INVITED PAPERS, PLENARY LECTURES AND KEYNOTE ADDRESSES
“Zombie Aesthetics.” Keynote. Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment. University of Edinburgh, 2012.
“Undead.” Keynote. International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts Annual Conference. Orlando, 2012.
"Ethics, Objects, Networks." Surface, Symptom and the State of Critique. Austin, 2012.
“Sublunary.” Keynote. Speculative Medievalisms. City University of New York, 2011. Audio here.
“Feeling Stone.” Keynote. Hearts and Stones. Collaboratory on the History of Emotions, University of Melbourne, 2011. Also presented at University of Virginia and Marymount University. Audio recording here.
"The Neighbor and the Jew in Medieval England." Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto; Medieval Colloquium, Harvard University; Medieval Colloquium, Northwestern University, 2011.
“The Monster That Therefore I Am.” Keynote address. Collective Identities: Policies and Poetics. Sponsored by the City University of New York Doctoral Program in French.
“The Promise of Monsters.” D'animals i monstres / On Animals and Monsters. MACBA [Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona], Barcelona, 2010
"Dreaming the Lithic in the Middle Ages." SUNY Buffalo, 2010
“The Sex Life of Stone: Queering Nonhuman Life.” Keynote address. Queer Again? Power, Politics and Ethics. International Conference of the PhD Research Training Group “Geschlecht als Wissenskategorie” (“Gender as a Category of Knowledge”), Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Humboldt University, Berlin.
“The Future of the Jews of York.” Plenary Lecture. The York Massacre of 1190 in Context: Reassessing Relations between Jews and Others in Medieval England. University of York, England, 2010.
“Between Christian and Jew: Orthodoxy, Violence, and Living Together in Medieval England.” Keynote Lecture. International Medieval Conference, Leeds 2009.
“Bodies in Motion / Mandeville, Defective.” Plenary Lecture. Bodies, Embodiments, Becomings: The 34th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association. Saint Louis, 2008.
“The Weight of the Past.” Theorizing (lecture series on contemporary critical theory), University of Pennsylvania, 2008; Renaissance Reckonings, University of Maryland, 2008.
“The Weight of the Past: Dreaming the Prehistoric in the Middle Ages.” The Holloway Lecture, McDaniel College, 2007.
“The Green Children of Woolpit: Medieval English History and Its Aliens.” Cornell University and the University of Rochester, 2007.
"Through a Monster's Eyes: The Landscape of Postcolonial England." Hamilton College, 2007.
"Green Children from Another World: How Britain Became England in the Middle Ages." American University, 2006.
"The Archipelago of England: On 'British' Literature in the Middle Ages." Dartmouth College, 2006.
"The Green Boy: History, Trauma and Masculinity in Post-Conquest England." Keynote address, Masculinity in the Long Middle Ages, City University of New York Graduate Center, 2006.
"Inventing with Animals in the Middle Ages." Bucknell University, 2005.
"The Green Children: Conversions of Race in Twelfth-century England." Conversion (conference at Harvard University), 2005.
"Aninormality." Illuminations: Theoretical Reflections on the Middle Ages and Modernity. Princeton University, 2005.
"Animal Identities." Lecture series on "Nature in the Middle Ages and Renaissance." Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Ohio State University, 2005.
"Grendel's Scream." Plenary lecture, Discovering the Other: 800-1600. University of Leicester, 2004.
"The Crisis of Race in Twelfth-Century Britain." Intercultural Medieval Studies. Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College, 2003.
"The Blood of Race." Medieval-Renaissance Program of the University of Pittsburgh, 2003.
"Race and Blood in the Middle Ages." Rutgers University Graduate Student Lecture Series, 2003.
"Was Margery Kempe Jewish? Storms and Screams in the Book of Margery Kempe." Medieval Club of New York, 2003.
"Blood, Race, and the Jews of Medieval Norwich." Quodlibet Lecture Series, Cornell University, 2002
"The Flow of Blood in Twelfth-Century Norwich." Keynote address, Medieval Alterity: the Other in the Middle Ages / The Middle Ages as Other. Columbia University Medieval Guild Twelfth Annual Conference, 2002
"The Becoming-Liquid of Margery Kempe." Department of English, Brown University, 2001
"Some Futures of Monsters Past: Race, Nation and the Monstrousness of England." Incontrare i Mostri: Variazioni sul tema nella letteratura e cultura inglese e anglo-americana, Università di Salerno, 2001
"Time's Machines." Postmodern/Premodern: Genealogies of Medieval and Early Modern Scholarship, Department of French of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2001
"On Saracen Enjoyment: Some Fantasies of Medieval Race." Department of English, Harvard University, 2000
"Possible Bodies." Rethinking the Human Sciences: Interdisciplinary Studies, Global Education, and the Languages of Criticism, George Washington University, 2000
"Hybrids, Monsters, Borderlands." Workshop on the Postcolonial Middle Ages, Medieval and Early Modern Institute of the University of Alberta at Edmonton, 1999
"In a Time of Monsters." Keynote address, Reading Monsters, Reading Culture, University of Cincinnati, 1994
CONFERENCE PARTICIPATION
New Chaucer Society Biennial Congress (2012): Program Committee (organized threads on “Ecologies” and “Oceans”)
“Ecologies: A Roundtable.” International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2012 (session organizer and presider).
