"Monstrous water and water monsters in the medieval and early modern imagination"Water monsters and water as monstrous are both part of the same complex -- the reminder that there are extents to our reach as human beings and a vast world that we cannot be part of, a place of multifaceted Otherness. Water spawns its own horrible offspring, birthing creatures from its depths. Water is vast and we are reminded by it of our limits; it is simultaneously a site of veneration and fear, of new life and loss. Like most monsters, water shares something with us -- we are largely made up of water -- but that shared similitude, that monstrous drop within us, does not give us the ability to comprehend it -- it is both us and completely Other to us.
There is a richness to exploring the link between water as monster and the monstrous within the water. Often in literature and visual representations, water has been written with the imagery of the subconscious and it links that subconscious with the monstrous figures at the fringes of our minds, those assemblages of our repressed fears and anxieties
Submissions should explore aspects of medieval and early modern literary and visual culture in respect to water monsters or instances of monstrous waters.
To submit send a 300 word abstract and short CV to Tina Boyer, boyertm@wfu.edu by March 15th, 2014. Please include your name, title, and affiliation on the abstract itself.
This special session is organized by MEARCSTAPA: an organization committed to the scholarly examination of monstrosity as an area of social and cultural interest to past and present societies. Our inter/trans/post/pre-disciplinary approach allows us to explore the significance of monstrosity across cultural, temporal, and geographic boundaries. We are interested in a multivalent approach using materials on monsters and monstrosity from literary, artistic, philosophical, and historical sources.
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