The Medieval Academy Blog

Who publishes in Speculum? The authors contributing articles to the July issue give a sense of the range of medievalists whose work is featured in our flagship journal. They include early career scholars—one a lecturer, the other an assistant professor—as well as seasoned researchers. They are international: one from Spain, two from Israel, two from the United States, and a US citizen who holds a faculty position in Europe. And their careers point to the diversity and strengths of our field.

Think they are all products of the Ivy League? Think again! Three of the four trained in North America earned their doctorates in public universities: Linda G. Jones earned her PhD at UC Santa Barbara, Yanay Israeli completed his at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and Donald N. Tuten earned his at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Pamela A. Patton did her doctoral work at Boston University. Scorecard: Ivys 0, non-Ivys 4.

Two have a particular dedication to teaching Spanish in all its forms. Tuten and his co-author María Jesús Torrens-Álvarez’s contribution to Speculum is a good example of their valorization of language as a living, changing medium. They use the Latin-Romance hybrid documents of an early thirteenth-century scribe in Burgos to argue that he and his peers worked within a monolingual culture characterized by spectroglossia that developed in response to significant socio-cultural changes. Torrens-Álvarez also contributed to a public digital-humanities project mapping diachronically the development of Spanish in Madrid (ALDICAM) and Tuten has edited five editions of the intermediate Spanish textbook, Fuentes: Lectura y redaccion, which highlights Hispanic cultures and societies. Their collaboration developed from reading one another’s work and meeting for deeper conversations at conferences.

Collaborative research is also showcased in the article opening this themed issue. Yosi Yisraeli and Yanay Israeli met for coffee when both arrived at Hebrew University, Yosi on a post-doc and Yanay as a new assistant professor. It didn’t take long for them to discover that they were both working on use of the term converso/neophyte in medieval Iberia, but in very different kinds of sources. That conversation over coffee led to a friendship as well as their article. Their contribution leverages the range of sources each commands to recover fifteenth-century debates over the meaning of the category “converso.” In their nuanced analysis of this term’s contestation, they link broader interpretations of the meaning of conversion to deployments of this fraught label. Over the course of their collaboration Yosi has advanced to lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and Yanay is in transition this summer from Hebrew University to a new position as assistant professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.

The diverse and non-linear paths of Speculum authors also highlights the many ways medievalists prove their indispensability. Pamela A. Patton began her career in a split position, half-time as a Curator of Spanish Art at the Meadows Museum and half-time as an assistant professor in art history at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She went on to teach full-time, rising through the ranks until she chaired her department at SMU. She now directs the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton. Her article on the depiction of enslaved people in late medieval Iberian manuscripts reveals how iconographical research is still a potent tool in exploring ideas and the ideological work that images accomplish. Torrens-Álvarez also left full-time teaching to direct scholarly projects. She is Senior Scientist (Científica Titular) at Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid where she oversees a project on the linguistic development of northern Castilian over the Middle Ages.

The issue also highlights opportunities for Americans abroad. Linda G. Jones is a UC all-star: after completing a B.A. and M.A. in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Berkeley, she worked in New York publishing houses and in the non-profit sector (Amnesty International) before returning to the UC to earn both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies at Santa Barbara. Early in her career, Dr. Jones welcomed opportunities to collaborate with Spanish scholars on research projects; perseverance and the relationships she built led to the faculty position she holds now as Professor of Medieval History and Islamic Studies at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Her article in July’s Speculum is a comparative study of Muslim and Christian hegemonic masculinities through the evidence of two twelfth-century Iberian dynastic chronicles. She explores the roles of religion and status in constituting masculinities with particular attention to relations between sovereigns, their allies. and their foes.

Want to learn more? Register HERE for the free Speculum Webinar on “Emerging Issues in Medieval Iberian Studies,” 25 August 12 noon to 3:30 pm EDT. All the contributing authors will give 10-minute TED-style presentations of their articles and answer your questions in the Q&A session. If you can’t make the day and time, look for the recording on the Academy’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ3CMBjLL-vGjldC6fXPn9w

Finally, congratulations to our authors and to the entire Speculum team on the publication of this superb thematic issue!

Maureen C. Miller
President, Medieval Academy of America

The latest issue of Speculum is now available on the University of Chicago Press Journals website.

To access your members-only journal subscription, log in to the MAA website using your username and password associated with your membership (contact us at info@themedievalacademy.org if you have forgotten either), and choose “Speculum Online” from the “Speculum” menu. As a reminder, your MAA membership provides exclusive online access to the full run of Speculum in full text, PDF, and e-Book editions – at no additional charge.

Speculum, Volume 97, Number 3 (July 2022) | Emerging Issues in Medieval Iberian Studies

Articles

Defining “Conversos” in Fifteenth-Century Castile: The Making of a Controversial Category
Yosi Yisraeli and Yanay Israeli

What Did Medieval Slavery Look Like? Color, Race, and Unfreedom in Later Medieval Iberia
Pamela A. Patton

From “Latin” to the Vernacular: Latin-Romance Hybridity, Scribal Competence, and Social Transformation in Medieval Castile
María Jesús Torrens-Álvarez and Donald N. Tuten

Representations of Hegemonic Masculinities in Medieval Leonese-Castilian and Almohad Chronicles
Linda G. Jones

Book Reviews
This issue of Speculum features more than 75 book reviews, including:

Jacopo Bisagni, ed., “Amrae Coluimb Chille”: A Critical Edition
Reviewed by Christina Cleary

Caroline Walker Bynum, Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe
Reviewed by Wei-Cheng Lin

Rita Copeland, ed., The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. Vol. 1, 800–1558
Reviewed by Larry Scanlon

Shirin Fozi and Gerhard Lutz, eds., Christ on the Cross: The Boston Crucifix and the Rise of Monumental Wood Sculpture, 970–1200
Reviewed by Thomas Dale

Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Diagramming Devotion: Berthold of Nuremberg’s Transformation of Hrabanus Maurus’s Poems in Praise of the Cross
Reviewed by Benjamin Anderson

Samantha Kelly, ed., A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea
Reviewed by Habtamu Tegegne

Lars Kjær, The Medieval Gift and the Classical Tradition: Ideals and Performance of Generosity in Medieval England, 1100–1300
Reviewed by Hugh M. Thomas

Angeliki Lymberopoulou, ed., Hell in the Byzantine World: A History of Art and Religion in Venetian Crete and the Eastern Mediterranean
Reviewed by Vasileios Marinis

Outi Merisalo, Miika Kuha, and Susanna Niiranen, eds., Transmission of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Reviewed by Gian Mario Cao

Sara Ritchey, Acts of Care: Recovering Women in Late Medieval Health
Reviewed by Tory V. Pearman

Katherine Allen Smith, The Bible and Crusade Narrative in the Twelfth Century
Reviewed by Beth C. Spacey

MAA members also receive a 30% discount on all books and e-Books published by the University of Chicago Press, and a 20% discount on individual Chicago Manual of Style Online subscriptions. To access your discount code, log in to your MAA account, and click here. Please include this code while checking out from the University of Chicago Press website.

Sincerely,
The Medieval Academy of America

If you’re going to be at the Leeds International Medieval Congress this year, please join us on Tuesday, 5 July, 19.00-20.00 for the Annual Medieval Academy of America Lecture: Carol Symes (Dept. of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign): “Médiévistes sans frontières – Shifting Medieval Boundaries at Multiple Scales”

Afterwards, join Prof. Symes and MAA governance and staff members for the Medieval Academy’s open-bar wine reception.

The Medieval Academy’s Graduate Student Committee roundtable, “Gatekeeping the Middle Ages: Accessing, Congrolling, and Disseminating the Medieval Past in the Modern World,” will take place on Monday, 4 July, from 19.00-20:00.

We hope to see you there!

To all Members of the Medieval Academy of America:

All members of the Medieval Academy of America are hereby invited to submit nominations for the election of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Academy for 2023. You need not be a Fellow to nominate a Fellow or Corresponding Fellow, and all members are warmly encouraged do so, for this is one important way in which the Academy recognizes and honors its most outstanding scholars. Nominations from Corresponding Fellows who reside in countries outside of North America, who need not be members of the Academy, are equally welcome.

