“Epic Geographies” is a two-day international symposium, organized by the NYU Medieval and Renaissance Center as its annual conference. Coinciding with the 400th anniversary of the publication of Agrippa d’Aubigné’s epic, Les Tragiques, scholars from the United States and Europe will study ways in which early modern epic in English, French, Italian, and other languages plot and map both real and imaginary places.

Please note location for April 16 conference: 19 University Place, Room 102

Program:

9:30am: Coffee and Pastries

9:45-11:15am: Panel 2— Strange/ Queer/ Untamed Mapping
Chair: Tanya Schmidt (NYU)
Jane Tylus (NYU), Epic Estrangements in Early Modern Europe
Kathleen Perry Long (Cornell U), Queer Geographies in Les Tragiques
Katharina N. Piechocki (Harvard U.), Bison-Bound: Epic Figurations in Conrad Celtis and Nicolaus Hussovianus

11:30-1:30pm: Panel 3— Cartographies of Conflict
Chair: Elizabeth Kirby (NYU)
Catherine E. Gray, (U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), War and Israelite Nationhood in Abraham Cowler’s Davideis (1656)
Laura Yoder (NYU), The Shape of Space in Paradise Lost
Tim Duffy (NYU), Interior Projections: Cartographies of Conflict in Milton, Du Bartas, and Vida
Katherine Maynard (Washington C.), Of Lice and Men: d'Aubigné Imagines Empire

1:30-2:30pm: Lunch Break

2:30pm-4:15pm: Panel 4— Words for Places
Chair: Virginia Cox (NYU)
Susanne Wofford (NYU), The Geography of the Epic Simile
Tom Conley (Harvard U.), Banderoles fluviales
Ayesha Ramachandran (Yale U.), Genre and Geography: Epic vs. Lyric

4:30-4:50pm: Reading from Agrippa d’Aubigné, Les Tragiques

5pm-6pm: Keynote 2
Ken Hiltner (UCSB), Reconsidering and Reconstructing Epic Geographies

6pm: Closing Remarks
Tim Duffy, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature (NYU)

6:15-7:15pm: Closing Reception (all welcome)