Other Spaces: Gender and Architecture in the Imagination, session at the 24th International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 3–6, 2017

Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the significant roles played by medieval women as patrons of architecture and to the ways in which gender informed the design and function of architectural sites. But what about representations of women and architecture in the medieval imagination? How do visual materials such as manuscript illuminations, paintings and tapestries, and literary works, such as dream visions, conceptualize the relationship between women and architectural space? To what degree are gender and architecture mutually constituted? What conclusions can we draw about spaces considered feminine, and how do these spaces renegotiate the divisions between private and public? Given the longstanding associations between the female body and enclosure, what is the relationship between gender roles and real or imagined enclosures? In what ways do gendered imagined spaces help reconceive real spaces, or vice versa?

Though all topics will be considered, we are particularly eager for papers that address female identity and agency as figured through architectural forms.

Paper Panel sponsored by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS).