremont McKenna College, “Travel Gear”
Eluned Summers-Bremner, The University of Auckland, “A ‘Common Humanity’: Reliquary Modes in
Piers Plowman”
Wan-Chuan Kao, Washington and Lee University, “‘Whitlether’: Material Suffering and Salvific Energy”
Chair: Shannon Gayk, Indiana University
B. Theologies III: Virtues (In Honor of Lawrence M. Clopper)
Denise N. Baker, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, “The Three Troublesome Words in Piers
Plowman: Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest”
Ingrid Pierce, Purdue University, “The Poetics of Memory and the Question of Hope in Piers Plowman”
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William Revere, Duke University's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, “Mercy and 'Myhte':
Virtue and Power in Piers Plowman”
Chair: Thomas Goodmann, University of Miami
C. Langland in the Sixteenth Century
Katie Little, University of Colorado, Boulder, “Medieval Poetry in Sixteenth-Century England:
Cannibalized? Ignored? Reformed?”
Noelle Phillips, University of British Columbia, “A Papist Piers? Treason and Nationalism in Beinecke
Library MS Osborn a.18”
Thomas Prendergast, The College of Wooster, “The Mystery of Owen Rogers”
Spenser Strub, University of California, Berkeley, “Robert Doughtie and the Readers of Piers Plowman
in Print”
Chair: Rebecca Davis, University of California, Irvine
10:45-11:15 AM: coffee break
11:15 AM-1:00 PM: Session VI
A. Metrical Form II: Piers Plowman and Verse History
Eric Weiskott, Boston College, “The Meter of Piers Plowman in the Sixteenth Century”
Macklin Smith, University of Michigan, “Langland’s Line, Statistically Speaking”
Ian Cornelius, Yale University, “The Electronic Archive and the Meter of Piers Plowman B”
Chair: Kristin Lynn Cole, Pennsylvania State University
Respondent: Donka Minkova, University of California, Los Angeles
B. Manuscripts and Books II
Angela Bennett-Segler, University of Nevada, Reno, “Digital Piers: Linked Data, Machine Reading and
the End of the Archive”
Tomonori Matsushita, Senshu University, “Piers Plowman Manuscripts and the Ubiquitous Archive”
Lawrence Warner, King’s College London, “Adam Pinkhurst, Scribe of Trinity B.15.17 (but no other
Middle English MSS)”
Chair: Michael Calabrese, California State University, Los Angeles
C. Langland’s Poetics II: A Roundtable
Emily Steiner, University of Pennsylvania
Maura Nolan, University of California, Berkeley
Frank Grady, University of Missouri, Saint Louis
D. Vance Smith, Princeton University
Traugott Lawler, Yale University
Chair: C. David Benson, University of Connecticut
1:00-2:00 lunch break
box lunch
2:00-3:45 PM: Session VII
A. Structures of Meaning in Piers Plowman
J.A.T. Smith, Pepperdine University, “Allegory of the Noun: Person, Place, Thing, or Idea?”
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James Ensley, North Carolina State University, “Textuality, Latinity, and Piers Plowman’s Archival
Malady”
Sarah Wood, University of Warwick, “Voices in the Margins of Huntington Library, MS HM 143: Two
Readings of Langland’s Work”
Chair: Louise Bishop, University of Oregon
B. Keeping Form in Piers Plowman
Rebecca Davis, University of California, Irvine, “Anima and its Aliases”
Jennifer L. Sisk, University of Vermont, “False Habits; Cloaked Truth: Disguise and Ambiguous Form in
Piers Plowman”
Eleanor Johnson, Columbia University, “Refraining in Piers Plowman”
Chair: Elizabeth Robertson, University of Glasgow
C. Langland and the French Tradition
Andrew Galloway, Cornell University, “Madame Meed”
Marco Nievergelt, University of Lausanne, “Allegory, Hermeneutics and Textuality: the French Lineage
of Langland’s Re-Visionary Poetics”
R. D. Perry, University of California, Berkeley, “Langland’s French Song”
Elizaveta Strakhov, Marquette University, “`But Who Will Bell the Cat?’ Langland and Deschamps on
the Hundred Years War”
Nicolette Zeeman, University of Cambridge, “Langland’s Chivalric Apocalypse”
Chair: Frank Grady, University of Missouri-St. Louis
3:45-4:15 PM coffee break
4:15-5:15 PM: Session VIII
Piers Plowman in Our Time
Sarah Tolmie, University of Waterloo, Author of The Stone Boatmen
Rosemary O’Neill, Kenyon College, “Teju Cole’s Open City and Medieval Faculty Psychology”
Peter Sutton, Independent Author & Translator, Piers Plowman: A Modern Verse Translation
Chair: Lawrence Warner, King’s College London
5:15-6:45 PM Closing Plenary Session: Fiona Somerset, University of Connecticut
7:00 PM Closing reception and banquet
Sun 26 July: Excursions
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