Friday, May 21

11:00am
Director’s Welcome
Emily Steiner, University of Pennsylvania

11:15am
Plenary Interview 1: Can Piers Teach Us How to Feel?

Organizer: Stephanie Batkie, University of the South
Interviewer: Nicholas Watson, Harvard University

• Chase Padsuniak, Princeton University Sarah McNamer, Georgetown University
• Cristina Maria Cervone, University of Memphis Allan Mitchell, University of Victoria
• Jessica Rosenfeld, Washington University, St. Louis

12:30pm-1:45pm
Lightning Rounds A and B
Organizer: Adin Lears, Virginia Commonwealth University
Moderators: Louise Bishop, University of Oregon, and John Sebastian, Loyola Marymount University

Lightning Round A

• Spencer Strub, University of California, Berkeley “The Feeling of Dislocation”
• Richard H. Godden, Louisiana State University “Disabling Will”
• Katharine Jager, University of Houston-Downtown “Meddlynge with Makynges: Idleness, Aesthetics and Identity in Piers Plowman”
• Alexis Becker, Ithaca College “Lewed and Lettred Abetting”
• Ahmed Seif, Harvard University “The Langlandian Character as a ‘jurydical’ Person”
• Jennifer Jahner, California Institute of Technology “A Life Assayed: Piers Plowman as Experimentum”

Lightning Round B

• Hope Doherty, Durham University “Langland’s ‘Kynde’ and Heredity as Typology: Some Contexts and Questions”
• Shannon Gayk, Indiana University “The Uncertain Climes of Piers Plowman”
• Adin Lears, Virginia Commonwealth University “Covetousness and the Leap of the Louse”
• Jennifer Sisk, University of Vermont “Hospitable Reading”
• Bernardo Hinojosa, University of California, Berkeley “Langland, Auerbach, and the Materiality of Jewish History.”

2:00pm- 3:00pm
Roundtable 1: Spheres and Atmospheres
Organizer: Paul Megna, SUNY, Purchase College Moderator: Larry Scanlon, Rutgers University

• Andrew Galloway, Cornell University, “The Fog of the Law”
• Danielle Allor, Rutgers University “The World’s Wicked Wind: Windthrown Trees and Uprooted Virtue”
• Karl Steel, Brooklyn College / The Graduate Center, CUNY “The Problem of Hunting: Wolf-Killing in Piers Plowman C.9 and Idaho”
• Tekla Bude, Oregon State University “Wyndes and Wyndowes”

3:00pm-4:00pm
Translation Workshop
Leader: Katharine Jager, University of Houston-Downtown

Join us for an hour-long session of creating collaborative translations of Piers Plowman!

We will first think through some different possible styles (lyric narrative free verse? as close to the original as possible? prose? the hip-hop long line? iambic pentameter and rhyme?) for translating Piers into Modern English.

Then we will split into groups and translate an excerpt from the B-text. Together we will generate a hybrid, performative version of an excerpt from Piers Plowman, which we will share online via social media.