Programme

New Visions of Julian of Norwich

Somerville College, Oxford, 15th-16th July 2022

Organisers: Antje E. Chan (Lincoln College, Oxford), Godelinde Gertrude Perk (Somerville, Oxford), Raphaela Rohrhofer (Somerville, Oxford), Alicia Smith (English Faculty, Oxford)

Thursday 14th July

18:00-19:00 In-Person Welcoming Performance (Somerville College Chapel)
New Music for a New Vision
by Dr. Alison Daniell (University of Southampton), Louise Stewart (Multitude of Voyces), and members of Somerville College Choir, dir. Will Dawes

Friday 15th July 

09:15 Opening session (Flora Anderson Hall)

Keynote speaker – Nicholas Watson 

Julian of Norwich: Recension and Witness 

Respondents – Laura Saetveit Miles, Barry Windeatt 

11:30 Panel 1 

TRANSFIGURING THE MUNDANE 
Chair: Elizabeth Robertson 

  • Gillian Adler 
    Julian of Norwich and Medieval Traversals of Time 
  • Raphaela Rohrhofer  
    Julian of Norwich on Love and Nothingness  
  • Laura Kalas 
    Producing Passioun: Reading Pain Generatively in the Revelations of Love
      
  • Jo Koster 
    The Custom of Our Prayer: Establishing the Context of Julian’s Anchoritic Discourse 

14:00 Panel 2  

MATERIAL AND IMMATERIAL 
Chair: Annie Sutherland 

  • Fred Morgan 
    “But I saw not synne” 
  • Anna-Nadine Pike 
    “dereworthy blod”, Meditation and Performance in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and British Library, MS Egerton 1821 
  • Melissa Tu 
    “These words seyd our Lord”: Virtual Voices in Julian’s Text 
     
  • Victoria Yuskaitis 
    Julian of Norwich’s Cell: The Role Archaeology Plays in Strengthening Authenticity and Impact 

16:00 Roundtable 1a  (Pusey House, Chapel)

JULIAN IN THE COVID ERA 
Moderator: Hannah Lucas 

  • Gill Butterworth 
    An Icon for Such a Time as This: A Pre-UK First Lockdown Anticipatory Consideration of Julian of Norwich and Pandemic Themes 
  • Margaret Healy-Varley 
    Reading Julian for Resilience 
  • Hilary Pearson
    The Life of the Anchoress: Practical Lessons for Times of Pandemic

16:00 Roundtable 1b (Pusey House, Ursell Room)  

PREMODERN CRITICAL RACE STUDIES AND JULIAN OF NORWICH 
Moderator: Mishtooni Bose  

A conversation between:  

  • Michelle M. Sauer 
  • Dorothy Kim 
  • Bailey Ludwig 
  • Kyle Moore 

17:30 Roundtable 2a (Pusey House, Chapel)

JULIAN AND MODERN CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES  
Moderator: Godelinde Gertrude Perk

  • Carla MacKinnon 
    When a Woman Sits Alone: A Creative Project Inspired by Julian of Norwich 
  • Emma Pennington 
    Doorway to Silence: An Analysis of the Use of Julian’s Text by Contemplative Prayer Groups Today 
  • Claire Foster-Gilbert 
    Contemplating Cancer Cells: A Personal Account of Julian’s Companionship Enduring and Writing about Two and a Half Years of Treatment for Myeloma 

17:30 Roundtable 2b (at Pusey House, Ursell Room)

CREATIVE ENGAGEMENTS WITH JULIAN 
Moderator: Antje E. Chan 

  • Max Brumberg-Kraus and Jennifer Awes-Freeman 
    “Visions of Divine Love”: A Poetic and Visual Response to Julian’s Revelations  
  • Caroline Golum 
    Creative Engagement with Revelations of Divine Love as Transcendental   Cinema 
  • Laura Varnam 
    Voices in Dialogue: Meeting Julian through Margery in Contemporary Creative Adaptations 

Saturday 16th July 

09:00 Panel 3 (Flora Anderson Hall)

MODERN RESPONSES TO JULIAN  
Chair: Alicia Smith 

  • Laura De Gaspari 
    Divine Motherhood in Julian of Norwich and Spiritual Maternity in Edith Stein 
  • Heather Glover 
    Beholding as Interpretive Strategy: Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and Christina Rossetti’s The Face of the Deep 
  • Simon Horobin 
    “A dangerous book”: C.S. Lewis on the Revelations of Julian of Norwich 
  • Nancy Bradley Warren 
    Julian of Norwich: New Visions of Her Lives and Afterlives 

11:00 Panel 4 

TEXTUAL INTERVENTIONS  
Chair: Laura Saetveit Miles 

  • Samira Lindstedt 
    Towards a Grammar of Revelation: Editing and Translating Julian’s Revelations 
  • Fumiko Yoshikawa
    What Do Scribal Corrections Show in Paris, BNF, Fonds Anglais MS 40? 
  • Brenna Duperron 
    Editing Community in the Works of Julian of Norwich  

13:30 Panel 5 

BEYOND THE ANCHORHOLD 
Chair: Nicholas Watson 

  • Alexis Becker 
    Behovely Work 
  • Laurence Bond 
    “With alle the faith of haly kyrke”: Social Meaning and Dissent in the Writings of Julian of Norwich 
  • David Palko 
    Moving Beyond Economics with Julian of Norwich 
  • Chase Padusniak 
    Julian and the Politics of Norwich 

15:30 Panel 6 

WORKING ON / WITH JULIAN 
Chair: Ayoush Lazikani 

  • Juliana Dresvina  
    Julian of Norwich’s Shewings: A Medieval Failure, An Early Modern Success 
  • Daniel Fishley 
    The Weakness of A Revelation: Julian of Norwich, John Caputo, and the Questioning Event of Theology 
  • Hannah Lucas 
    The Good Enough Mystic: Toward a Practical Theory of Julian Scholarship 
  • Melaney Poli 
    How We got “Saint Julian”: A Short History in Images 

17:15 Respondent  

Liz Herbert McAvoy 

18:15-19:30 ‘Cell’
A darkly humorous play written and performed by Cindy Oswin
‘Cell’ examines the enclosed life of Julian of Norwich into old age

This conference is part of  “Women Making Memories: Liturgy and the Remembering Female Body in Medieval Holy Women’s Texts”, Dr Perk’s MSCA-IF project at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 842443.


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