A common medieval trope in stories of women's misdeeds seems to be their mouths getting them into trouble. In her book "Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature," E. Jane Burns cites the vagina as the site of a second producing 'mouth' in fabliaux. Taking this doubling under consideration, the kind of trouble women find themselves in almost invariably involves either speech, consumption of food or drink, or sexual appetite. Regardless of which mouth is opened, the production or reception of materials into or out of their mouths involves crossing bodily boundaries: letting outside matter in, or expelling or revealing inside matter to the outside world.

Feminist Take On/Construction of the Enclosed Garden (Kalamazoo 2010)

International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI
13-16 May 2010

Contributions are sought for a book on women in spaces of transit in Anglo-American literature from 1860 to the present day. The projected edited book sets out to explore representations in literature of the presence of women in spaces of transit such as trains, hotels, bedsits, cafés, hospitals, parks, paths, rivers, seas etc. in which the familiar distinction between public and private space is eroded or suspended.

/The peace, that I deem`d no peace, is over and done.
Alfred Tennyson, 1855/

CFP: NVSA 2010
_
FIGHTING VICTORIANS: DISUNION, POLEMIC, CONTROVERSY_

Princeton University: April 16-18, 2010

NVSA website: http://web.stonehill.edu/nvsa/

NVSA solicits submissions for its annual conference; the topic this year
is FIGHTING VICTORIANS.

The conference will feature a keynote panel including Anna Clark,
Elaine Hadley, and Alex Woloch, and visits to Special Collections at the
Firestone Library and the Princeton Art Museum.

17th METU BRITISH NOVELISTS CONFERENCE
Hanif Kureishi and His Work
December 17-18, 2009