Friday, February 14—8:45am - 6:00pm
Saturday, February 15—9:00am - 5:00pm
Humanities Gateway 1010
“By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.”
- Portia, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice
Please join us for “Corporeality and Incorporation: The Body in Literature and Culture Pre-
1800,” a two-day, in-person, graduate student conference to be held on February 14th and 15th,
2025. The conference will bring graduate students and faculty together from across the UC
system as well as other universities across the globe.
This conference will be focused on the centrality of embodiment to the way in which early
cultures conceptualized human relationships—political, social, religious, economic, and
affective. The body appears in global literature and culture pre-1800 as a tool for political
creation, a vessel for religious experience, a space for identity construction and conflict, and a
catalyst for community, among myriad other functions. It is central to the formation of developing
sociopolitical categories like race, gender, and class, raising fraught questions about agency,
boundedness, and vulnerability. Presentations will explore this theme from the perspectives of
disciplines across the humanities, including literature (in any language), visual arts, history,
drama, anthropology, classics, and more.
The keynote address will be delivered by Professor Maggie Vinter (Case Western Reserve
University).
This conference is organized by the Method & Madness Premodern Reading Group and the
UCI English Department, with generous support from the Humanities Center, the New Swan
Shakespeare Center, the Center for Early Cultures, Classics, Art History, Religious Studies, and
Comparative Literature.
RSVP appreciated: https://forms.gle/JHSGgTJ9DWrrQaxF8
For more information and the full conference schedule, please visit the Method and Madness
Premodern Reading Group website:https://sites.uci.edu/methodandmadness/annual-conference/