Currently, there are 122 Active Fellows and 67 Corresponding Fellows. According to the Strategic Plan recently approved by the Fellows, the number of total Fellows and Corresponding Fellows is to be increased each year as follows:

“The number of voting Fellows [will] be increased from 125 to 150 and the number of Corresponding Fellows [will] be increased from 75 to 100 over a period of 9 years, with 3 additional Fellows and 3 additional Corresponding Fellows to be elected per year over the first 8 years and an additional Fellow and Corresponding Fellow in the ninth year.”

In accordance with this new policy, there will be a maximum of 131 Fellows and 81 Corresponding Fellows in 2023. The number of openings in the current cycle, then, is 9 Fellows and 14 Corresponding Fellows.

New procedures for nomination dossiers have been instituted as a result of the reforms adopted by the Fellows in 2021. The instructions are detailed at
https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/?page=Election_Procedure

In brief, here are the rules for the dossier:

1) up to three signed letters of nomination, each of which may be up to two pages in length (although a nomination can still go forward without prejudice with a single letter);
2) a curriculum vitae of NO MORE than four pages;
3) a URL directing voters to an expanded online CV, if possible (this URL should be included in the body of the first nominating letter)

These components must be combined into a single PDF and submitted by email to the Executive Director (LFD@TheMedievalAcademy.org). Incomplete or improperly constituted dossiers will not be accepted.

All Fellows (except for Corresponding Fellows) must be members of the Medieval Academy who reside in North America at the time of election. They should be medievalists who have contributed to our knowledge of the Middle Ages with a substantial body of scholarship, distinguished in both quality and quantity. In most fields the contribution will entail several well-received books, though in some areas the standard may be important digital work or a sheaf of influential articles. Major prizes, editorships, and professional leadership in societies including (but not limited to) the MAA may also be taken into account. Election to the Fellows recognizes a lifetime of academic achievement. Candidates, therefore, will ordinarily be full professors, though senior curators and distinguished independent and non-tenure-track scholars may also merit election. Nominations of associate professors are normally considered premature.

In nominating candidates, please consider diversity in discipline, ethnicity, gender, regions of the country, and types of institution. Please also bear in mind that Medieval Studies is not limited to Western Europe or to the second half of our period.

In order to present a balanced slate, additional nominations may be made by the Fellows Nominating Committee, the members of which are listed on the Officers page.

To sum up: Please follow instructions for nominations as found on the MAA website; nominations that are incorrectly prepared will not be considered.

Instructions for nominations are available here:
https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/?page=Election_Procedure

Please refer to the lists of current Fellows before proposing a nomination:

Current Fellows:
https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/?page=Fellows_List
Current Corresponding Fellows:
https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/page/CorrFellows

Nominations for the 2023 elections must be received by 1 October 2022. Unsuccessful nominations from previous years may be resubmitted. Please contact the Executive Director for further information about this process.

Finally, please keep nominations confidential. Although nominators are to sign their names to the letters, all involved should try not to let nominees learn about their nomination.

We look forward to a diverse and exciting set of nominations.

– Richard Emmerson, President of the Fellows

We are very pleased to announce that Afrodesia McCannon (New York Univ.) will be succeeding Patrick Geary as the Medieval Academy of America’s Delegate to the American Council of Learned Societies . Delegates play an important role in ACLS governance as well as serving as liaisons between learned societies and the ACLS. Prof. McCannon will serve a five-year term, reporting annually to the MAA membership at the Annual Meeting and in each year’s July issue of Speculum. We welcome Prof. McCannon to this important role and are very grateful for her service.

Three first-time authors have been awarded MAA Subventions to support the publication of their monographs:

Gregory Bryda, The Trees of the Cross: Wood as Subject and Medium in the Art of Grünewald, Riemenschneider, and Late Medieval Germany (Yale University Press);

Elizabeth Coggeshall, On Amista: Negotiating Friendship in Dante’s Italy (University of Toronto Press);

Andrew Griebeler, Botanical Icons : Critical Practices of Illustration in the Premodern Mediterranean (University of Chicago Press).

Congratulations! The complete list of publications supported by MAA subventions may be found here.

Sean L. Field (Univ. of Vermont) has been elected Correspondant étranger de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.

If you have Good News to share, please send it to Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis.