The Medieval Academy Blog

Editors:
François-Xavier Fauvelle, Collège de France
Nahir Otaño Gracia, University of New Mexico
Cord J. Whitaker, Wellesley College

For far too long, scholarly consensus held that race and racism were mainly Enlightenment innovations, datable to no earlier than the seventeenth century. As long ago as the early twentieth century, some scholars pushed race’s origins to the sixteenth or even fifteenth centuries, but these scholars were few and far between. The Middle Ages and, with them, medieval studies were set off as a time and discipline innocent of race and racism. This remained generally true until the advent of critical medieval race studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Now, in 2021, special issues in major journals and no less than six full-length scholarly monographs have treated the imbrications of race with medieval art, literature, religion, and even the periodizing concept of the Middle Ages itself. Many more studies in medieval literature, history, art, religion, and culture have been conceptually informed by race, as have many studies in the modern perceptions and deployments of the Middle Ages. Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies calls for proposals for a themed issue, to be published as one of Speculum’s four quarterly issues, to recognize the intellectual value of the study of race to a comprehensive understanding of the Middle Ages.

We invite proposals for full-length essays (8,000-11,000 words) that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages. For example, essays might consider the roles of race-making and racialization in the Islamic world; how race and identity, together with religion, was negotiated and navigated in border regions such as al-Andalus, Sicily or the Levant (between Latin Christendom and Islam), the Sahara and the Sahel region (between the Islamic world and Subsaharan Africa); how the dynamics of race-thinking informed relations between Latin and Greek Christendom and Islam or the Mongol Empire, or between the Muslim/Islamicate world and Christian, Jewish, Hinduist, and traditional-religious societies within it or beyond its reaches; how race intersected with the dynamics of trade and connectivity, religious affiliation and conversion, slavery and emancipation, peace and war. Essays may also take on the roles of race, race-thinking, and identity in the geography and periodization of the Middle Ages: Are historical moments that are quintessential to the history of race also relevant to medieval-and-modern periodizations? Essays may also consider how and why race, race-thinking, and identity have shaped modern concepts, uses, and scholarship of the Middle Ages.

The editors are open to essays that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages by asking these and other deeply probing questions. Additionally, we are especially interested in essays that consider the globality of the medieval world: those that examine the networked interrelations and interdependences of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. In addition to scholarship in history and literature, we invite proposals using the tools and methods of anthropology, archaeology, art history, book history, historical linguistics, religious studies, sociology, and other fields germane to the studies of race, identity, and the Middle Ages.

The themed issue on race, race-thinking, and identity and the articles selected for it will be in keeping with Speculum’s purview as stated in the Guidelines for Submission: “preference is ordinarily given to articles of interest to readers in more than one discipline and beyond the specialty in question. Articles taking a more global approach to medieval studies are also welcomed, particularly when the topic engages with one or more of the core areas of study outlined above. Submissions with appeal to a broad cross-section of medievalists are highly encouraged.”

Proposals should be no more than 500 words in length and should be submitted by email to cord.whitaker@wellesley.edu with SPECULUM PROPOSAL in the subject line by 31 January 2022. The authors of selected proposals will be notified by 28 February 2022. Completed essays will be expected by 1 December 2022.

Dear fellow medievalists,

In times of crisis we must all work together, and this is especially true in a time of multiple crises. This is why we are asking you to renew your membership in the Medieval Academy of America for 2022. After signing in, you can easily check your profile on our website to see if your membership is up-to-date. While many of our events and activities are accessible to all, you must be a member in good standing to apply for one of the many grants and fellowships given out by the Academy, to speak at the Medieval Academy Annual Meeting, or to participate in its governance. We rely on you to keep the Medieval Academy going and enable us to continue to offer the support, both practical and intellectual, that makes us a community.

Medieval Academy membership brings other benefits, such as:

– a subscription to Speculum, our quarterly journal
– online access to the entire Speculum archive
– access to our online member directory
– publication and database discounts through our website

You can easily pay your dues and/or make a donation through the MAA website where, after you sign into your account, you can also adjust your membership category if necessary. Please consider supplementing your membership by becoming a Contributing or Sustaining member or by making a tax-deductible donation as part of your end-of-year giving. Such gifts are crucial because they help subsidize lower membership rates for student, contingent, and unaffiliated medievalists and also support our grant-making programs. In order to make membership more affordable for those in financially precarious circumstances, we have recently revised our dues structure.

You may also wish to remember the Academy with a bequest as a member of our Legacy Society (for more information, please contact the Executive Director).

During the COVID-19 lockdown, the Medieval Academy was able to redirect resources to host webinars on the latest Black Death research, working beyond academia, and race & racism in our classrooms and in our field. All of these webinars were recorded and can be viewed on our website. Thanks to prudent stewardship by our governance, we increased support of members in 2021, especially student, independent, and contingent scholars, and expanded programming in support of medievalists of color and of medievalists working in various professional contexts beyond university and college campuses. As we work towards a more expansive Middle Ages, we are also working to build a more inclusive Medieval Studies. Your membership dues make such programming possible, while also supporting the highest-quality research in all fields of medieval studies, and we sincerely hope that you will renew your valued membership in the Academy as we continue this work in 2022.

