The Medieval Academy Blog

Banquet attendees

What an absolute joy to see so many of you at the 101st Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, hosted by the Five College consortium and held on the beautiful campuses of Amherst College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The plenary lectures were splendid: in the opening plenary “Law, Speculation, Fiction,” Jesús Rodríguez Velasco (Yale University) presented several case studies demonstrating how legal thinkers responded to hypotheticals with legal ramifications (who knew there was so much to learn about the legal implications of the damage that could be inflicted by a wild boar?); Peggy McCracken (University of Michigan, in her Presidential Plenary “Echoes of Echo in Medieval France,” engaged with the various ways the character of Echo appears, or does not appear, in late medieval French versions of the Narcissus myth; and Elly R. Truitt (University of Pennsylvania), in her lecture “Before Science: The View from (and of) the Thirteenth Century,” explored the life, work, and reputation of Roger Bacon. The CARA session on Friday morning focused on finding “the medieval” (or pseudo-medieval) in North America, with presentations of projects and online resources stretching from Hawaiʻi to Boston. The 350 attendees were treated to exhibits, receptions, concerts, and nearly 200 lectures across fifty-five sessions. Publication, Teaching, Service, and Student Prizes were awarded, and Fellows were inducted.

Fellows President Anne D Hedeman with newly-inducted Fellows Emily Steiner, Martha Driver, Tom Barton, and Calvin Bower

Of particular note was the beautiful encomium to the Humanities and to Medieval Studies delivered in welcome by Pawan Dhingra, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion at Amherst College. He has given me permission excerpt his words here.

“…Connections across difference are seen in your program for this year. You will encounter presentations across an array of disciplines, methods, and geographies. Topics include material culture, law and literature, science and technology, performance, religion, the environments of the medieval world, and more. Many sessions invite us to think about technologies of knowledge and the changing relationships between people and environments. As someone who works in diversity, equity, and inclusion, I appreciate how vital medieval studies is to these conversations, and vice versa. The Middle Ages are often imagined as distant, homogeneous, or even exclusionary. The only thing seemingly more outdated than “DEI” is the Middle Ages. But the scholarship in your field and in this conference reveal how history is present today. Medieval Studies asks us to confront how categories of belonging were constructed, how power operated, and how narratives of the past continue to shape inequalities in the present. And your conference is a testament to the fact that when scholarship in the humanities is done right, it draws out the themes of diversity, equity, and inclusion despite the political pushback and dismissiveness they are encountering today. These questions not only concern the past. We are meeting at a moment when the United States is engaged in a war with Iran. You, as scholars of the medieval past, have a key role to play, to elucidate how the regions at the center of today’s headlines – whether in Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and elsewhere – have deep histories of cultural exchange, intellectual production, inequality, and religious diversity. Medieval Studies helps us see those histories in their fullness. We need your scholarship in order to better navigate the challenges that we face today.”

I couldn’t agree more.

My thanks to the Program and Local Organizing Committees – led by Jenny Adams (UMass), Ingrid Nelson (Amherst College), Joshua Birk (Smith College), and Jessica Barr (UMass) – the army of volunteers, MAA Annual Meeting Representative Sean Gilsdorf, and the MAA staff. I hope to see you at the 102nd Annual Meeting at the University of Toronto!

– Lisa

Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director
LFD@TheMedievalAcademy.org

The Medieval Academy Book Subvention Program provides two subventions of up to $2,500 each to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of first books by Medieval Academy members. Click here for more information.

The Medieval Academy Inclusivity and Diversity Book Subvention Program provides one subvention of up to $5000 to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of a book by a Medieval Academy member that will broaden the scope of medieval studies. Projects that focus on non-European regions or topics under the Inclusivity and Diversity Committee’s purview such as race, class, disability, gender, religion, or sexuality are particularly welcomed. Click here for more information.

Applications for subventions will be accepted only from the publisher and only for books that have already been approved for publication. Eligible Academy members who wish to have their books considered for a subvention should ask their publishers to apply directly to the Academy, following the guidelines outlined on the relevant webpage. The deadline for proposals is 1 May 2026.

