The Information Age

Part 1 Sexual/textual consumption - response to papers by Nicholas Watson: consuming passions - gender and sexuality in book VIII of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis", Diane Watt; consuming the body of the working man in the later Middle Ages, Isabel Davis; reproductive rites - Anne Askew and the female body as witness in the "Acts and Monuments", Kimberly Anne Coles; "such stowage as these trinkets" - trading and tasting women in Fletcher and Massinger's "The Sea Voyage" (1622), Teresa Walters; antipodean tricks - travel, gender and monstrousness in Richard Brome's "The Antipodes", Claire Jowitt. Part 2 Monstrous bodies - response to papers by Margo Hendricks: Sheela's voracity and Victorian veracity, Emma L.E. Rees; bloodsuckers - the construction of female sexuality in medieval science and fiction, Bettina Bildhauer; "ant nes he him seolf reclus i maries somebe?" - the anchorhold and the redemption of the monstrous female body, Liz Herbert McAvoy; fountains and strange women in the bower of bliss - Eastern contexts for Acrasia and her community, Marion Hollings; monstrous tyrannical appetite - "and what wonderful monsters have there now lately ben borne in Englande?", Margaret Healy. Part 3 Consuming genders, races, ractions - response to papers by Andrew Hadfield: the monstrous appetites of Albina and her sisters, Ruth Evans; monstrous (m)othering - the representation of the Sowdanesse in Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale", Sue Niebrzydowski; monstrous generation - witchcraft and generation in "Othello", Kirstie Gulick Rosenfield; an Ethiopian history - reading race and skin-colour in early modern versions of Heliodorus's "Aithiopika", Sujata Iyengar.