When you renew, please take a few minutes to update your profile page so that members with similar interests can find you, and you can find them. You can also check a box to indicate your interest in serving on a Medieval Academy committee or reviewing for Speculum. Your profile page now includes an option to indicate gender and racial/ethnic identity. This information will not be visible to other members, but it will help the Academy immensely as we strive to increase our understanding of member demographics and work to improve diversity and inclusivity in Medieval Studies. If you have forgotten your username and/or password, please contact us for assistance.

Thank you for your support. We look forward to working with you in 2022 and hope to see you – in person or online – at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, 10-13 March, at the University of Virginia.

Thomas E. Dale, President
Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director

p.s. if you have already renewed, please ignore this message and accept our thanks

The Medieval Academy of America invites applications for the following grants. Please note that applicants must be members in good standing as of September 15 in order to be eligible for Medieval Academy awards.

The Inclusivity and Diversity Research Grant
The Inclusivity and Diversity Research Grant of up to $3,000 will be granted annually to a scholar, at any stage in their career, who seeks to pursue innovative research 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. The grant prioritizes applicants who are students, ECRs, or non-tenured. For the current round of applications, we encourage proposals that address the challenges of conducting research during the Covid-19 era. (Deadline 31 December 2021)

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. Click here to make a donation in support of the Greene Award. (Deadline 15 February 2022)

Olivia Remie Constable Award
Four Olivia Remie Constable Awards of $1,500 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 2022)

MAA Dissertation Grants:
The nine annual Medieval Academy Dissertation Grants support advanced graduate students who are writing Ph.D. dissertations on medieval topics. The $2,000 grants help defray research expenses. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2022)

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 $2,000 awards help defray research expenses. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2022)

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 2022)

Applicants for these and other MAA programs must be members in good standing of the Medieval Academy. Please contact the Executive Director for more information about these and other MAA programs.

The Medieval Academy of America invites proposals for sessions at the upcoming annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Philadelphia, January 5-8, 2023.

Each year the Medieval Academy co-sponsors sessions at the AHA’s annual meeting. This year, we aim to sponsor sessions that address an overarching theme of interest both to MAA members and broader audiences:

“(Re)Constructing the Middle Ages through Migrations, Mobilities, Mediations.” We offer this theme in encompassing terms. We imagine that panels might address a range of topics that include: indigenous and global perspectives that extend and challenge previous conceptions of the period; considerations of the field from historical scales that reveal temporal, geographic, or conceptual incongruities, from microhistories to civilizational studies; new narrations of the medieval past from unexpected or previously de-centered locales, objects, or persons; configurations of the field that blur or eradicate geographic, temporal, conceptual, or linguistic boundaries; reckonings of the medieval that jettison or expose its medievalist, nationalist, and colonialist legacies. How does your work invite reconsiderations of what is medieval? We’d love to hear from you!

We invite all manner of session programming, and strongly encourage MAA members to think beyond traditional paper panels. Roundtables, lightning talks, interviews, field conversations, pedagogical workshops, digital labs, performances, working sessions, and any other experimental and inclusive forms of knowledge-sharing you might propose will be received with enthusiasm.

We especially encourage session proposals from scholars representing a variety of identity positions and academic ranks and affiliations, including graduate students and independent scholars. We also encourage session proposals from scholars whose work features sources, geographies, and populations that are under-represented in traditional reckonings of “the medieval.”

The committee is happy to provide feedback on draft session proposals; please reach out to us at ahacommittee@themedievalacademy.org. In addition, MAA members may receive feedback on proposals as part of the review process.

How to submit a session proposal

There is a two-stage process for submitting a session proposal for MAA and AHA co-sponsorship.

1) Members of the Medieval Academy submit session proposals to the MAA’s AHA Program Committee through the online submission form by 11:59 p.m., February 1, 2022.

2) If the session proposal is approved by the MAA’s AHA Committee, the session organizer will be informed by February 11 and will then be responsible for submitting the proposal directly to the AHA before the deadline of 11:59 p.m., February 15, 2022, indicating that the session has the sponsorship of the Medieval Academy of America.

For more information, please see FAQ: Organizing MAA/AHA Sessions.

At a ceremony celebrating his eightieth birthday, Herbert Kessler (president of the MAA 2009-10) was distinguished by a singular award: the gold medal of the Fundación Santa María la Real (FSMR) in Aguilar de Campoo (https://www.santamarialareal.org/en/tourism-and-culture), Spain’s most important institution dedicated to the protection, rehabilitation, and dissemination of the medieval artistic and monumental heritage, mainly Romanesque art.

The Medieval Academy office will be closed from December 27 through January 3. We wish you all the best for the holidays and look forward to working with you in the New Year.