Registration is required
Register at: https://bit.ly/kalaskempe
College of Arts and Humanities
SpeakerLaura Kalas
Liz Herbert McAvoy
To: 9 Dec 2020, 8 p.m.
Location: Online Event - Please see description
Born in 1373, Margery Kempe is the writer of the first known female-authored autobiography in the English language. As an effusive, often rambunctious, visionary woman living in the lay world, her particular mode of spirituality was not always well-received in a cultural milieu that frequently pathologized, or deemed heretical, ‘excessive’ female expression. Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine: Suffering, Transformation and the Life-Course (D.S. Brewer) is the first full-length study of The Book of Margery Kempe from a medical humanities perspective. Harnessing the ubiquitous medieval notion of Christ the Physician, it offers a new way of reading the Book as a narrative of Kempe’s own engagement with the medical paradigms of which she has previously been a passive subject. Focusing on the interactions of medicine, mysticism and reproduction as a feminist project, the book is a broad traverse through the life course, exploring Kempe’s persistent attendance to her mystical body and refusal to compromise her instinct to authentically show how she feels.
About the Author
Laura Kalas is a Lecturer in Medieval literature in the Department of English literature and Creative Writing at Swansea University. She has published in several academic journals, contributed to The Literary Encyclopedia, and has articles in The Conversation and The Independent. Her work on the medical recipe at the end of The Book of Margery Kempe has been featured in The Guardian and in the BBC History Magazine. Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine is her first book.
The event will include a Q&A session chaired by Dr Elaine Canning, Head of Cultural Engagement and Development at Swansea University.
In association with Boydell and Brewer.
VERY SPECIAL LAUNCH OFFER: Save 50% off 'Margery Kempe’s Spiritual Medicine' Valid 9-13 December, 2020, use code BB887
Order online at: https://boydellandbrewer.com/margery-kempe-s-spiritual-medicine.html
Contact: Cultural Institute - Swansea University (Email: cultural-institute@swansea.ac.uk)
Website: https://bit.ly/kalaskempe
Event created by: m.t.hughes