“Objects, Networks and Materiality: A Roundtable.” International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2011 (session organizer and presider).
"Lithic Animation, or, Do Rocks Have Souls?" International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2011
“Blogging Past, Present, and Askew.” New Chaucer Society Congress, Siena, Italy 2010
“Touching the Past.” Two linked panels, New Chaucer Society Congress, Siena, Italy 2010 (session organizer and presider).
“How to Get the Medieval Studies You Want: Institutional Perspectives (A Roundtable)” International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2009 (session organizer and presider).
“Monster Culture: Seven Theses (A Roundtable).” International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2009.
“Forgotten Realms.” New Chaucer Society Congress, Swansea, Wales, 2008.
“Towards a Restless Medieval Studies.” International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2008.
“Chaucer’s Fairye.” International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2008.
"Infinite Realms and Alternate Worlds: Barrows, Portals and Possibility." International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2007.
Respondent, "Premodern to Modern Humanisms." International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2007.
“Three Stories About Perverse Cows: The Medieval Transnational.” Futures of the Field: The English Major in the Twenty-First Century. George Washington University, 2007.
"The Alien Boy." New Chaucer Society Congress, New York, 2006.
"Puerulus." International Medieval Conference, Leeds 2005. Presented as part of a panel I organized on "The Uses of Boys."
"English Chaucer / British Chaucer," session co-organizer with Sylvia Tomasch, New Chaucer Society Congress, Glasgow 2004.
"Resonance of Voice in the Prioress’s Tale." 118th Convention of the Modern Language Association, New York, 2002
"The Future of the Past," 117th Convention of the Modern Language Association, New Orleans, 2001
"Foucault's Time Machines," Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, New Orleans, 2000
"Saracen Chaucer and the Invention of Literature," New Chaucer Society Congress, London 2000
Medieval Academy Annual Meeting, local arrangements committee, April 1999
"Disciplinary Perspectives on the Limits of the Body," session organizer, presider, and presenter, 114th Convention of the Modern Language Association, San Francisco, 1998
"The Location of Joy: Glossing Alterity in The Sultan of Babylon," 114th Convention of the Modern Language Association, San Francisco, 1998
"The Inhuman Circuit," The Queer Middle Ages, New York, 1998
"The Material Body in Chaucer," session organizer and presider, New Chaucer Society Congress, University of the Sorbonne, Paris, 1998
The Limits of the Body, conference organizer (with the Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture), Washington DC, 1998
"Men and their Horses," The Limits of the Body, Washington DC, 1998
"Virtual Bodies and Post-Modern Identity Disruptions: Using a MOO to Teach Critical Theory," E-Mail, the Web, and MOOs: Developing the Writing Skills of University Students in Cyberspace, George Washington University, 1997
"Grieving for Deleuze," 112th Convention of the Modern Language Association, Washington DC, 1996
"Diminishing Masculinity in Fragment VII," New Chaucer Society Congress, Los Angeles, 1996
"The Place of Time," International Association for Philosophy and Literature, George Mason University, 1996
"Hyper-Multiplicity and the Forging of a Career," The Role of Hypertext in Scholarly Communication, George Washington University, 1996
Cultural Frictions: Medieval Studies in Post-Modern Contexts (the first live and virtual conference in the humanities), planning committee, Georgetown University, 1995
"Masoch / Lancelotism," Cultural Frictions: Medieval Studies in Post-Modern Contexts, Georgetown University, 1995.
"Becoming Monstrous," Psychoanalysis and Postcolonialism: Nation, Identity, and Self, George Washington University, 1995
"'The Armour of an Alienating Identity': Medieval Masculinities and Interscripta," Thirtieth International Congress of Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, 1995
"Emily as Amazon: Prayers, Desires and Monstrous Women in the Knight’s Tale," New Chaucer Society Congress, Dublin, 1994
"Monstrous Bodies and the Interpretation of Culture," On the Margins, 27th Annual Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies Conference, Binghamton NY, 1993
"Conceiving Maternity in the Middle Ages," Medieval Academy Annual Meeting, University of Arizona, Tucson, 1993
"Beheading Scenes and Gender Assertion in Arthurian Romance," 108th Convention of the Modern Language Association, New York, 1992