1st International Egodocumental Network Conference
Vilnius University, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the University of Lodz, and the Egodocumental Research Group (https://egodocuments.umk.pl) organise an international conference focusing on research, development, and changing perceptions of egodocuments in the twenty-first century. The conference aims to bring together scholars from different disciplines to share their insights and to encourage interdisciplinary studies of egodocuments.
The conference will also be the first meeting of the International Egodocumental Network established in December 2023 by the Egodocumental Research Group (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the University of Lodz) to unite scholars from different disciplines working on egodocuments. It provides a platform for discussion, collaboration, and exchange of information between the participants, as well as online research seminars organized twice a year. In this dimension, our conference continues two editions of the Scientific Symposium "Egodocuments, Life-Writing and Autobiographical Texts..." organized at NCU in Toruń in 2022 and 2024.
Keynote speakers
Dr. Nataliia Voloshkova
Kazimierz Wielki University and Oxford Brookes University
Prof. Leona Toker
Hebrew University and Shalem Academic College
Prof. François-Joseph Ruggiu
Sorbonne Université, CNRS and Oxford University
Jennifer Jasmin Konrad
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
The World as Vulva: Genital Metaphors in the Writing and Images of Female Mystics
Medieval mysticism is known for its insights into the dynamics between the earthly body and ecstasy as a religious experience. These intuitions are recorded in egodocumentary visions and autobiographical descriptions in richly illuminated manuscripts. In her work Liber Scivias (1151/1152), the best-known female mystic Hildegard von Bingen was the first to develop a genuinely female interpretation of the cosmos, describing it in genital terms. The accompanying illustration of the cosmos clearly has the shape of a vulva. It is designed in rings and a central yellow-red crescent, which resemble the outer and inner labia and the clitoris. It was the female mystics of the 14th century who took up von Bingen’s approach in their Books of Hours and adopted the vulval form for an isolated, full-page depiction of the wound of Jesus Christ. With regard to the progressive discovery of intimacy in the High Middle Ages, the article examines the use of sexually connoted and erotic imagery in the mystical context and its seemingly contradictory function. The erotic descriptions and images serve as triggers of somatic arousal in order to achieve an ecstatic, cosmic transgression. Sexuality, originally stigmatised as a sin, thus becomes a means of religious practice, while at the same time providing an insight into the thinking of female scholars.