Dear colleagues,

We are happy to announce that season 5 of The Multicultural Middle Ages has officially launched. This season promises to be our biggest one yet, and we are starting strong with our first episode: “Pandemic in the Medieval World: Teaching a New Black Death Narrative in the 21st Century.”

How do pandemics happen? In this episode, historians of medieval medicine Monica H. Green, Winston Black, and Lucy Barnhouse talk with Will Beattie about the genesis of a new open-access teaching module on the Black Death. Our understanding of the late medieval pandemic has been transformed not only because of advances in the biological sciences, but also because historians have recently discovered—or newly interpreted—written records from the 13th and 14th centuries. For the first time, the Islamicate world’s experience is centered in the narrative, allowing entirely new perspectives on the Afro-Eurasian pandemic to be revealed.

Please, tune in! You can find The Multicultural Middle Ages on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major podcasting platforms. You can also listen through our website: https://www.multiculturalmiddleages.com/listen

And please follow us on social media: Bluesky (@mmapod.bsky.social) and Instagram (@multiculturalmiddleagespod).

All the best,
The Multicultural Middle Ages Team
Jonathan F. Correa Reyes
Assistant Professor of English
Clemson University
Co-producer The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast

Summer Skills Workshops

This summer, the MAA will offer four online Summer Skills Workshops: Old French (Terry Cullen, Vassar College); Latin Paleography (Sean Gilsdorf, Harvard Univ.), Medieval Latin (Diane Warne Anderson, University of Massachusetts, Boston), and Medieval Liturgy and Liturgical Books (Susan Boynton, Columbia University). Applications must be received by 15 April.

Click here for more information and to apply.

Have you found yourself unsure about which MAA Grant or Fellowship is the right fit for you and your work? Thanks to MAA Special Projects Assistant Jon Dell Isola, you need wonder no more. Jon has recently written Guidelines for Applicants, and these have now been posted to our website: one for students, and one for everyone else. He will be presenting the student guidelines at an upcoming webinar sponsored by the MAA Graduate Student Committee; click here for more information and to register. We hope that this presentation and these documents will help members make decisions about which MAA grantmaking program they should look to for support.

As the MAA enters its second century, we continue to revisit all of our various programs and policies in order to ensure that we are serving our constituents and the field as best we can. The Ad Hoc Committee on Grants & Fellowships was convened in the fall of 2025 to review all of our grantmaking programs and recommend possible changes to eligibility, grant amounts, and adjudication procedures. The Committee members are: Joseph Ackley (Wesleyan Univ.), Richard Barton (Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro), Cristina Maria Cervone (Univ. of Memphis), Sarah Davis-Secord (Univ. of New Mexico), and Craig Nakashian (Texas A&M Univ. – Texarkana). Their work is nearly complete and any changes approved by Council will be announced and implemented in the fall.

As ever, the Medieval Academy will have a strong presence at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. We hope you will join us for these sessions and special events:

1) For the first time, the MAA Plenary will take place on Friday evening instead of Friday morning. The lecture will be delivered by Michelle M. Sauer (University of North Dakota), “The Queerness of Solitude”, at 7 PM in Sangren Hall 1910. Two related sessions organized by Prof. Sauer will take place on Saturday at 10:30 AM, “Queerness of Solitude (1): Gender, Queerness, and Enclosure” and Saturday at 1:30 PM, “Queerness of Solitude (2): Sex, Gender, and Space in Mystical Literature,” both in Sangren Hall 1910.

2) The Graduate Student Committee Roundtable will take place on Saturday at 8:30 AM, “Ugly Books: How to Research Damaged or Fragmented Manuscripts,” in Sangren Hall 2710.

3) The MAA Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Committee is co-sponsoring a workshop on Saturday at 1:30 PM, “Digital Pedagogies for a Medieval World: A Workshop on Digital Humanities in the Classroom,” in Waldo Library 3014 (the Multipurpose Room).

4) Finally, we invite you to visit our staffed table in the exhibit hall to introduce yourself, transact any Medieval Academy business you may have, or pick up some chocolate to keep you going during those long afternoon sessions. As in the past, we will be giving away fifty free one-year memberships to new members, so spread the word!

