Decolonizing Early Medieval Sovereignties (Seminar)

Harbour Centre 2050

Organizers: Mo Pareles (University of British Columbia)
Robert Rouse (University of British Columbia)
Wallace Cleaves (University of California, Riverside)

This seminar examines early medieval (pre-1290) British archipelagic sovereignties and their colonial afterlives in conversation with indigenous and postcolonial/decolonial scholarship, particularly Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s groundbreaking Decolonizing Methodologies.

Day 1

Robert Rouse, “Whose Voices Do We Read? Hybridity and Indigeneity in the Medieval North Atlantic”

Shamma Boyarin (University of Victoria), “A Great Evil that Took Place in the Islands of the Sea”

Sarah Nelle-Jackson (University of British Columbia), “Consorting with Stone: Occult Bonds and Sovereign Occlusion in Three Insular Texts”

Wallace Cleaves (University of California, Riverside), “From Monmouth to Madoc to Māori: The Myth of Medieval Colonization and an Indigenous Alternative”

Day 2

Anna Klosowska (Miami University), “Globalizing the British Archipelago: The Impact of the Colonies in Eastern Mediterranean in the 1200s”

Cory Rushton (St. Francis Xavier University), “A Galfridian Framework for Indigenous Erasure”

Tarren Andrews (University of Colorado Boulder), “Centering Indigenous Futures in the Palimpsest of Medieval Sovereignty”

Coll Thrush (University of British Columbia), “Bertha's Shadow: Imagining Colonial Legacies at the Oldest Church in he English-Speaking World”

Day 3

Mo Pareles, “Like Dogs Who Don't Care for Filth: Figuring Sexual Violence”

Audrey Walton, “The Celtic Hypothesis: Decolonizing the Origins of the English Language”

Shela Raman (University of Notre Dame), “Hybrid Sovereignties: Decolonizing the Old English Life of St. Christopher”

Haruko Momma (University of Toronto), “Alfred the Great: Sovereignty, Apotheosis, Totemism”