This workshop explores the various appearances and meanings of water in pre-modern literary cultures. What role did the geography of waterways play in the transregional movement of authors, texts, styles, and poetics? What commonalities and differences can we identify across pre-modern literary canons, including those in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and other vernaculars? How does water function as a literary motif and/or device in various traditions? Which (metaphorical) meanings are attached to it? And what light can our understanding of pre-modern human-nature relationships shine on modern-day ecological concerns? The aim of this workshop is to explore these questions through a variety of disciplinary, literary and linguistic contexts and approaches. In doing so, it seeks to build on a growing body of scholarship that turns the critical lens onto water.
The workshop will be held in Ghent (Belgium) on 4 and 5 April 2024.
SCHEDULE DAY 1:
09:30: Welcome and coffee
10:00: Introduction to the workshop:
Jeroen de Gussem (Ghent University) and Klazina Staat (VU Amsterdam)
SESSION 1: Materialities of Water Writing (moderated by Robert Gallagher)
10:30-11:00: Stewart Mottram (University of Hull):
Writ on Water: Literatures of Flooding in the Pre-Modern Humber Wetlands
11:00-11:30: Jens de Rijbel (Ghent University):
The Role of Water in Bruges’ perception in the Middle Dutch Gruuthuuse Manuscript
11:30-12:00: General Discussion
12:00-13.00: Lunch
SESSION 2: Aquatic Poetics (Moderated by Dinah Wouters)
13:00-13:30: James Louis Smith (University College Cork): Hydro-Social Flows: Deep Mapping and Pre-Modern Blue Humanities (CANCELLED)
13:30-14:00: Frank van den Boom (Leiden University): Rudis Amphitrite: Hydropoetical Narrativity in Catullus 64
14:00-14:30: General discussion
14:30-15:00: Coffee break
SESSION 3: Symbolic Waters (Moderated by Klazina Staat)
15:00-15:30: Lorenzo Paveggio (University of Padua): Early Medieval Waterways, Justice and Greed
15:30-16:00: Ipek Hüner (Boğaziçi University Istanbul): Water and its Wonders in Ottoman Mirabilia
16:00-16:30: Silvio Lorenzo Ruberto (Utrecht University & Leiden University): The Role of Rivers in the Northern Song Southward Migration in Song Poetry
16:30-17:15: General discussion
17:45: Boat tour with Historical Tour Guide
19:00 Dinner for workshop participants
SCHEDULE DAY 2
KEYNOTE LECTURE: Albrecht Classen
9:00-10:30: Keynote lecture by Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona): Bodies of Water as Epistemological Challenges in Medieval and Early Modern European Literatures
10:30-10:45: General discussion
10:45-11:15: Coffee break
SESSION 4: Making Knowledge through Water (Moderated by Jeroen De Gussem)
11:15-11:45: Navaneeth Krishnan S
(Jawaharlal Nehru University): The Indian Ocean and its Fabled Sea Monsters in Pre-Modern European Visual Culture
11:45-12:15: Ovanes Akopyan (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice): Nogarola on the Nile: Current science and fluent Latin (IN ABSENTIA)
12:15-12:45: Luisa Ostacchini (University of Oxford): ‘Mare turbabatur’: Seawulf’s Sea Voyages as Imagined Crusade
12:45-13:00: General discussion
13:00: Lunch
SESSION 5: Roundtable
15:00: CLOSE
LOCATIONS
Conference Venue: Kapittelzaal Sint-Pietersabdij, Sint-Pietersplein 9, 9000, Ghent
ORGANIZERS
Dinah Wouters (University of Groningen and Utrecht University)
Jeroen De Gussem (Ghent University)
Klazina Staat (Free University Amsterdam)
Robert Gallagher (University of Kent)
Interested in joining the conference? Register via this link: https://event.ugent.be/registration/waterways
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