MAA News – CARA Summer Scholarship Winners

We are very pleased to announce that CARA Summer Scholarships have been awarded to:

Katherine Briant (University of Rochester), Rare Book School, “Scientific Analysis of the Book”

Wei-Ting Chen (University of Kentucky), Princeton University, French and Latin

Anastasia Marie Heiser (University of Tennessee – Knoxville), Rare Book School, “Introduction to Archives for Special Collections Librarians, Booksellers & Collectors”

Alex Korte (University of Minnesota Twin Cities), University of Colorado, “The Mediterranean Seminar: An Introduction to the Archive of the Crown of Aragon (Documents in Latin to ca. 1350)”

Kimberly Jaye Lifton (Cambridge University), University of Groningen, “Old Frisian and its Neighbours”

Marisa Ellen Mills (University of Southern Mississippi), University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Latin

Kelsey Shearman (University of St Andrews and University of Birmingham), University of Tennessee, Latin

Nick Thompson (Queen’s University at Kingston), Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, Latin

Melanie Vigil (California State University-Fullerton), University of Toronto, Latin;

Emma-Catherine Wilson (University of Ottawa), University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies, Latin

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MAA News – The Monica H. Green Prize for Distinguished Medieval Research

We are very pleased to announce the establishment the Monica H. Green Prize for Distinguished Medieval Research. This annual Prize honors Dr. Monica H. Green, whose body of scholarship and public advocacy makes a large and innovative contribution to our awareness and understanding of pandemics, their vectors and their historiography, topics of increasing urgency in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Her work towards a global history of health reframes the public discussion of epidemics and pandemics: it is relevant to biomedical researchers, molecular biologists, population geneticists, and policymakers as well as to historians and medievalists from all fields. Green’s collaborative approach to scholarship serves as a model for others to follow, engaging with geneticists, archaeologists, paleobiologists, and others forging connections between modernity and the Middle Ages both in the public and scholarly spheres. The Monica H. Green Prize will honor scholarship and public engagement that demonstrates the importance of studying the past to understand the present. The inaugural Green Prize of $1,000 will be awarded in 2022 and annually thereafter to honor a distinguished project that shows the value of medieval studies in our present day. We are very grateful to the anonymous donors who have endowed the Green Fund and established the Prize in Dr. Green’s honor.

Click here to make a donation to the Monica H. Green Fund.

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MAA News – MAA@Kzoo

Even though we won’t be able to greet you in person this year at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, the Medieval Academy of America will have a strong presence at the virtual conference, with lectures, sessions, and roundtables focusing on the Global Middle Ages, DEI, and Anti-Racism (May 10-15).

1) The MAA plenary will be delivered by Sharon Kinoshita (Univ. of California–Santa Cruz), “Marco Polo and the Diversity of the Global Middle Ages” (pre-recorded and available to registrants May 10–15 and May 17–29). Two related sessions organized by Prof. Kinoshita on “Diversity in/and the Global Middle Ages” will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday at 11 AM (Sessions 124 and 179 respectively).

2) The Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) roundtable on “Diversifying the Medieval Studies Syllabus” will take place Thursday at 3 PM (Session 291).

3) The Medieval Academy Graduate Student Committee roundtable on “Teaching the Middle Ages with Inclusivity and Diversity” will take place on Friday at 7 PM (Session 391).

All times are EDT. Click here for more information.

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MAA News – Good News from Our Members

The 2021 Paul Mellon/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize has been awarded to Randall Todd Pippenger (Princeton University), “Left Behind: Veterans, Widows, and Orphans in the Era of the Crusades.”

Terrence Cullen (New York University) has been awarded a 2021 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships for his dissertation project, “Take Note: Listening to French Literature in the Long Thirteenth Century.”

Georgia Henley (Saint Anselm College) has been awarded an ACLS Fellowship for her project, “Memory on the Margins: Reimagining the Past in the Medieval Anglo-Welsh Borderlands.”

NEH Summer Stipends have been awarded to Jennifer Bryan (Oberlin College), “Chaucer’s Ovidian Arts: Poetic Influence and Innovation at the Beginning of English Literature” and to Mary Caldwell (University of Pennsylvania), “Musical Hagiography and the Medieval Cult of St. Nicholas in Western Europe (ca. 1100–1500).”

Congratulations! If you have good news to share, please forward it to Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis,

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Workshop: Manuscripts in the Digital Age: XML-Based Catalogues and Editions

A workshop titled “Manuscripts in the Digital Age: XML-Based Catalogues and Editions” is being offered as part of the 11th European Summer University in Digital Humanities – Culture & Technology between August 3-13, 2021.

The two-week workshop (36 hours over 10 days) focuses on cataloging and editing manuscripts with TEI-XML. In addition to hands-on learning with XML, participants are introduced to practical applications of XSLT to extract data from their datasets and to present this data in different formats such as a map, a stemma and a network diagram. There is built-in time for participants to work on their individual projects and discuss their specific needs based on their own material. The language of instruction is English.

The deadline for applications is May 15, 2021. More information may be found here: https://esu.fdhl.info/manuscripts-in-the-digital-age-xml-based-catalogues-and-editions/

Please feel free to contact manuscriptsDH@gmail.com should you have any questions.

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Paul Szarmach

Paul Szarmach died a few days ago. A fellow of the Medieval Academy since 2006, he had long been a major scholar and scholarly editor and a central figure in the administration of medieval studies in both the U.S. and abroad (at SUNY Binghamton, Western Michigan University, in what was then known as the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, and the Medieval Academy). Paul and I have been co-editing Studies in Medieval & Renaissance History for several years and now, sadly, I will turn Vol. 17 of the series, now in the early planning stages, into a memorial volume. So if you wish to be included in this tribute to a colleague, a friend, and a scholar who worked to encourage the careers of so many of us in a great variety of enterprises, please contact me. Though Paul’s major field of endeavor was Old English, SMRH welcomes submissions in all aspects of medieval studies – a policy that Paul actively encouraged.

