MEARCSTAPA Sponsors "Behavior in Medieval Literature and Law: In Memory of Lisi Oliver"

It has only been a week since the devastating loss of Lisi Oliver, but we would like to honor her at SEMA this year. So:

 

SEMA 2016

CFP: Monstrous Behavior in Medieval Literature and Law: In Memory of Lisi Oliver  

Session Sponsor: MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology Through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application).

Session Organizer: Larissa Tracy (Longwood University) 

Session Presider: Larissa Tracy (Longwood University)

 

In the introduction to The Body Legal in Barbarian Law, Lisi Oliver explains that her complex and interdisciplinary analysis is designed to help “lay to rest the use of the adjective ‘medieval’ often employed in modern prose to represent ‘uninformed’” (4). As her work often does, in The Body Legal Oliver took fragments and pieces of the past, with a particular interest in wounds, feud, community, and compensation, and created a clearer more nuanced understanding of the medieval world through a legal lens. Her work often explored monstrous behavior, or the modern assumptions of monstrous behavior, and sought to elucidate the causes and consequences of such actions. Her work has had a profound impact on the work of medieval scholars who have a similar interest in investigating the presumed monstrosity of the medieval past: torture, punishment, rape, feud, murder, wounding, and warfare. This session honors her work and her numerous contributions to this discipline with papers on monstrous behavior of any kind in medieval literary and legal texts. Interdisciplinary papers that also consider material, physical or visual evidence are also welcome.

 

Please send abstracts of 300 words and a brief bio to session organizer Larissa Tracy (kattracy@comcast.net) by June 25.