UVA Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXXVIII (9/18-20)
Sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference promotes scholarly discussion in all disciplines of Medieval and Renaissance studies. The conference welcomes proposals for papers and panels on Medieval or Renaissance literature, language, history, philosophy, science, pedagogy, and the arts. Abstracts for papers should be 300 or fewer words. Proposals for panels should include: a) title of the panel; b) names and institutional affiliations of the chair and all panelists; c) a 200-250 word description of the panel). A branch campus of the University of Virginia, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise is a public four-year liberal arts college located in the scenic Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia.
Keynote Address
Frederick de Armas, University of Chicago Cervantes’ Architectures: Windows, Holes, Corners and Fissures
Professor de Armas’ keynote address arises out of his study of the architectures in Cervantes’ works, especially depictions of smaller architectural elements such as rooms in the attic, shuttered windows and even keyholes. Professor de Armas will investigate other holes, along with corners and fissures, conjugating the apparent insignificance of some architectural features or flaws, with their inordinate consequences. Specifically, his address will discuss the three moments in the Don Quixote in which the story of Pyramus and Thisbe come into play and show how its cracks and fissures are spaces for innovation in Cervantes’ novel.
Frederick De Armas received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1969) and was awarded a doctorate Honoris Causa by the Université de Neuchatel (Switzerland) in 2018. He also received the Norman Maclean Faculty Award in 2023. Professor De Armas has taught at Louisiana State University, Duke University and Pennsylvania State University. He has been Andrew W. Mellon Professor and then Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in Romance Languages and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago (2000-2024). At Chicago, he has served as Chair of the Department of RLL and Director of Graduate Studies. He has been President of the Cervantes Society of America and President of AISO (Asociación Internacional Siglo de Oro). He is now Honorary President of AISO and of EMIT: Early Modern Image and Text Society. He has been awarded several NEH Fellowships and has directed several NEH Seminars.
His interests include the politics of astrology; ekphrasis; the uses of architecture in early modern prose fiction; the relations between the verbal and the visual particularly between Spanish literature and Italian art; and the interconnections between myth and empire during the rule of the Habsburgs. He is the author of numerous books and edited volumes. Some of the more recent ones:
Writing for the Eyes in the Spanish Golden Age (Bucknell UP2004);
Ekphrasis in the Age of Cervantes (Bucknell UP 2005);
Quixotic Frescoes: Cervantes and Italian Renaissance Art (Toronto 2006);
Ovid in the Age of Cervantes (Toronto UP 2010);
Don Quixote among the Saracens: Clashes of Civilizations and Literary Genres (Toronto UP 2011);
El retorno de Astrea: astrología, mito e imperio en Calderón (Iberoamericana 2016);
Women Warriors in Early Modern Spain (U of Delaware P, 2019):
Cervantes’ Architectures: The Dangers Outside (Toronto UP, 2022).He is also the author of several short stories and has published two novels: El abra del Yumurí (2016) and Sinfonía Salvaje (2019), both set in Cuba in the late 1950’s. Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words by June 23, 2025 to: https://www.uvawise.edu/webform/medieval-renaissance-proposals/ For more information, please visit our website: https://www.uvawise.edu/academics/department-language-literature/medieval-renaissance-conference/ or contact
Kenneth J. Tiller
Professor of English
Co-director, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
UVA’s College at Wise
Wise, VA 24293
(276) 376-4587
kjt9t@virginia.edu