See you at the ‘Zoo!

The Schallek Awards support graduate students whose work, in any relevant discipline, focuses primarily on the late medieval period in England or any of the British Isles, or which involves British connections to the European Continent in the late medieval period. The five Awards of $5,000 each are supported by a generous gift to the Richard III Society from William B. and Maryloo Spooner Schallek.

Madeline Fox (University of Michigan), “The Middle English Devotional Life of Magdalena von Freiburg”;

Olivia Caroline Geraci (University of Notre Dame), “Liturgical practices of medieval English women religious”;

Catherine Rose Introcaso (CUNY Graduate Center), “Annotation as Embodied Devotion in Late Medieval Mystical-Contemplative Manuscripts”;

Kamila Kaminska-Palarczyk (Yale University), “Reading Like a Woman: Medieval Prologues in the Mother Tongue, c. 1300–1420″;

Karen Ward (University of Waterloo), “The Interpellating Mindscape of Medieval York: Objects, Times, and Spaces as Networked Cultural Nodes in the York Corpus Christi Cycle”.

The four Constable Awards of $1,500 support research and travel for unaffiliated scholars, adjuncts, postdoctoral lecturers, and other pre-tenure scholars. The Constable Fund was established in memory of Oliva Remie Constable.

Ella Beaucamp, “Swallow, Bite, Sing: Sound and Image in the Romanesque Ambones of Campania”;

Katherine Churchill, researching late medieval English archives, docupoetry, and authority;

Brittany Nikole Forniotis, “Monumental Fictions: Constructing Urban Landscapes with Pieces of the Past”;

Matthew A. Keil, investigating the Syriac origins and Greek transmission of the hagiographic Life of Abraham of Qidun and Mary.

The Belle da Costa Greene Award of $2,000 supports research and travel by an unaffiliated, adjunct, or otherwise pre-tenure medievalist. Belle Da Costa Greene (1883-1950) was a prominent art historian and the first manuscript librarian of the Pierpont Morgan collection. She was also the first known person of color and second woman to be elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1939). The 2026 Greene Award is being granted to Tiago Viula de Faria, “Falconry: Cultural Syncretism in Medieval and Early Modern Portugal.”

Writing Like Monks and Nuns: a Writing Community by the Graduate Student Committee
Tuesday, April 7th, 3pm EDT

“He who does not know how to write does not think that it is a labor. Three fingers write, the whole body labors. Whoever has read this book, pray for me”. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 9561, fol. 81v.)

Does this scribal plea—found by Thijs Porck (Universiteit Leiden)—resonate with your writing practice? Crying out in pain from an eighth century copy of Gregory’s Pastoral Care this scribe asks for an intercession familiar to dissertation writers, “pray for me”. Clacking away, hunched over a computer screen we toil physically as well.

Toil alone no longer! The Graduate Student Committee of the MAA invites you to our writing community pilot, Writing Like Monks and Nuns.

Informed by research on the benefits of writing groups for early career researchers and inspired by medieval writing practices, we aim to create a space of accountability, community, and fun.

Each 75-minute writing session begins with a medieval writing warm-up, followed by dedicated writing time and a short debrief. Attendees will be entered in a drawing to win a free year of MAA membership. 

Questions can be directed to organizers Camila Roxana Marcone (camila.marcone@yale.edu) and Summer Block Lizer (summer.lizer@cgu.edu)

Dates and times
April 7 – 3pm EST
April 21 – 3pm EST
May 5 – 3pm EST
May 19 – 3pm EST
June 9 – 3pm EST
June 23 – 3pm EST

Register here to receive the zoom link.

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MAA Funding for Graduate Students
Moderated by Rebekkah Hart
Wednesday, May 6th, 3pm EDT

We welcome all graduate student medievalists to a webinar on May 6th at 3pm EDT about grant opportunities through the Medieval Academy. MAA Special Projects Assistant Jon Dell Isola will provide an overview of the various grant opportunities and tips for applying to grants.

Presenter:
Jon Dell Isola, Medieval Academy of America

Click here to register!