Premodern Pilgrimage in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Prof. Christina Laffin (University of British Columbia)
Prof. Shannon Gayk (University of Indiana)
with a response from Prof. Adam Newman (UIUC, Department of Religion)
Join us for a comparative conversation about pilgrimage and travel in the premodern world, from England to Japan.
Christina Laffin: "Courtiers, Courtesans, and the Traveling Body"
Women representing a spectrum of classes, occupations, and stages of life are seen in ancient and medieval Japanese literary records and visual depictions of travel. For many literary women, journeying away from the capital meant undertaking a pilgrimage to a temple, often in spring or fall. In this talk I will present excerpts from memoirs and look at some visual examples in illustrated scrolls to consider (1) the logistics of travel as a noblewoman in tenth to thirteenth-century Japan; (2) who these travelers met while on the road, (3) and what this may reveal about the traveling body when it was gendered as female.
Shannon Gayk: "Wandering toward Walsingham: The Virgin Mary, Margery Kempe, and Me"
Long called “England’s Nazareth,” the little East Anglian village of Walsingham was one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in Medieval England. The location of a replica of the “Holy House” where the Virgin Mary received the angelic annunciation, it reflected a particularly embodied site of female piety. This talk braids together three accounts of female travelers to Walsingham across its long history to explore how women’s pilgrimage writing explores annunciation, incarnation, and repetition.