Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Studies

The participants of "Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Studies" include scholars from across North America and Europe who are currently exploring the role of theoretically-informed and oriented work on and around Anglo-Saxon England. The advent of critical theory is arguably the single most profound influence on study in the humanities in recent times, and scholars increasingly recognize that study of the earliest periods of European culture has in many ways been at the heart of the critical theory movement. Not only were a number of the practitioners of contemporary theory themselves medievalists, or were influenced by their readings of medieval texts, but scholars of the Middle Ages have been active in dismantling the strictures of Enlightenment progressivism by insisting that the medieval period is apt to any theoretically-charged discussion.

Perhaps more importantly, the interdisciplinarity that grounds medieval studies has long questioned both the practicality of firm boundaries between history, literature, and culture and the claims to novelty of post-Enlightenment thought. Medievalists have thus been quick to point out the ways in which post-modern critique, while espousing an anti-teleological rhetoric, has nonetheless replicated a teleology in its own practice, concentrating primarily on the modern and the contemporary while attributing transparency and homogeneity to earlier periods.

"Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Studies" poses a set of crucial questions about these developments: how does theoretical work fit within or expand the traditional disciplinary paradigms and aims of Anglo-Saxon studies? What does such work contribute to our understanding of critical theory in general (i.e. outside the discipline of Anglo-Saxon studies)? How can such work foster dialogue between scholars working on different time periods or in different disciplines, and in what ways does the early period interrogate and reframe the assumptions underlying contemporary theoretical modes of inquiry?

This conference is made possible by support from

• The University of Illinois College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• The Center for Advanced Study
• The Program in Medieval Studies
• The Department of English
• The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
• The School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics

Additional support provided by the University of Illinois departments of

• Philosophy
• Classics
• Anthropology
• Comparative and World Literature
• History
• Art History

And by

• The programs in Gender and Women's Studies and Jewish Culture and Society
• The Center for Translation Studies
• The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities
• The University of Texas at Arlington College of Liberal Arts and Provost's Office