CFP: Writing About Early Modern Nuns and Writing-Nuns (5/15/08; RSA, 3/19/09-3/21/09)

by Jessica C. Murphy

For the 55th Annual Renaissance Society of America Meeting in Los Angeles, California March 19-21, 2009 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza:

This panel seeks to highlight ties between fictional representations of nuns in early modern literature and the actual writing of nuns in early modern Europe and the Americas. Panel participants should examine how
fictional nuns mirror, mesh with, or oppose their real life counterparts in the early modern world. Papers can reflect how authors imagine nuns in their prose, drama, and poetry and how real nuns perform their existence in the textual world through their personal writing. Appropriately complementary examinations of the writing of nuns such as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Santa Teresa of Avila, Madre Castillo, Juliana Ernst, and others are welcome. Lastly, panel participants may consider how the querrelle des femmes informs the fictional portrayal of nuns and how its arguments affected the agency and writing of real nuns.

Please e-mail your abstract (150-250 words) and CV as .doc or .rtf attachments to Horacio Sierra at hsierra_at_english.ufl.edu by 15 May 2008.

Panel participants must be members of the Renaissance Society of America and register for the conference sometime before Fall 2008. Details to follow.