Videos
Videos
2024. “‘A fine lunatic language, i’faith’: Masque Culture and Lunar Neurodivergence in Ben Jonson’s News from A New World Discovered in the Moon.” Disability and Performance (Seminar). Annual Conference. Shakespeare Association of America.
2024. “‘I Always Took Delight in a Singularity’: Neurodivergence and Autobiography in Margaret Cavendish's A True Relation.” The Many Minds of the Renaissance: Neurodiversity in Early Modern England (Seminar). Annual Conference. Renaissance Society of America.
2024. “‘The Follies dance, which were twelve she-fools’: Neurodiversity and Masque Performances of Intelligence in Ben Jonson’s Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly.” Disability and Theories of Mind (Panel). Body Matters!: Disability in English Literature to 1800. UCSB Early Modern Center.
2023. “‘This spirit dumb to us will speak to him:’ Neurodiversity and ‘Dumbshows’ in Hamlet.” Shakespearean (Dis)embodiment (Panel). 66th Annual Conference. Renaissance Conference of Southern California.
2023. “Did Neurodivergents Have a Renaissance?: Neurodiversity and Genre in Early Modern English Literature.” Neurodiversity and Corporeality (Panel). Symposium on Health Humanities and Disability Studies. UCSB Humanities and Fine Arts Division.
2022. “‘Their Optick organs did not move alike:’ Microscopes, Telescopes, and the Construction of Ability in The Blazing World.” Philosophies (Panel). Futures. International Margaret Cavendish Society.
2022. “Mapping Mary Wroth’s Urania.” Women’s Work in the Digital Archive (Panel). Digital Culture from Below, 1500-1800: A Symposium in Honor of Professor Tim Hitchcock. UCSB Early Modern Center.
2022. “‘The World, Said They, Would Be But Blind Without Them’: Destabilizing Standards of Ablebodiedness through Lens Technology in The Blazing World.” Embodied Experience: Sensation, Affect, and Disability in Seventeenth-Century British Literature (Panel). 65th Annual Conference. Renaissance Conference of Southern California.
2022. “‘Told still shee was mad, and threatned to bee used accordingly:’ The Social Model of Madness in Mary Wroth’s Urania.” Writing ‘Woman’ and Women Writers (Panel). Voicing ‘Woman’ Across Media, 1500-1800. UCSB Early Modern Center.
2024. Medieval Disability Across Genre. UCSB Early Modern Center Annual Conference. Panel Moderator.
2023. Gendering Ballads. UCSB Early Modern Center Annual Conference. Panel Moderator.
2022. Intellectual Disability, the English Law, and the Fools of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Presentation by Alice Equestri). Introducer and Discussion Moderator.
2022. ‘Woman’ Across Media: Depictions, Connections, Translations, and Adaptations. UCSB Early Modern Center Annual Conference. Panel Moderator.
2021. Towards an Eco-Crip Theory. The UCSB Disability Studies Initiative. Discussion Moderator.
I presented my first digital humanities project, “Mapping Mary Wroth’s Urania” at a one day symposium hosted by the UCSB Early Modern Center.
I presented my first digital humanities project, “Mapping Mary Wroth’s Urania” at a one day symposium hosted by the UCSB Early Modern Center.
Mary Wroth's Urania is a notoriously difficult text. In addition to several dozen characters, Wroth mentions over 160 places, some of which easily correspond to locations known by the modern reader, some of which seem hopelessly indistinct. To assist in my own navigation of the text, I have begun mapping the locations mentioned in the Urania using GIS software. My maps currently have 164 entries, each of which includes latitude and longitude, associated royalty, and the number of times that each place was mentioned (sorted into three separate categories: part one, part two, and the two parts combined). Along with a discussion of the making of my maps, I will explore how mapping the Urania returns Wroth's text to its geographical bearings, acknowledging what is lost (and gained) when the space of a literary text is transported to another medium.
I presented my first conference paper, “Told still shee was mad, and threatned to bee used accordingly”: The Subjectivity of Madness in Mary Wroth’s Urania,” at the UCSB Early Modern Center Annual Conference.
I presented my first conference paper, “Told still shee was mad, and threatned to bee used accordingly”: The Subjectivity of Madness in Mary Wroth’s Urania,” at the UCSB Early Modern Center Annual Conference.
In over 1200 pages of spiraling, discontinuous narration, The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania rarely features discussions of disability. Virtually every character remains ablebodied (in addition to being upper-class and “beautiful”), with the exception of a few dwarf footmen and some isolated instances of madness, generally afflicting the male characters and caused by “love.” However, several characters accuse Nereana, a particularly prideful princess, of being “mad” because her vain perspective seems detached from the reality experienced by other characters. Although some characters use Nereana’s madness to justify their actions against her, Nereana remains steadfastly certain in her own sanity, her experience of madness widely diverging from that of the male characters. I argue that Nereana’s madness is defined through the disconnect between Nereana’s perspective on her own conduct and that of the other characters, providing one of the first disability studies critiques of the Urania. Employing Lindsay Row-Heyveld’s concept of “disabled knowledges,” itself indebted to Tobin Siebers, I further contend that, through her experiences with disability, Nereana acquires the skills that she needs to lead her people, even as she is forced to obscure parts of herself to reclaim her role as a monarch.
I presented a dissertation excerpt, entitled “‘The Follies dance, which were twelve she-fools’: Neurodiversity and Masque Performances of Intelligence in Ben Jonson’s Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly,” at the UCSB Early Modern Center Annual Conference.