MAA News – MAA in NYC!

Mass of St. Gregory, from the Prayer Book of Charles the Bold. Ghent, Belgium, and Antwerp, 1469-71/1480s. Getty Ms. 37, fol. 126 (detail)

The Medieval Academy of America is thrilled to announce a collaboration with the New York Medieval Society in support of Speculum and the Speculum Centennial Fund! In celebration of Speculum’s 100th anniversary, the NYMS will host a public lecture at the Grolier Club in New York City on Thursday, January 7 at 6:30 PM. Bruce Holsinger (Linden Kent Memorial Professor of English, University of Virginia) will be our guest speaker, discussing his latest project “Blood & Art: The Many Lives of Medieval Wine.” We are so grateful to NYMS for this critical support of our work. More information about this partnership and the Fund can be found here.

Register here to attend in-person or online. We hope to see you in New York in January!

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MAA News – New Membership Perq!

We are very pleased to provide you with a new perquisite: a discounted subscription to the ACLS Humanities eBook Library! ACLS HEB is a library of over 6,300 scholarly books from over 125 publishers. To purchase your discounted $40 annual subscription, sign into your account on our website and access the subscription page from the Resources -> Store dropdown menu. You’ll also find the usual benefits of membership in the Store: discounted subscriptions to the Lexikon des Mittelalters, the International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages, International Medieval Bibliography, the Bibliographie de civilisation médiévale, and JSTOR. If you have trouble signing in, you may need to renew your membership first. Contact us for assistance.

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MAA News – Upcoming Grant Deadlines

The Medieval Academy of America invites applications for the following grants. Please note that applicants must be members in good standing in order to be eligible for Medieval Academy awards.

Belle Da Costa Greene Award

The Belle Da Costa Greene Award of $2,000 will be granted annually to a medievalist of color for research and travel. The award may be used to visit archives, attend conferences, or to facilitate writing and research. The award will be granted on the basis of the quality of the proposed project, the applicant’s budgetary needs (as expressed by a submitted budget and in the project narrative), and the estimation of the ways in which the award will facilitate the applicant’s research and contribute to the field. Special consideration will be given to graduate students, emerging junior scholars, adjunct, and unaffiliated scholars. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2027)

Olivia Remie Constable Award

Two Olivia Remie Constable Awards of $3,500 each will be granted to emerging junior faculty, adjunct or unaffiliated scholars (broadly understood: post-doctoral, pre-tenure) for research and travel. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2027)

MAA Dissertation Grants:

The four annual Medieval Academy Dissertation Grants support advanced graduate students who are writing Ph.D. dissertations on medieval topics. The $4,000 grants help defray research expenses. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2027)

Schallek Awards

The five annual Schallek awards support graduate students conducting doctoral research in any relevant discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain (ca. 1350-1500). The $5,000 awards help defray research expenses. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2027)

MAA/GSC Grant for Innovation in Community-Building and Professionalization

The MAA/GSC Grant(s) will be awarded to an individual or graduate student group from one or more universities. The purpose of this grant is to stimulate new and innovative efforts that support pre-professionalization, encourage communication and collaboration across diverse groups of graduate students, and build communities amongst graduate student medievalists. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2027)

Please contact the Executive Director for more information about these and other MAA programs.

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MAA News – Upcoming Webinars

GSC Webinar: Teaching at Community and Junior Colleges
Moderated by GSC chair Novella Frasier
Wednesday, December 9th, 3:00 pm EST

Continuing from the GSC’s previous webinar with Alison Perchuk: “Where Most of Us Teach,” this webinar will address what to expect from teaching at community and junior colleges in America. After our speaker, Bruce Nye, discusses the processes of applying to positions at community and junior colleges, and how teaching at these institutions differs from state and private universities, there will be time for questions and clarifications. This webinar is aimed toward helping graduate students learn about and thrive in the varied career paths available to medievalists, by emphasizing the challenges and the rewards of teaching in the most common type of institution of higher education in the United States.

