Re-voicing the Cross-Cultural Networks of the North Atlantic Archipelagos: Modern and Contemporary Women's Perspectives (Lab)

Harbour Centre 2200

Organizers:
Francesca Allfrey (King's College London)
Francesca Brooks (University College London)
Bethany Whalley (King's College London)

In recent decades, there has been an influx of new scholarship on literary ‘medievalisms’ in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, attesting to a recognition that the early medieval past offers a rich resource for modern and contemporary artists. For the most part, however, this remains a reconstructed history of male writers and poets reworking the early medieval past; there is a wealth of modern and contemporary women’s creative work that we, as medievalists, are only just beginning to explore. This lab brings together researchers and practitioners with a view to enriching critical engagement with the underexplored voices of women poets, writers and artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Together, we hope to rethink the role of women in remaking the early medieval past, and develop new methodologies for cooperative, interdisciplinary and innovative scholarship.

The lab session will be led by each of our speakers in turn:

Dayanna Knight (Independent Scholar and illustrator of The Viking Coloring Book (2016))

Rowan Evans (poet/sound artist) and Maisie Newman (director/choreographer of WULF, a dark feminist adaptation of ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’)

Meg Boulton (University of York)

Each will be sharing current work-in-progress and posing key questions related to women's creative re-makings of the medieval past. This will be followed by 40 minutes of discussion and reflections, chaired by the panel organisers.
We will be pre-circulating short examples of our speakers' research or practice, alongside a selection of core published writings by women scholars and artists; materials for the lab can be accessed from Friday 15 March at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZtL3-oKxrKG0HPFluJJ3MUpSDrwwOI6q.