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).

4) With the Material Collective, the MAA is sponsoring a workshop titled “Race and the Medieval Academy of America,” led by Jax Gardner, Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, Kalamazoo College. The workshop will take place on Saturday, at 3 PM (Session 436). Attendance will be limited to 20 participants.

All times are EDT. Click here for more information.

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MAA News – MAA/CARA Summer Scholarships (deadline 1 April)

The MAA/CARA Summer Scholarships support graduate students and especially promising undergraduate students participating in summer courses in medieval languages or manuscript studies. Applicants must be members of the Medieval Academy in good standing with at least one year of graduate school remaining and must demonstrate both the importance of the summer course to their program of study and their home institution’s inability to offer analogous coursework. Click here for more information.

Applicants for this 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.

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MAA News – Book Subventions

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

NEW: The Medieval Academy Inclusivity and Diversity Book Subvention Program provides subventions of up to $5,000 to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of books concerning the study of inclusivity and diversity in the Middle Ages (broadly conceived) by Medieval Academy members. 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 2021.

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MAA News – Good News From Our Members

Alexandre Roberts, University of Southern California, has been awarded an NEH Fellowship to support his project, “Matter Redeemed: Physics and Alchemy in Byzantium and the Islamic World” (research and writing leading to a book on physics and alchemy in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East).

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

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Jobs for Medievalists

BSA Seeks a New Editor for PBSA

March 2, 2021

The Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) seeks a new Editor or co-Editors of the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (PBSA). The Editor is responsible for the editorial direction of the journal, which serves to fulfill the mission of the BSA to foster the study of the material text.

The Editor is appointed for an expected three-year term, with the option to renew. The expectation is that this position is part time, about 10 hours weekly. Terms and conditions are to be negotiated, as is the physical location of the Editor or team. A full job description is available here.

Click here for more information.

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Webinar: A New Past for a Pandemic Future: Evolutionary and Cultural Histories of Infectious Diseases.

Monica H. Green will be delivering the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Centre for History in Public Health Annual Lecture on the theme of “A New Past for a Pandemic Future: Evolutionary and Cultural Histories of Infectious Diseases.” The lecture will take place virtually, via Zoom, at 17.30 (5:30pm) GMT, on Tuesday, 16 March 2021. Further details can be found at https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/events/new-past-pandemic-future-evolutionary-and-cultural-histories-infectious-diseases. For any accessibility requirements, please get in touch with the event contact.

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Jobs for Medievalists

The Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School has an exciting opportunity for a Rare Book Librarian. This position oversees and promotes the use of rare books and understanding of legal history through collection development and management, preservation activities, exhibits, publications, instruction, and participation in Law Library reference and public service activities.

Yale is a fantastic place to work. The work is challenging, fun, and extremely rewarding. We have an amazing group of brilliant, hard-working, diverse, and collegial colleagues who hail from all over the country and the world, in fact. Yale benefits are superb, and we support and encourage new ideas, innovative activities, and significant professional development.

Inquiries should be directed to Dawn Smith, Chair of the Search Committee, at dawn.smith@yale.edu.

Application instructions and a detailed explanation of the position can be found here:
http://bit.ly/YaleCareers-64066BR

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“On Being Conquered in Byzantium” Virtual Symposium

“On Being Conquered in Byzantium” Virtual Symposium
Date: April 16-17, 2021 at 9am EST

The famous adage that history is written by the victors may have become a truism, but the voices of conquered people have never been fully silenced—rather, we may not have been interested in hearing them. All too often, historiography (by no means limited to Byzantine studies) has focused on great-man histories, impersonal studies of societies, or the “longue durée,” all modes that diminish the importance of subjective individual experiences of people who were not great or who were not men.

This symposium therefore aims to refocus the collective scholarly gaze of Byzantinists away from the victors in war and toward the vanquished; away from heroes and rulers and toward victims and casualties; away from the political, economic, historical, and social causes of war and toward the personal and subjective experience of it; away from the insistence of dominant voices and toward the recuperation of marginalized ones.

Bringing together twelve specialists in literature, history, art history, and contemporary cultural theory, this symposium seeks to better understand both how Byzantines themselves understood being conquered and, as importantly, what being conquered in Byzantium can mean for us now.

Free and open to the public. Register here.

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Dumbarton Oaks Virtual Museum Study Day

Dumbarton Oaks Virtual Museum Study Day
Deadline: March 28, 2021

How did objects convey information about individuals and society in Late Antiquity and Byzantium? Much like today, people of these periods carefully constructed their public personas through textiles, jewelry, seals, and other artifacts. This workshop will consider how modern-day notions of identity apply to premodern concepts of individuals’ relationships to their broader social, religious, gender, ethnic, and official communities. In addition, we will discuss the pragmatic challenges of displaying objects associated with individuals in museum contexts.

This year’s Dumbarton Oaks Museum Study Day will go virtual. We can accommodate up to 12 graduate students in art history, archaeology, history, classics, religious studies, and other fields who might benefit from close engagement with our collections and from training in material culture approaches.

To apply, please submit a CV and cover letter with a brief summary of the candidate’s research interests, plans for future research, and an explanation of why attendance is important to the candidate’s intellectual and professional development. All materials should be submitted to byzantine@doaks.org.

 

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GSC Mentorship Program for the 2021 Annual Meeting

DEADLINE TO REGISTER AS A MENTOR OR MENTEE:
March 18, 2021

*Please note that since the 96th Annual Meeting will be conducted virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we will be running the mentorship program digitally. Because of this, anybody can participate, regardless of their 2021 Annual Meeting attendance plans*

The Graduate Student Committee (GSC) of the Medieval Academy of America invites those attending the 96th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America and the Medieval Studies Institute of the Indiana University (15-18 April 2021) and any other interested medievalists to participate in the GSC Virtual Mentoring Program. The GSC Mentoring Program facilitates networking between graduate students or early career scholars and established scholars by pairing student and scholar according to discipline.

Mentorship exchanges are intended to help students establish professional contacts with scholars who can offer them career advice. The primary objective of this exchange is that the relationship be active during the conference, although mentors and mentees sometimes decide to continue communication after a conference has ended.

We have recorded an increased interest in the GSC Mentorship Program since it has been held virtually due to COVID-19 restrictions. We will attempt to match all those who register as a mentee with mentors; however, if need be, preference will be granted to those in order of form submission and any surplus will be given priority for the next GSC Mentoring Program (Virtual Kalamazoo 10-15 May 2021).

To volunteer as a mentor (faculty, librarians, curators, independent scholars) or to sign up as a mentee, please submit the online form, linked here, by 18 March 2021.

On behalf of the committee, thank you and our best,

Julia King & Lauren Van Nest
2020-2021 Mentoring Program Coordinators

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