This webinar will be cohosted between the Medieval Academy of America and the Medieval Association of the Pacific.

Speaker: Bruce Nye, Front Range Community College
Moderator: Novella Frasier, Rutgers University

Click here to register.

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How to talk to your Provost or President: Advice from Medievalist Provosts & Presidents
Friday, January 22, 2027
5pm-6pm EST

Moderated by Christina Christoforatou Konstantinis (Baruch College, CUNY). 

Panelists: Anne Harris, Grinnell College, Iowa (President of Grinnell College and Professor of Art History); Jeff Bowman, Kenyon College, Ohio (Provost of Kenyon College and Professor of History); David Sylvester, St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto (President of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, and Professor of History)

So many of us who are working to advocate for medieval studies in universities today are trying to better understand our academic administrators. How can we advocate for our programs at an age that seems to increasingly devalue the Humanities and premodern studies across disciplines? What initiatives, partnerships, or investments are possible and worth pursuing? How can faculty advocate for their programs, scholarship, and students? Join us for this special CARA zoom session when we will get the inside scoop thanks to this panel of medievalist-provosts and presidents. To better streamline our conversation, please send any questions you might have for our panel of provosts and presidents by January 7, 2027 (email them to laurenmancia@brooklyn.cuny.edu).

Click here to register.

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MAA News – Self-Nominate for MAA Committee Service: Nomination forms due Dec. 1

Volunteer committee service is critically important to our mission, and we welcome your expertise and efforts. Even if you have already checked the relevant box on your MAA Member Profile page or you self-nominated for service last year, please confirm your specific area of interest and provide additional information by filling out this form to self-nominate for committee service in the upcoming cycle. You may also nominate a colleague.

See our FAQ page for information about how Committee members are selected. Committee members seated in the upcoming cycle will begin their three-year term of service in March 2025.

Click here for more information and to submit a nomination.

Thank you for your interest!

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MAA News – Call for CARA Prize Nominations

Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies: The Medieval Academy of America’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) invites nominations for its annual service prize. The Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies recognizes Academy members who have provided leadership in developing, organizing, promoting, and sponsoring medieval studies through their administrative work—work that is critical to the health of medieval studies, but that often goes unrecognized by the profession at large. This award of $1000 is presented at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy. The annual deadline for nominations is 15 November; please note that three nominators are required, all of whom should have first-hand knowledge of the nominee’s contributions to Medieval Studies. For more information, please visit the CARA Service Award web page.

CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching: The Medieval Academy’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) invites nominations for its annual teaching prize, which recognizes outstanding pedagogical achievement by Medieval Academy members. This can include:

• teaching inspiring courses at the undergraduate or graduate levels;

• creating innovative teaching materials (including textbooks);

• developing courses and curricula;

• scholarship of teaching and learning (including presentations at conferences as well as publications)

• support for K-12 pedagogy and curricula;

• community-oriented or publicly-directed educational initiatives.

Normally, one prize is given for undergraduate and one prize for graduate teaching, each in the amount of $1000. These will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy. The annual deadline for nominations is 15 November. For more information, please visit the CARA Teaching Award web page.

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MAA News – 2027 Annual Meeting: Save the Date!

We are thrilled to invite you to join us in Toronto from April 15-17 for the 102nd Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America! Since 1967, our meeting has been held at the University of Toronto every decade “on the 7s,” and we are very pleased that the University will be hosting us next year. The Annual Meeting will be held at Trinity College and St Michael’s College (two of the federated colleges in the University of Toronto college system) and will be officially hosted by The Centre for Medieval Studies in partnership with the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and the Canadian Society of Medievalists. Keynote speakers will be MAA President Haruko Momma (New York University), Siân Echard (University of British Columbia), and Adrienne Williams Boyarin (University of Victoria). The program will be posted and registration will open in early 2027. We look forward to seeing you there!

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Online Lecture: Inheritors of Christ: Christian Pilgrimage in Early Islamic Palestine, c.750–c.1099

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the next lecture in our 2026–2027 lecture series.

