GSA 2023 »Gender and Rulership in the 16th and 17th Century« (Montréal, Canada)

CfP: »Gender and Rulership in the 16^th and 17^th Century«

GSA 2023 – Conference Panel

October 5-8, 2023, Montréal, Canada

Deadline: March 15, 2023

This panel takes its starting point from gendered encodings within early modern practices of rule, which, based on an early humanist anthropology, began to standardise "good rule" as a theory of political practice in the early 16^th century. This eventually led to a loss of normative autonomy of female regency, following from 18^th century transitions. In our investigation, we deliberately use the plural when referring to gender-specific encodings: neither was the conflation of gender and rulership subject to a single encoding nor were gender and rulership/regency monolithic concepts in the early modern period. Just as rulership and regency combined both the legitimate (potestas) and illegitimate (violentia) exercise of power, gender (genus) denoted bodily sex as well as familial origin at the same time. Gender-specific encodings of early modern rule always had to address all levels of meaning and thus multiplied automatically. 

At the same time, the performative condition of early modern rulership, which demanded the continuous (re)production of power by verbal, gestural, and mimic actions, was responsible for the inseparable relationship that early modern rulership maintained with questions of presentation and representation, staging and exposing, in short: the various modes of representation we summarize under the generic term medialization. These media qualities, inscribed in every early modern act of rule, put into question Kantorowicz's famous concept of the king’s (and possibly also the queen’s) two bodies, calling for an extension of Kantorowicz's well-known construction of body natural / body politic that takes the medial dimension into account. According to the panel's leading thesis, only the systematic inclusion of medial modes of representation in the guise of a third body, the body media, can help to adequately grasp the multi-layered complexity of representation of gendered rulership/regency in early modern literature and broadsheets as well as in political treatises and other textual and/or pictorial manifestations of gendered reign.

Our panel seeks contributions that reflect theoretically on Kantorowicz’ notion of the king’s (as well as probably the queen’s) two bodies using literary or media examples as case studies, as well as contributions that investigate so far unexplored literary texts and media with regard to early modern configurations of gender and power. 

Please email a 300 to 500 word abstract and a brief CV to Hania Siebenpfeiffer (hania.siebenpfeiffer@uni-marburg.de) and Lea Reiff (lea.reiff@uni-marburg.de) by March 15, 2023. 

We encourage applicants to contact us with any questions.