All events will take place at Levis Faculty Center
919 W Illinois St, Urbana, IL 61801
Thursday, October 18
7:30 PM: Plenary lecture
Room 300
Sponsored by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
Peggy McCracken (University of Michigan)
“Animate Ivory: Global Trade and Pygmalion’s Statue”
Friday, October 19
9:00-9:30 AM: Coffee and pastries
Room 424
9:30 AM: Welcome to participants
Room 422
Martin Camargo, Associate Dean for Humanities and Interdisciplinary Programs
Nora Stoppino, Director, Program in Medieval Studies
Renée R. Trilling (English, UIUC)
10:00-12:00: Panel 1, “Decentering the Human”
Chair: Brett Kaufman (Classics, UIUC)
Aylin Malcolm (English, University of Pennsylvania)
“Fish: Friends, or Food? Medieval Perspectives on Aquatic Animals”
Gian Piero Persiani (East Asian Languages and Culture, UIUC)
“The Medieval Erasure of the Subject from East Asian Poetry: Fujiwara Kintō’s Nine Levels of Waka”
Jacqueline Fay (English, University of Texas, Arlington
“Becoming an Onion: the Extra-Human Nature of Genital Difference in Old English Medical Texts”
Respondent: Nora Stoppino (Italian, UIUC)
12:00 PM-1:30 PM: Lunch (for conference participants)
Room 210
1:30-3:30 PM: Panel 2, “Plants”
Room 422
Chair: Renée R. Trilling (English, UIUC)
Shannon Kelley (English, Fairfied University)
“The Race of Plants and the Value of Tears in Venus and Adonis”
Erin E. Sweany (English, Vassar College)
“The Wheat from the Chaff: Investigating Anglo-Saxon Plant Classifications”
Verena Höfig (Germanic Languages and Literatures, UIUC)
“Birth-Stone and Sea-Kidney: A Botanical Exploration of the Brísingamen, Necklace of the Goddess Freyja”
Respondent: Robert W. Barrett, Jr. (English, UIUC)
3:30-4:00 PM: Coffee break
Room 424
4:00-6:00 PM: Plenary lecture
Room 300
Anne Harris (DePauw University)
“Bruegel’s Babel: the Prehumanist Ecology of the Hewn and the Human”
6:00-8:00 PM: Reception
Saturday, October 20
9:00-10:00 AM: Coffee and pastries
Room 424
10:00 AM-12:00 PM: Panel 3 “Nature and Longing”
Room 422
Chair: Bonnie Mak (iSchool, UIUC)
Elizabeth Sutton (Art, University of Northern Iowa)
“Ecologies of Wheat Weaving in Premodern Norway and Modern US”
Maria Slautina (Independent Researcher)
“Not Set in Stone: Recontextualization of Imported Chinese Rocks in Fifteen and Sixteenth-Century Japan”
Peter Buchanan (English, New Mexico Highlands University)
“Longing for (H)land: Nostalgia and the Uses of Stale Urine”
Respondent: Heather Grossman (Architecture, UIUC)
12:00 PM-1:30 PM: Lunch (for conference participants)
Room 210
1:30-4:00 PM: Panel 4, “Landscapes and Soundscapes”
Room 422
Chair: Dede Ruggles (Landscape Architecture, UIUC)
Nancy McLoughlin (History, University of California, Irvine)
“Reading Into the Sinful Landscape of the Hyper-Object”
Mikhaila Redovian (English, University of Colorado, Boulder)
“Rereading Eden: Examining Donne’s Gardens “
Joshua Groffman (Music, University of Pittsburgh, Bradford)
“Sounding the Pre-Human Landscape in New York’s Hudson Valley”
Anahit Poturyan (California Institute of the Arts)
“Transmodernity in Medieval Armenia”
Respondent: Robert Morrissey (History, UIUC)
4:00-6:00 PM: Free time
6:30-8:30 PM: Banquet