Academics

Penn State Beaver professor organizes global conference

Robin Bower promotes medieval literature scholarship

Robin Bower, associate professor of Spanish at Penn State Beaver, teaches Spanish, Latin America and comparative literature courses. She helped organize a worldwide conference to promote 13th-century literature in the Iberian Peninsula. Credit: Cathy Benscoter / Penn State. Creative Commons

MONACA, Pa, -- Robin Bower, associate professor of Spanish at Penn State Beaver, was a part of a team of college educators who conceived a worldwide conference to promote 13th-century literature in the Iberian Peninsula, which is now Spain and Portugal.

Bower, along with Matthew Desing, associate professor of language and linguistics at the University of Texas at El Paso, and Clara Pascual-Argente, assistant professor of Spanish at Rhodes College in Tennessee, organized the conference, “The Cleric's Craft: Crossroads of Medieval Spanish Literature and Modern Critique,” which was held in October at the University of Texas at El Paso. Educators from some of the world’s top universities, including Columbia University, University of Virginia, Georgetown, University of Oxford, and the Sorbonne,* converged on the El Paso campus. The conference attracted more than 100 professors, postdoctoral researchers and doctoral candidates for focused discussions on new scholarship of the literature of the period.

“Established scholars from across the United States, Latin America, and Europe assembled at the conference to share perspectives and current work,” said Bower, who also presented at the event.

The event commemorated the 150th anniversary of Mester de Clerecía, (Latin for Clerics Craft), which describes the poetry of Spanish medieval literary criticism in 1865. In 13th-century Iberian, political and cultural changes were occurring throughout the region. Much of the early vernacular poetry from the Northern Iberian Peninsula was written in a very structured poetic form and was thought to have been composed by clerics due to its learned nature.

The Spanish scholar Manuel Milà i Fontanals was the first modern critic to use the term “mester de clerecía” to describe this poetry. The most famous authors of this period were Gonzalo de Berceo and Arcipreste de Hita. Popular themes of these poets were Christian legends, lives of saints, and tales from classical antiquity. The poems were cited to villagers in public plazas.

“The nature of the conference permitted very fruitful exchanges among scholars who rarely encounter each other, due to geographical constraints, as well as the huge scale of major international medieval studies conferences,” Bower said. “The conference also sought to generate a shared vision of how to ensure institutional support of medieval literary and cultural studies and to promote the inclusion of medieval topics in high school classrooms through teacher workshops.”

The four-day program was divided into seven “Focus Sessions” with three to four speakers per session. Bower’s session, “Crossbones: Materiality, Corporeality, and Clerecia Poetry” was the final one of the conference. Her presentation was entitled “Person, Place, Thing: Precincts of Knowledge in the Mester de Clerecía."

“My paper considered the literary representation of spaces and objects to configure epistemological paradigms or models of knowing,” Bower said.

Bower’s presentation preceded her closing remarks. According to Bower, the conference exceeded all the organizers' expectations.

“Feedback from participants included the adjectives ‘magical and "dazzling,’” Bower said. “One participant declared it was ‘one that will be talked about for the next 20 years.’ Others had similar comments.” Robin BowerBower joined the Beaver faculty in 2000 and teaches Spanish, Latin America and comparative literature courses. She is active on campus and served as chair of various Faculty Senate committees and adviser for the Foreign Language Club.

The Pittsburgh resident’s contributions to the campus and community have been recognized throughout the years with numerous awards and citations. Her teaching talents were acknowledged by the University in 2012 with the Milton S. Eisenhower Award for Distinguished Teaching. Penn State honors faculty for academic excellence, outstanding leadership and meritorious service. The Eisenhower Award recognizes excellence in teaching and student support among tenured faculty. Milton S. Eisenhower, brother of former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, served as president of Penn State from 1950 to 1956.

"Dr. Bower continues to be an asset to Penn State Beaver through outstanding teaching, exemplary scholarship and a university wide commitment to service." said Carey McDougall, director of academic affairs at the campus. "Faculty like Dr. Bower, lead the way in the expansion of knowledge and therefore in the furthering of the education of our student body."A native of Philadelphia, Bower received her doctorate in Medieval Literature from Columbia, where she also earned her master’s degree. She has a bachelor’s in English and Comparative Literature from West Chester University.

Educating students is Bower’s passion. Her undergraduate experiences had a profound effect on her choosing education as a vocation.

“Teaching has always been something I wanted to do because you can really change lives,” said Bower, who served as a visiting professor at Duke University. “Higher education changed my life. A professor I had when I was working for my undergraduate degree was very passionate about teaching. I realized that you have to give back what you’ve been given.”

When she is not in the classroom, Bower is committed to scholarship. Her research specializes in medieval and Iberian literature and cultures. Secondary fields include Renaissance and Golden Age Spanish literature and the impact of religious and governmental organization and practice on popular and literary culture. She has published on the hagiographies of de Berceo, and is interested in modern reception and transformation of medieval aesthetic and ideological categories.

Bower’s scholarly pursuits double as a “teachable” moment for Beaver students. Although her students were not at the conference, it impacted them. Bower believes research and scholarship endeavors help students grasp the purpose of international conferences and meetings, and show why research is a critical component of Penn State faculty’s mission of teaching, research and service.

“It is essential that our campus students understand the larger scholarly commitments of their faculty,” Bower said. “Students do not easily imagine that we have homes and relationships outside of the classroom, let alone that we have intellectual connections that span the globe.

So even though the specific topics under investigation at this conference may never directly infiltrate a general education comparative literature class at Penn State Beaver (although indirectly, certainly, and continually), giving students an understanding about the nature of scholarly work and the scholarly community is an agent in expanding their ability to imagine themselves as global citizens.”

For more information about the conference, visit http://clerecia.utep.edu

*The Sorbonne metonymously describes the 13 autonomous institutions of the former University of Paris, which is believed to be one of the first universities in the world. It can be likened to the terms “Wall Street,” used as the name for the U.S. financial sector, and “Hollywood,” used for the film industry. Founded around 1150, the university earned a reputation for its theology and philosophy programs. The College of Sorbonne housed the theology department at the university. Paris was forced to close in 1793 in the midst of the French Revolution and didn’t reopen until 1899. In 1970, Paris was divided into the current 13 universities.

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Last Updated November 6, 2015