Expanding Perspectives on Hoccleve and Gender

A Session of Papers at the 2025 International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, sponsored by the International Hoccleve Society

In his notoriously laddish introduction to The Minor Poems,Frederick Furnivall wishes that Thomas Hoccleve had been “a manlier fellow.” Furnivall’s judgment reflects straitened Victorian gender norms that have little to do with medieval reality. But Hoccleve’s relationship to masculinity, femininity, and the gender politics of his own era remains an open question in criticism.

Politics and the Psyche in the Piers Plowman Tradition (A Roundtable)

Sponsored by the International Piers Plowman Society 

FASHION’S FIBRES AS PLANETARY FLOWSFashion Highlight journal, call for papers- issue 4

Guest Editors: Alice Payne and Anneke Smelik

Fibre, the basis of fashion’s materiality, is experiencing rising demand year on year, reflecting the insatiable desire for ‘more’ that defines the dominant fashion system. With an annual consumption of 116 million tonnes in 2022, close to a doubling in 20 years (Textile Exchange 2023), humanity’s appetite for fibre has never been more voracious.