The Other Sister: New Research on Non-Cloistered Religious Women (1100-1800)
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto
May 18–20, 2023

N.B. The following program is tentative. The final program (with the schedule) will be available in April. For more information, please contact us at tos2023conference@gmail.com. This conference is a collaborative and international endeavour with, besides the University of Toronto team of The Other Sister (Isabelle Cochelin, Alison More and graduate students Joseph Akl, Emma Gabe, Meghan Lescault and Laura Moncion), Professors Mary Doyno (California State University Sacramento) and Patricia Stoop (University of Antwerp).
Welcome notes
Augustine Thompson, PIMS Praeses
Alison More (St Michael’s College, University of Toronto) and Isabelle Cochelin (University of Toronto)
Their voices
Michael Hahn (Sarum College), Angela of Foligno within Franciscan (mystical-)theological genealogies
Mary Harvey Doyno (Californa State Univ, Sacramento), Shout-Outs to the Friars: Catherine of Siena’s Daughters and the Search for Institutional Identity
Silvia Giovanardi Byer (Park University), Mystical Journeys in Post-Tridentine Italy: Caterina Paluzzi’s Laborious Writings
Dissidence
Courtney Barter-Colcord (Princeton University), Woman as Savior: Guglielma of Milan, Na Prous Boneta, and the Holy Spirit Incarnate
Delfi Nieto-Isabel (Queen Mary University, London), Central Outliers: Women, Intellectual Contributions and Beguinal Dissident Networks in the 14th-Century Mediterranean
Andreas Nijenhuis-Bescher (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies), (In)visible presence. The Catholic klopjes in the Protestant public space of the early Dutch Republic

Liturgy
Samantha Slaubaugh (University of Notre Dame), Teaching the Liturgy through Ecstasy: Douceline of Digne’s Vida as Liturgical Source
Katherine Clark Walter (College of Brockport), Pious Widowhood in Text and Image: Widows’ Consecrations in Illuminated Pontificals of the Later Middle Ages
Interactions with the Church I
Melissa Moreton (Institute for Advanced Study), Romite del Ponte: Pinzochere, Anchorites, and Spiritual Women on Florence’s Ponte alle Grazie
Tanya Stabler Miller (Loyola University, Chicago), The Beguinage of Cantimpré: A Sponsored Emergence
Meghan Lescault (University of Toronto), Appealing to a Higher Power: Popes and Bishops Intervening in the Conflicts of Nivelles
Interactions with the Church II
Ashley Tickle Odebiyi (Arizona State University), Partners not Servants: The Religious Networks of Fifteenth-Century Roman Bizzoche
Sarah Joan Moran (independent scholar), Reforming the Low Countries: The Beguines, the Clerics, and the Archduchess Isabella
Isabel Harvey (Université catholique de Louvain and UQAM), The Others: an Archival Journey to Restore the Experience of Non-Cloistered Religious Women who were Neither Saints, Heretics, Rich, nor Noble

Production and Transmission of Knowledge
Patricia Stoop (Universiteit Antwerpen), Non-Cloistered Religious Women and their Contributions to Literary Culture in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Low Countries
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (University of Notre Dame), Not So Silent After All: Anchoretic Women Intellectuals and Readers in Medieval Oxford
Sergi Sancho Fibla (Università degli Studi di Padova), Women, religion and education: types of sources and perspectives of study (Southern Europe, 14th-15th c.)
The lower-status ones
Kate Bush (College of the Holy Cross), Ut pedissequa ministrare: Service and Serving Sisters in Early Clarissan Hagiography
Kim Main (University of Toronto), Among the Number of His Spouses:’ Ursuline Converse Nuns in 17th and 18th Century Quebec
Angela Carbone and Giovanna Da Molin (Università degli studi di Bari Aldo Moro), The Oblates of the Conservatory of the Santa Casa dell’Annunziata in Naples: rules, conflicts, powers (18th century)
In hagiographical sources
Alicia Smith (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto), Harlots and hermits: Thais as intertext for twelfth-century eremitic experiments
Barbara R. Walters (City University of New York), The Emerging Office of the Anchoress in Medieval Liège
Laura Moncion (University of Toronto), A Recluse in New France: The Life of Jeanne Le Ber (1662-1714)

Some communities
Sigrid Hirbodian (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen), Secular canonesses in southern Germany in the late middle ages: self-image and agency
Letha Böhringer (Universität zu Köln), The beguines of Cologne, a social history
Problems of definition, questions of identity
Fiona Griffiths (Stanford Univ), Clerics’ Wives as “Other” Sisters
Michelle M. Sauer (University of North Dakota), Noble women attached to the Minoresses in England
(Non-)Enclosing
Alison Beach (Univ of Saint Andrew’s), Hermits, Inclusae, and Other Freelancers: Women in Germany’s Apostolic Awakening (11-12th c.)
Adrian Kammerer (Göttingen Universität), An Order and its’ Consequences: Effects of the Dominican Third Rule on Non-Cloistered Religious Women
Conclusion
John Van Engen (University of Notre Dame)










