Workshop: Hadewijch’s Vernacular
April 5-6, 2012
Organized and led by Patricia Dailey, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature; Veerle Fraeters, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Antwerp; and Mary Suydam, Professor of Religious Studies at Kenyon College. During the two-day workshop, undergraduate and graduate students collaborated with faculty to work through some of the Middle Dutch terminology of the thirteenth-century Brabant mystic Hadewijch (ca. 1230), the first poet in the Middle Dutch language. The invited guests prepared handouts on the uses of specific Middle Dutch terms in Hadewijch’s writings, comparing some of them with Latinate terms while analyzing the nuances of the vernacular. The workshop culminated in the idea of founding an “international Hadewijch Society” as an internet presence to further the study of Hadewijch and to keep people up to date on current scholarship and events pertaining to her work.