This roundtable seeks to understand the ways in which early modern people conceived of the body as being willful. Early modern poets, playwrights, and prose writers represent the body as having (or almost as if having) a will of its own. For instance, in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the titular protagonist desires to sign a devilish contract with his blood, but his blood congeals, preventing that damning deed. Margaret Cavendish imagines in Poems and Fancies cognitive processes as being directed by vital matter she metaphorizes as faeries, whose markets, funerals, and marriages dictate the functioning of the brain. Additionally, Barnabe Rich in his treatise My Ladies Looking Glass suggests eyes have some degree of volition “that for in these daies eyes can both speake and understand.”

Papers (8-10 minutes) in the roundtable might address questions such as how do poets, playwrights, and prose writers picture the body possessing volition? To what degree is the willful body metaphorical or mimetic? How do writers negotiate the relationship between the willful body and the psychic self or rational soul? What discourses (religious, medical, scientific, or others) do writers draw upon that attribute agency to the body? What specific body parts or processes do writers imagine having volition? Are there specific types of bodies (gendered? racial?) that have more or less volition than others? In what ways do writers leverage the willful body to think about political, social, gender, racial, religious, philosophical, medical, scientific, or other issues?

Proposals should include the following:
• Paper title (15-word maximum)
• Abstract (200-word maximum)
• Brief CV (1 page maximum)
• PhD or other terminal degree completion year (past or expected)
• Full name, current affiliation, and e-mail address

Please send proposals or queries to Brice Peterson (brice_peterson@byu.edu) no later than July 15, 2025. Applicants will be notified of acceptance by August 1, 2025.