Parker to Give MHC Teacher of the Year 草榴社区 March 9
Tue, 03/07/2023 - 03:35pm | By: David Tisdale
Dr. Leah Pope Parker, an assistant professor of English in The University of 草榴社区 Mississippi (草榴社区)
School of Humanities, will present the Mississippi Humanities Council (MHC) Teacher
of the Year lecture, titled, "Disability and the Medieval Apocalypse: Body and Soul鈥�
Thursday, March 9 at 5:30 p.m., room 108 (Gonzales Auditorium) in the Liberal Arts
Building (LAB) on the 草榴社区 Hattiesburg campus. This event is free and open to the public,
and a reception will follow in the LAB lobby.
MHC Teacher of the Year award recipients present a lecture showcasing their research for their campus communities. 鈥淚鈥檓 extremely honored to be selected for this year鈥檚 MHC Humanities Teacher of the Year award,鈥� said Dr. Parker, who also serves as English Undergraduate Coordinator for the School of Humanities; she joined the 草榴社区 faculty in 2019. 鈥淭eaching is the heart of what we do as academics, and so I take being recognized for my teaching as the highest praise of a job well done.鈥�
Dr. Parker鈥檚 presentation will draw from her current book project, Disability and Salvation in Old English Literature. In it, she examines the ways ordinary medieval Christians in ninth- and 10th-century England used literary representations of disability to imagine and plan for the promised afterlife. With that in mind, she says the goal of her presentation is to reveal some of the rich nuance in how people in the 10th century thought about disability, particularly when imagining the all-important initiation of eternal life: the Apocalypse.
鈥淭he promised afterlife is an essential doctrine of Christianity, and so the idea that disability would have been a fundamental part of imagining the afterlife in the Middle Ages promises to restore disabled bodies, minds, identities, and communities from the margins of history, back to the center,鈥� Dr. Parker noted.
She will also discuss two Old English poems鈥�Christ III and Soul and Body鈥攖hat imagine corporeal decay and corporeal resurrection through the language of earthly
bodily difference, predominantly injuries and impairments that we would call disability
today. She says these poems reveal how bodily variation was used to contemplate variations
in the soul in 10th-century England, with consequences for how disability and embodied
difference are viewed and even experienced up to the present day.
鈥淔ew historians of disability have examined the Middle Ages in any depth, and those who have often focused on the later 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries,鈥� Dr. Parker continued. 鈥淏ut I find the particular moment of early medieval England fascinating, and crucial for how disability is understood globally today. The vernacular literature of early England witnesses the earliest intersections of Christianity and the English language: both now global influences in the way we speak鈥攁nd think鈥攁bout a great many topics, including the human body and disability.
鈥淚t鈥檚 unsurprising that disability would have been stigmatized and moralized鈥攎any of our cultures still do the same today,鈥� she further explained. 鈥淏ut I hope to surprise my audience with some of the ways in which disability was seen as practical, positive, and even as a promise. Experiencing physical differences, even disabling, painful, or stigmatized differences, was one way medieval Christians hoped for the promise of salvation.鈥�
Each year, the MHC honors outstanding humanities instructors from 草榴社区 and other colleges/universities in Mississippi through its Humanities Teachers Awards, which were established to celebrate Mississippi's humanities teachers and promote continued interest in the humanities throughout the state.
Learn more about Dr. Parker鈥檚 work in 草榴社区鈥檚 School of Humanities at /faculty-directory/profile.php?id=2204093. Learn more about the MHC at .