Medieval & Early Modern Studies: Karen Nelson, "Women and War: Mapping Early Modern Conventions of Representation"

Join the Graduate Field Committee in Medieval and Early Modern Studies for their first spring talk. Lunch begins at 12:00 pm, and the lecture starts at 12:30 pm.

RSVP to Phil Soergel.

Abstract:

How do sixteenth-century epics from Europe and Asia represent early modern women's experiences with war? When compared with historical records, what do they preserve and elide? How do artistic works mediate war’s violence and displacements?

By placing female characters in European epics alongside graphic depictions of women that accompanied Mughal and Chinese epics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, generic conventions of representation emerge. In epic, women operate as inspiration and justification for quests, battles, and territorial disputes; noble women often own property and land, and their capture and forced marriage in the course of siege figures anxieties around those transfers of power. Epic's focus upon knights and ladies traversing the landscapes of exile individually or in paired groupings also   erases the support systems and the chaos, the lived experiences of men and women at war.