November 18, 2026 | Zoom | 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)
Inheritors of Christ: Christian Pilgrimage in Early Islamic Palestine, c.750–c.1099
Daniel Reynolds, University of Birmingham

At the opening of the seventh century, historic Palestine and Transjordan were among the most densely occupied ritual landscapes of the Late Roman world. Over the course of the early Islamic period, that landscape transformed as local Christian communities adapted to the shifting political and social realities of Muslim rule. While pilgrimage to the region from Byzantium and the post-Roman Latin kingdoms continued throughout this period, it was far exceeded by the vibrant, diverse practices of the region’s locally-rooted Christian population. Drawing together evidence from archaeology, epigraphy, graffiti, and texts, this lecture examines how Christians living within the Caliphate experienced the spaces and stories of the Biblical and early Christian past, and how their practices intersected with the visits of pilgrims from beyond the region.

Daniel Reynolds is Senior Lecturer in Byzantine History at the University of Birmingham

Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/inheritors-of-christ

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Opportunity for Graduate Students & ECRs: GIS Tools for Byzantinists: Visibility Analysis

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America are pleased to offer a GIS visibility analysis workshop for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Becky Seifried of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

GIS Tools for Byzantinists: Visibility Analysis, workshop by Becky Seifried (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Zoom, December 11, 2026, 12:00 AM–2:00 PM EST (UTC -5)

Visibility analysis is a common geospatial technique for investigating the visual interconnections across past landscapes, as well as for exploring questions about why people existed where they did. This intermediate-level workshop will introduce a group of visibility analysis tools available in QGIS, a free and open-source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) desktop software. It will begin with a quick review of core concepts, including vector and raster data types, coordinate reference systems, and how to find and create data. Using a dataset we create together, we will then use QGIS to experiment with line-of-sight, viewshed, and cumulative viewshed tools. Participants will come away ready to apply visibility analysis to their own case studies.

Registration closes November 19.

For a full description of the workshop and to register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/visibility-analysis.

Contact Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

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Online Lecture: Re-excavating Antioch: The First New Publication of Princeton’s Excavations of the 1930s

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Mashtot Chair of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the next lecture in the 2026–2027 East of Byzantium lecture series.

November 6, 2026 | 12:00 PM (EST, UTC -5) | Zoom
Re-excavating Antioch: The First New Publication of Princeton’s Excavations of the 1930s
A. Asa Eger, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Antioch is an invisible city, assumed to have faded out after the Islamic conquests in the early seventh century. Indeed, this perspective carries in scholarship until today. The Princeton archaeologists of the 1930s set Byzantine Antioch as their prize and documented extraordinarily little of the excavated remains of the medieval city. Synthetic analysis of urban transformations was not a priority. Recent research is beginning to demonstrate that the city did indeed have a rich afterlife and experienced meaningful change. This paper will present the first new publication of the Princeton excavated material of sector 17-O.

Excavated in 1937, 17-O was designated as a pilot area of the larger project and thus was not published. The area did not possess any mosaics and is supposedly located at the crossroads of the city, at the edge of the Forum of Valens. It also has a long stratigraphic record of the city’s occupation and therefore acts as a microcosm of larger urban transformations. 17-O began as a public space in the Early Roman period with a nymphaeum that was restored twice and continued until the 5th century when it and the entire area were destroyed by fire (and likely earthquake). Between the 5th and 7th centuries, a courtyard house with a series of shops on a side street off the cardo appeared and grew into three courtyard houses with attached shops by the 8th century. In the Middle Byzantine and Crusader periods, 10th–12th centuries, these houses were reused, subdivided, and fitted with kilns for ceramic production. The publication project harnesses recent studies on ceramics, glass, and small finds and situates these back in stratigraphic context using the archived notebooks, maps, and photographs. The transformations of this area are representative of shifts in Antioch and follow the trajectory documented in other Greco-Roman cities.

Asa Eger is Professor of the Islamic World in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/

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

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