01 September 2022 (University of Helsinki)
Parallel Session 1
Panel A: Representing female bodies
- Tracy Adams (University of Auckland), “The Duchess of Étampes: Creating the body of the political royal mistress”
- Mirabelle Field (University of Auckland), “‘A princess, or a prostitute’: The representation of Maria Fitzherbert”
Panel B: Pregnancy on display
- Susannah Lyon-Whaley (University of Auckland), “‘Shewed like a great bellied Woman’: Mary of Modena and performing Catholic pregnancy”
- Karen Hearn (University College London), “‘The picture of ye Queene when she was wth childe’: Pregnancy in English/British court portraits c.1554–1640”
Parallel Session 2
Panel A: Giving birth (or not)
- Emma Trivett (Independent Scholar), “Faking pregnancy: The significance of childlessness for two Scottish medieval queens”
- Julie Özcan (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales–Paris), “Royal Women and birth: Panorama of differentiated situations according to space and the anthropological position of the actresses in the pre-modern era (France – England – Ottoman Empire)”
- Erin Griffey (University of Auckland), “From preconception to birth at the Stuart court: Théodore de Mayerne’s case notes for Henrietta Maria’s first pregnancy and stillbirth in 1628/29”
Panel B: Near and far: Proximity at court
- Maria F. Maurer (University of Tulsa), “The stuff of love: Materializing the beloved’s body at the Italian court”
- Susan M. Cogan (Utah State University), “Catholic bodies in motion at the Elizabethan court”
- Maximilian Diemer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München / Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), “‘As you make your grave, you must rely on it’: 18th-century sepulchral media as means of noble integration at Munich’s court”
Opening Keynote:
Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly (University of Oxford), “The Disabled Prince”
Parallel Session 3
Panel A: The strange afterlives of dead bodies
- Megan Shaw (University of Auckland), “‘The riddle of the world is dead’: Murder, memory, and the Duke of Buckingham’s body”
- Esther Griffin van Orsouw (University of Warsaw), “From exile to heritage of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth: The secret burial and ‘resurrection’ of controversial royal bodies”
- Philippa Woodcock (University of the Highlands and Islands), “The three burials of Gaston de Foix: Corpses and courts, Milan, 1512–22”
- Fabian Persson (Linnæus Universitet), “I’m still here: The court and the presence of royal bodies after death”
Panel B: Materiality, practices, and narratives of embodiment in early modern South Asian courts
- Amrita Chattopadhyay (Jawaharlal Nehru University), “Understanding embodied material practices of ephemeral objects in the Mughal court (16th–18th centuries)”
- Emma Kalb (University of Bonn), “Adornments of the court: beauty and enslavement in the Mughal world”
- Shounak Ghosh (Vanderbilt University), “Courtly encounters and performative corporeality in islamicate South Asia, 1591–1621”
- Sonia Wigh (University of Edinburgh), “Part of parturition: Visualizing royal childbirth in early modern North India”
Parallel Session 4
Panel A: Gendering high fashion
- Clémentine Girault (Université de Paris), “Horns and helms: Gendered headdresses and the frontiers of the medieval body”
- Diana Lucía Gómez-Chacón (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), “Gendering the royal body: fashion, sexuality, and scandal in the Castilian court at the end of the Middle Ages”
Panel B: Building relationships in the literature of the court
- Aishwarya Kothare (Jawaharlal Nehru University), “Beyond celestial and mortal: Engendering love, courtship and marriage in Kālidāsa's Vikramorvaśīya”
- Lourdes Mazlymian (Queen’s University), “The inseparability of body and mind in Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain”
Roundtable 1
“Performativity of Premodern Bodies – Natural and Staged”
02 September 2022 (University of Helsinki)
Parallel Session 5
Panel A: Contesting bodily categories at court
- Tupu Ylä-Anttila (University of Helsinki), “Margaret of Parma: The emperor’s illegitimate daughter and her reputation”