Joel Rosenthal
Joel.rosenthal@stonybrook.edu

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Circular Thinking: The Drawing Compass as a Tool of Creation in Premodern Europe

Circular Thinking: The Drawing Compass as a Tool of Creation in Premodern Europe
10 & 11 June, 5:30–7pm BST (online)

Circular Thinking is an online lecture, short papers and panel discussion devoted to the drawing compass, an essential tool of premodern makers that came to represent divine Creation. Although now associated primarily with architecture, the compass was a transmedial instrument, integral to a range of artisanal operations. Through conversation and the close study of historical evidence, ‘Circular Thinking’ seeks to impart a more precise understanding of the compass’s varied uses — in measurement, scaling, copying and the generation of diverse shapes in two and three dimensions — and, with this, its symbolic force. The event is free and open to the public, but booking is required. Details and booking here: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/event/24358

LECTURE, Thursday, 10 June, 5:30–7pm BST (online)
Professor Robert Bork, University of Iowa
Circles Below the Surface: The Role of the Compass in Premodern Creativity

PAPERS & PANEL DISCUSSION, Friday, 11 June, 5:30–7:00pm BST (online)
Speakers

Dr. Sarah Griffin, Winchester College
Constructing the Calendars in the Diagrams of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-c. 1352)

Professor Jean-Marie Guillouët, University of Burgundy, Dijon
Testimony of Construction Practices in Some Late Medieval Compass Traceries

Dr. Stephen Johnston, History of Science Museum, University of Oxford
Drawing and the Design Process in Mathew Baker’s Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry

Professor Robert Bork will join the group for discussion and Q&A

Moderator
Dr. Megan C. McNamee, University of Edinburgh

CIrcular Thinking is made possible through generous support from the Warburg Institute and the Leverhulme Trust.

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Tra liti sì lontani – Dante for the Americas

Tra liti sì lontani – Dante for the Americas
May 5, 2021 – May 13, 2021

Click here for more information:

To mark the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death, the Dante Society of America and Harvard University are together organizing an international symposium on the reception and influence of Dante and his work from Canada to Chile from May 5-13, 2021.  This collaboration commemorates the origins of “The Dante Society” in 19th-century Cambridge, but aims also to display the wider range of Dante’s presence as found in the Harvard collections. Yet our main goal is to highlight the reception of Dante in all parts of the Americas, and among readers of different intersectional identities. Our sessions include a wide range of contributions that consider the poet’s legacy in a variety of different spheres.

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Call for Papers – 31st Texas Medieval Association Annual Conference

TEMA 2021 Call For Papers
31st Texas Medieval Association Annual Conference
October 15-16, 2021

VIRTUAL MEETING
Hosted by Rice University, Houston, TX

Conference Theme:
MEDIEVAL GLOBAL ENCOUNTERS
Permanent Conference Thematic Strand:
Race and Medieval Studies
#TEMA2021

The 31st Annual Conference of the Texas Medieval Association will be held virtually, via an online platform, and hosted by Rice University.

The 2021 TEMA program committee is pleased to invite papers and sessions on all topics in medieval studies. We especially invite papers and sessions contributing to the 2021 conference theme of Medieval Global Encounters, as well as papers and sessions that contribute to the permanent theme of Race and Medieval Studies.  

In recent years, the field has seen a significant shift away from a Eurocentric approach to the Middle Ages.  The so-called “global turn” in medieval studies has encouraged scholars to transcend traditional geographic and chronological boundaries, and to pursue innovative, interdisciplinary methodologies that have already enriched our understanding of the period.  We invite participants to propose papers, sessions, and roundtables that explore hemispheric and global connections between peoples and cultures, c. 500 to c. 1500 CE.  Possible topics include mobility and travel, cultural and artistic networks, trade, science and technology, pandemics, ecologies and climate change, and interfaith relations.

TEMA recognizes diversity as a critical component of medieval studies. Therefore, the organizers of the 2020 TEMA meeting established a permanent strand of linked thematic sessions on Race and Medieval Studies that will be part of all future meetings. Papers, sessions, roundtables, and other events that engage with any aspect of this theme are very welcome.

Papers may be submitted in any language, but if you wish to present in a language other than English, please specify this preference. Send title and abstract of approximately 200 words to texasmedieval@gmail.com (with TEMA 2021 PROPOSAL in the subject line) no later than September 1, 2021. Early submission is encouraged: rolling acceptance will begin on July 1, 2021. Among proposals for full sessions, those including participants from more than one institution will be given priority. A prize will be awarded for the best paper by a graduate student. For more information, visit the Texas Medieval Association website [www.texasmedieval.net].

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Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies

To encourage the integration of Byzantine studies within the scholarly community and medieval studies in particular, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 9–14, 2022. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

PLEASE NOTE: The 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies will be virtual.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website (https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/57th-international-congress-on-medieval-studies). The deadline for submission is May 18, 2021. Proposals should include:

**Title
**Session abstract (300 words)
**A description of the importance and/or timeliness of the proposed session (100 words)
**Proposed list of session participants (presenters and session presider)
**CV

Applicants will be contacted by May 25, 2021, regarding the status of their proposal. The Mary Jaharis Center will submit the session proposal to the Congress and will keep the organizer informed about the status of the proposal.

If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse up to 5 session participants (presenters and presider) for the cost of conference registration. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Receipts are required for reimbursement.

Please contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Further information about the International Congress on Medieval Studies is available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress.

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