MaRSA Graduate Student Symposium
The 2026Medieval and Renaissance Student Association Annual Symposium:
Medieval and Early Modern People and Their Things
October 24, 2026 in Room LA3-120
8:30 - 9:00AM - Registration/Sign In
9:00 - 9:15AM - Opening Remarks
9:15 - 9:30AM - Intermission
9:30 - 10:45AM - Panel One: “(In)accessibility: Making Meaning of Community through Hierarchical Structures”
Moderator: Daniel Rancic
Beka Castro - UC Irvine
“Margery Kempe’s Cushioned Heart”
Omar Del Rio - Cal Poly Pomona
“Materiality and Meaning in Arthurian Narrative”
Zuleima Arquieta Aleman - CSU Long Beach
“Workshop Culture and Legal Red Taping in Northern Renaissance Nuremberg"
10:45 - 11:00AM - Intermission
11:00AM - 12:00PM - Panel Two: “Weaving Status: Women’s Work and the Fibers of Identity”
Moderator: Rayelyn Mallari
Brianna-Isabella Aispuro - CSU Fullerton
“Women by a Thread: Seeing Medieval Women through Embroidery, 14th-16th century”
Maggie Mallison - CSU Long Beach
“Weaving the Language of Cræft: Early English to Today”
12:00 - 1:30PM - Lunch
1:30 - 2:30PM - Keynote Address
Dr. Heather Graham, CSU Long Beach
“A Room of Her Own: Art and Emotion in Bronzino’s Chapel for Eleonora di Toledo”
2:30 - 2:45PM - Intermission
2:45 - 4:00PM - Panel Three: “Commodifying Time in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Cavendish”
Moderator: Rebekah Hahn
Aaron Halverson - UC Davis
“To Hold the Heavens in Your Hands: Revisiting the Astrolabe in Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe”
Laudan Payne - CSU Long Beach
“Smoke, Lilies, and Jade: The Colonial Relationship that is Shakespeare’s Romantic Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra”
Zack Medway - CSU Long Beach
“Clocks and the Misperception of Time in Margaret Cavendish”
4:00 - 4:15PM - Intermission
4:15 - 5:30PM - Panel Four: “Women’s Embodiment and Material Catharsis”
Moderator: Chiara Aleman
Drea Wineman-Dorris - CSU Long Beach
“Materiality and Immateriality, Union and Disunion: The Maternal Elegies of Katherine Philips”
Allie Wright - CSU Long Beach
“Embodied Shame: Gender, Emotion, and the Female Figure in Masaccio’s Expulsion from the Garden of Eden”
Jade Saffery - Independent Scholar
“Eat Me Devout: Food, Sexuality, and Bodily Worship in Medieval Depictions of Female Mystics”
5:30 - 6:00PM - Closing Remarks