- Shreejita Basak (Jawaharlal Nehru University), “Beyond the realm of the haram: A case study of the Mughal administrator I‘timad Khan Khwajasara”
- Janet Dickinson (Oxford University Department for Continuing Education/New York University-London), “The constant inconstant: Elizabeth I and her body natural”
Panel B: Courtly bodies in conflict
- André Godinho (Universidade de Lisboa), “Bodily performance and experience in a poetic account of a Portuguese royal bullfight: Manuel de Leão’s Triumpho Lusitano (1688)”
- Audrey Thorstad (University of North Texas), “Chivalric masculinity, violence, and kingship: The battle speeches in Edward Hall’s Chronicle (1547)”
- Emilie Margaix (Université de Poitiers), “La sexualité du tyran: la politisation des violences sexuelles à la cour de Jean sans Terre/The sexuality of the tyrant: The politicisation of sexual violence at the court of John Lackland”
Parallel Session 6
Panel A: Courtly illness, courtly cures
- Marc W. S. Jaffré (Durham University), “Sickness and politics at the courts of Henri IV and Louis XIII, 1589–1643”
- Mirella Marini (Independent scholar), “The ailing and failing body of the Duchess of Aarschot: The responsibilities of personal physicians in the 17th-century Low Countries”
- Bożena Popiołek and Anna Penkała-Jastrzębska (Pedagogical University of Cracow), “Physicans, barber surgeons, midwives, herbalists and traditional healers: Medicine at women's courts in the 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth”
Panel B: Rethinking body and desire at the Mughal court, 15th–18th centuries
- Anuj (Jawaharlal Nehru University), “Some reflections on homoeroticism and homosexuality from the Baburnama”
- Rakshit Malik (Jawaharlal Nehru University), “Bodies perceived and gendered: Mughal eunuchs as a third biological sex”
- Noble Shrivastava (Jawaharlal Nehru University), “At the intersection of royal courts and quotidian bazaars: A study of the relationship between courtesans and the Mughal elite”
Plenary Keynote
Svante Norrhem (Lunds Universiteit), “Gender and Materiality: Courtly Clothing from Comission to Consumption”
Parallel Session 7
Panel A: Problematic relationships at early modern courts
- Carmen Vioreanu (University of Bucharest), “Gustaf lll's marriage as a rite de passage/Gustaf lll:s äktenskap som övergångsrit”
- Holly Marsden (University of Winchester/Historic Royal Palaces), “The sexual life of Queen Mary II of England”
- Merit Laine (Uppsala University), “‘You have poisoned the most beautiful day of my life’: A drama at the Swedish court, 1775–1782”
Panel B: Bodies under duress
- Susanna Niiranen (University of Jyväskylä), “Courtly bodies imprisoned: Catherine Jagiellon’s family life in Gripsholm Castle”
- Reima Välimäki (University of Turku), “Tortured bodies in the papal court of Urban VI (1378–89)”
- Marie-Claude Canova-Green (Goldsmiths–University of London), “The king’s suffering body”
Parallel Session 8
Panel A: Where life meets death
- Miriam Shadis (Ohio University), “Pregnant, in pain, and dead: The necessary body of the queen in early Portugal”
- Juliana Amorim Goskes (Morgan Library & Museum), “Isabelle of Aragon, the once and future queen of France”
- Patrik Pastrnak (Palacky University Olomouc), “Weddings and deaths, weddings despite deaths: dynasty, ritual, and emotion”
Panel A: Public and private lives at court
- Harriet Strahl (University of Oxford/Durham University), “The grieving court of Henry I”
- Marian Rothstein (Carthage College), “Courtly sex in the eyes and ears of others”
- Zita Eva Rohr (Macquarie University), “Sex and the single girl?: Embodying sex in fifteenth-century French court culture”
Roundtable 2
“Premodern Contested Bodies”
03 September 2022 (Turku Castle)
Tour of Turku Castle
Session 9: Power and play among the elite
- Amanda Westcott (University of Oxford), “Holding court at Windsor: The physical and social structures of court under George III”
- Dustin M. Neighbors (University of Helsinki), “Dianas of court: The bodiliness, performativity, and culture of female hunting in Northern Europe, 1500–1700”
- Kristen Vitale (University of Connecticut), “The performance of power relations: Early Henrician courtly dance”
Closing Keynote
Anu Lahtinen (University of Helsinki), “Reassessing Lifecycles, the Body, and Courts: The Case of the Swedish Court”