Symposium

Cloistered Women’s Voices: Sound, Song and Lyric in Early Modern Convents

March 30-April 1, 2016

University of Kentucky, Lexington KY

In recent years, sound, lyric and song in early modern women’s religious communities has received increased attention from musicologists, historians and literary and cultural studies specialists.  Despite renewed scholarly interest, disciplinary and geographic boundaries tend to limit prior approaches.  For example, few extant works address the intersection of music and literary cultures in early modern women’s religious communities and none consider convent music-making from a global perspective.  As a result, it becomes difficult to draw conclusions about cloistered women’s lyrical and vocal production as a broad cultural practice.  The Cloistered Women’s Voices Symposium thus responds to these lacunae by examining song and lyric in convents throughout Europe and the Americas.  This comparative and cross-disciplinary scope puts diverse convent music cultures into dialogue and draws out paradigms of voice among cloistered women.

SCHEDULE

Thursday, March 31

6:00 pm—concert; St. Augustine's Chapel, Rose Street

Friday, April 1

Niles Gallery

9:00 am—First session: Voice and Lyric

1. “Reading Lyrics: Miguel de Toledano’s Minerva sacra.” Colleen Baade, Creighton University 

2. “The nun’s smooth tongue has sucked her in”: Cloistered Language in Marvell’s Upon Appleton House.”  Tessie Prakas, Kenyon College

3. “Songs in the Prison Cell, Songs at the Scaffold: Carmelite Convent Song extramuros, and the case of the Sixteen Carmelites of Compiègne.” Daniel Hanna, Lake Forest University

10:30—Coffee break

11:00—Second session: Sound and Contemplation

4. “Spiritual Soundscapes: La Musique spirituelle (1718) and La Dissection spirituelle of Marie-André Duplessis de Sainte-Hélène of the Hôtel-Dieu of Quebec." Thomas Carr, Harold E. Spencer Emeritus Professor of French

5. “Contrapuntal Voices: Silence in New Spanish Convents.” Sarah Finley, Christopher Newport University

6. “Nuns’ Spiritual Exercises and Music in Early Modern Rome.” Kimberlyn Montford, Trinity University

12:45—Lunch break

2:00—Third session: Performance Practice

7. “A Most Useless Vanity: Venetian Novices Singing at their own Monacations.” Jonathan Glixon, University of Kentucky

8. “Women Singing Low: Bass and Tenor parts in Viennese Convents.” Janet Page, University of Memphis

3:00—Coffee break

3:45—Keynote:  "Pænæ Catænæ sunt Præmium Amoris: Bodily Mortification and Mystical Death in Convent Choir Lofts." Craig Monson, Paul Tietjens Professor Emeritus of Music, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri

Organizers: Mónica Díaz, U of Kentucky; Sarah Finley, Christopher Newport University; Jonathan Glixon, U of Kentucky; Daniel Hanna, Lake Forest College

Jay M. Winter, the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University, is a specialist on World War I and its impact on the 20th century and one of the pioneers of the field of the history of memory.  Winter is the author or co-author of a dozen books, including  Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History, 1914-1918: The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, and Remembering War: The Great War between History and Memory in the 20th Century. He is co-director of the project on Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914-1919,  was co-producer, co-writer and chief historian for the PBS series “The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century,” which won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award and a Producers Guild of America Award for best television documentary in 1997.

This talk focuses on a contrast between the continuing presence today of the sacred language of martyrdom in some parts of Europe (and elsewhere), and the fading away or disappearance of the language of martyrdom in other parts of Europe by looking at the two contrasting cases of the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust.  While martyrdom is at the heart of how Armenians today remember the catastrophe of 1915, there has emerged since the 1940s a very different linguistic register in Jewish responses to the Holocaust, one by and large free of the language of martyrology.The implications of this distinction are far-reaching.  How we think about catastrophe matters in contemporary Europe. We must commemorate the victims of violence, but we must also seek a way out of the spiral of continuing conflict which the language of martyrdom perpetuates. 

For more information visit http://www.uky.edu/academy/2016BBS. 

For several decades, studying Islam in Central Asia meant beginning with questions, analytical categories, and conceptual frameworks rooted in Soviet and Russian studies; this approach, combined with a lack of basic understanding of the historical experience of Central Asian Muslims prior to the Soviet era, led to host of misconceptions surrounding the character of Muslim religious life in the Soviet era, the impact of Soviet policies and realities, and trends in the renegotiation of religious identities in the post-Soviet age.  Recent years have brought, in some circles, growing awareness of the need for approaches drawn from Islamic studies and from a  historically-grounded understanding of the history of Muslim religiosity in Central Asia.  This lecture will discuss some of the misconceptions rooted in the ‘Sovietological’ approach to Islam in the region, and the lessons to be drawn from viewing the region through the lens of Islamic studies, with a particular focus on the ways in which religiosity was manifested in Soviet times, and on the ways in which religiosity shaped or interacted with notions of ‘national’ identity.

Professor Joel Gordon will explore the depiction of ‘normative’ religious practices and personal expressions of religious identity in recent Egyptian movies with a particular focus is on Egyptian youth.  Whereas in the past signs of piety had been restricted to either ‘traditional’ Egyptians – often in comic fashion – or political extremists, a few recent films have dared to depict ‘normal’ veiled women and bearded men and even a social environment in which questions of piety, morality and proper behavior dominate the discussions, concerns and conflicts between young Egyptians.  These films may point to a growing willingness by film artists to honestly explore social trends that have been taboo, especially as Egypt enters a new political era.

Prof. Joel Gordon: Professor of History and Director of Middle East Studies, University of Arkansas; Specialist in modern Egyptian history and Arab popular culture; Author of Nasser' Blessed Movement, Revolutionary Melodrama, and Nasser: Hero of the Arab Nation