DRAFT PROGRAM

INTERNATIONAL MARGARET CAVENDISH SOCIETY

Presents

The 12th Biennial Conference

MARGARET CAVENDISH: RECEPTION AND REPRESENTATIONS

June 22 -- 24, 2017

All sessions in Pettengill Hall, G52, the Keck Classroom

BATES COLLEGE

Wednesday, 21 June

6:00 pm Registration and Reception at Benjamin Mays Center, Bates College

7:00 pm Film: “Margaret Cavendish, Virginia Woolf, and the Cypriot Goddess Natura,” a play by Jim Fitzmaurice, directed by Henry Bell, with actors from The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University.

Thursday, 22 June

8:30 am Registration

8:45 am

Welcome from Clayton Spencer, President of Bates College; announcements,

Cristina Malcolmson

9:00 am

Session 1 Cavendish: The Social, Cultural, and Regional Backgrounds

Chair: Edith Snook, University of New Brunswick

• Sarah Beah Jacobson, Yale University,

• Genre, Imperialism, and Northernness

• James Fitzmaurice, Northern Arizona University and The University of Sheffield

• Margaret Cavendish as Observer and Participant in the Cultural Milieus of Paris and Antwerp

• Sara Mendelson, McMaster University

• Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn: a comparison of their interactions with contemporary readers

10:30 – 10:45 am Break: Coffee, tea, juice, water

10:45 am

Session 2 Cavendish and Her Contemporaries

Chair: Mihoko Suzuki, University of Miami

• Marshelle Woodward. Canisius College

• The Dissolving Worlds of Margaret Cavendish and Hester Pulter

• Laura DeFurio, University of Alabama

• Lucy Hutchinson and Margaret Cavendish: Women, Solitude, and the State

11:45 pm

Session 3 The Text, Electronic and Otherwise

Chair: Liza Blake, University of Toronto

• Sarah Connell, Northeastern University

• “The Text is Variety”: Contextualizing and Analyzing the Works of Margaret Cavendish with Text Encoding

• Shawn Moore, Florida SouthWestern State College and Jacob Tootalian, University of South Florida

• “[L]ike to a Spiders Web”: The Digital Cavendish Project

12:45 Lunch Provided by the conference in the Bates Dining Commons

2:15 pm

Session 4 Cavendish’s Literary Influence

Chair: James Fitzmaurice, Northern Arizona University and The University of Sheffield

• Ruth Trego, University of Miami

• The Way of The Blazing World: Locating the Feminist Touch between Margaret Cavendish and Siri Hustvedt

• Lara Dodds, Mississippi State University

• A London Guide for the Blazing Worlders; or, Notes Toward an Alternate History of Science Fiction and Fantasy

3:15 pm Session 5 Shame and Her Sisters: The Very Critical Reception of Margaret

Cavendish

Organizer and Chair, Mary Baine Campbell, Brandeis University

• Cristina Malcolmson, Bates College

• “Mad Madge” and Historians of Science

• Marina Leslie, Northeastern University

• In Defense of Not Defending Cavendish

• Brandie Siegfried, Brigham Young University

• The Mad, the Silly, and a Hint of the Sublime-to-Come: The Delicious Temptations of Margaret Cavendish

4:45 pm Break: Coffee, tea, juice, water, brownies and cookies

5:00 pm Session 6 Roundtable: Reimagining Early Modern Women Authors for Modern Audiences

• Lisa Walters, Liverpool Hope University

• Naomi Miller, Smith College,

• James Fitzmaurice, Northern Arizona University and The University of Sheffield

6:00 pm Plenary:

Danielle Dutton reads from her novel Margaret the First, Pettengill Hall, G52, the Keck Classroom

Friday, 23 June

8:45 am

Announcements from Cristina Malcolmson

9:00 am

Session 7 Blazing World, Vision, and Natural Philosophy

Chair: Marina Leslie, Northeastern University

• Maria Antònia Martí Escayol, Autonomous University of Barcelona

• The Castilian translation of The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish

• Sophia Richardson, Yale University

• The Empress’s New Clothes: Margaret Cavendish’s Sartorial Epistemology in The Blazing World

• Shannon Garner-Balandrin, Northeastern University

• Splendor on the Backs of Fish-Men: Entangled Ecologies in The Blazing World

10:00 – 10:15 am Break: Coffee, tea, juice, water

10:15 am

Session 8 Cavendish’s Poetry

Chair: Lara Dodds, Mississippi State University

• Edith Snook, University of New Brunswick

• Margaret Cavendish and Early Modern Medical Writing in Poems and Fancies (1653/64)

• Liza Blake, University of Toronto

• A Thousand Lines of Non-Linear Poetry: Reading Cavendish’s Poems and Fancies, Part I

11:15 am

Session 9 Session Panel: Rethinking Domesticity and Science,

Organizer and Chair: Rebecca Laroche, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

• Mary Trull, St. Olaf College

• Atomic Aesthetics and Aristocratic Women in Margaret Cavendish’s Poetry”

• Jennifer Munroe, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

• Kitchen entanglements: An Ecofeminist Rethink of Cavendish, Science, and the Domestic

• Rebecca Laroche, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

• Tending the Fire:A Refiguration of Gendered Interiors in Matrimonial Trouble

12:45 pm Lunch Provided by the Conference in the Bates Dining Commons

2:15 pm

Session 10 Utopias

Chair: Alexandra Bennett, Northern Illinois University

• Lauren Liebe, Texas A&M University

• Margaret Cavendish and Post-Restoration Political Utopia

• Maureen McDonnell, Eastern Connecticut State University

• A “place for freedom”: Staging segregation as utopia within The Convent of Pleasure

• Emily Jones, University of South Florida

• Worldbuilding

3:45 pm Session 11

Reading and Debating Margaret Cavendish

Chair: Chris Koester, University of Alabama

• Katherine Landers, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• The Readerly Interlude and Margaret Cavendish’s Prefaces

• Promise Li, Occidental College

• Reading Cavendish for the Vices

• Barry Shelton, University of Georgia

• “An Ingenious Opposer”: Margaret Cavendish and the Drama of Debate

5:15 pm Break: Coffee, tea, juice, water, brownies and cookies

5:30 -7:00 Plenary

Carolyn Merchant, University of California, Berkeley

Margaret Cavendish: Natural Philosopher and Feminist

7:00 pm Conference Dinner at Benjamin Mays Center, Bates College

Saturday, 24 June

8:45 am

Announcements from Cristina Malcolmson

9:00 am

Session 12 Reception History

Chair: Jacob Tootalian, University of South Florida

• Hilda Smith, University of Cincinnati

• How Historians and Literary Scholars treat Margaret Cavendish

• Chris Koester, University of Alabama

• Canonizing Cavendish: The Creation of a Literary Cult

10:00 am– 10:15 am Break: Coffee, tea, juice, water.

10:15 am

Session 13 The Cavendish Family

Chair: Brandie Siegfried, Brigham Young University

• Alexandra Bennett, Northern Illinois University

• Going Both Ways: Influence and Contribution in the Writings of Margaret and William Cavendish

• Tanya Schmidt, New York University

• “Lives or Lies”: Indirect Speech as “Feigned Orations” in Margaret Cavendish’s Life of William Cavendish

• Erin Murphy, Boston University

• Mercy, Martyrdom and the Execution of Charles Lucas: Reconsidering Margaret Cavendish’s Wartime Singularity

12:00 pm Lunch in the Dining Commons. Pick up packed lunch for Excursion.

12:30 am Excursion. Meet in Fireplace Room in the Dining Commons.

PDF of Program

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