2021 Talks
With Laura Kalas, I organised and participated in the ‘Moving Holy Women’ roundtable at the Gender and Medieval Studies conference.
I wrote and recorded a podcast for the English Faculty’s Great Writers Inspire series: Desiring Dragons- Creative and Critical Responses to the Dragon in Beowulf.
Laura Kalas and I talked about Margery Kempe with AJ Langley on the My Favourite Mystic podcast (episode forthcoming in November 2021).
2020 Talks
I was a guest on the podcast Backlisted discussing Beowulf (here).
2019 Talks
I ran a range of events at the Fowey Festival of Arts and Literature in May 2019, including: reading groups on Du Maurier’s The Breaking Point and I’ll Never Be Young Again; Du Maurier Anniversaries Talk on The House on the Strand and The Parasites; interview with novelist Diane Setterfield; talk on the medieval mystic Margery Kempe; and introducing the Festival film, Frenchman’s Creek (1944). A review of the Festival can be found here.
2018 Talks
Contribution to roundtable at the Gender and Medieval Studies conference in January 2018. (Written up for the blog here)
“The Book of Margery Kempe: Feelings, Exemplarity, and Purpose” at the Medieval Church and Culture Seminar in Hilary Term (University of Oxford).
Gave a paper at the Margery Kempe Studies in the 21st Century conference, organised by myself and Laura Kalas Williams. My paper was entitled ‘Framing The Book of Margery Kempe: How the Good Mystic Taught her Readers‘. I wrote a report on the conference for my blog here.
University Press Redux conference, February 2018, panel contribution on my experiences of publishing my monograph. (I have written a blogpost about the monograph here).
I ran a range of events on Daphne du Maurier at the 2018 Fowey Festival of Arts and Literature, including a talk on Du Maurier’s Rebecca at 80, a talk on the 2017 film adaptation of My Cousin Rachel, and reading group discussions of Rule Britannia and The King’s General (a review of the Festival can be found here).
Lecture on J. K . Rowling at the Oxford Fantasy Summer School in September 2018. (I have now written an article based on this lecture which will be published in Studies in Medievalism in 2020. See my publications page for more details).
2017 Talks
‘Objects of Devotion in The Book of Margery Kempe‘, Medieval Research Seminar in the English Faculty, University of Oxford (Wednesday of 4th week, 1st November)
‘The Church as Sacred Space in Middle English Literature and Culture’, Oxford Medieval Society (Thursday of 5th week, 9th November)
Fowey Festival 2017: The 21st Festival
I ran a range of events at the Fowey Festival of Arts and Literature in 2017. On Friday 12th May, we celebrated all things du Maurier, beginning with my interview with Tatiana de Rosnay, novelist and author of a new biography of du Maurier: Manderley Forever. (Event information here)
Also on Friday 12th May, the Festival hosted the UK premiere of the new documentary about du Maurier, for which I was interviewed in 2016: Daphne du Maurier: In the Footsteps of Rebecca. The film was shown on the European culture channel Arte in February 2017. Before the film showing, I took part in a panel event with Tatiana de Rosnay, the producer of the film Patricia Houtart, and the director Elisabeth Aubert Schlumberger. Event information here.
I also ran the following events during the Festival:
Reading Group on du Maurier’s The Scapegoat on Sunday 7th May (here)
Lecture on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales on Monday 8th May (here)
Du Maurier Story Time event on Monday 8th May (here)
Reading Group on du Maurier’s The Flight of the Falcon on Wednesday 10th May (here)
Brontë Conference
I gave a paper at a conference on the Brontës in Durham in August (The Coarseness of the Brontes: A Reappraisal). My paper was entitled Coarseness, Identity, and Understanding in Daphne du Maurier’s The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë. This paper has now been published as an article in the journal Bronte Studies (2019).
Medieval Conferences 2017
I gave a paper at the Gender and Medieval Studies conference in Canterbury in January 2017, entitled ‘”Thu hast many awngelys abowte the to kepyn the bothe day and nygth”: Margery Kempe’s Body as Sacred Space.’
I gave a paper at the After Chichele conference in Oxford in June 2017: details here. My paper was entitled: Architectural Allegory, Pastoral Education and Community-Building in the Fifteenth Century.
2016 Talks
I appeared at the Fowey Festival of Arts and Literature in May 2016, running reading groups on Daphne du Maurier’s The Parasites and Julius. I also ran a Du Maurier Storytime event and gave a talk on Beowulf
I gave a paper at the New Chaucer Society Congress in London in July 2016. My paper was entitled “‘Þe ȝateȝ stoken watȝ neuer ȝet’: London, the New Jerusalem, and the Hardware of ‘Entre’”. I talked about Pearl and the Middle English translations of Guillaume de Deguileville’s La Pèlerinage de la vie humaine. This paper has been published in Studies in the Age of Chaucer 2018 (see my publications page for more details).
In August 2016 I spoke about my experience delivering outreach events at the ‘Academics in the Classroom’ conference at Hertford College. I discussed my involvement in University College’s Staircase 12 website (a hub of resources to help high school students to read around the subject) and my outreach events on Beowulf for students from primary school through to sixth form.
Dr Laura Varnam 