The Medieval Academy Blog

The 99th Annual Meeting of the
Medieval Academy of America
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
March 14–16, 2024

The 99th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place in South Bend, Indiana, on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. The meeting is hosted by Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, St. Mary’s College, Holy Cross College, and Indiana University, South Bend. The conference will be entirely in person, though the plenary lectures and some other events will also be live-streamed.

The themes for this year’s meeting are “Mapping the Middle Ages,” “Bodies in Motion,” and “Communities of Knowledge.” Plenary addresses will be delivered by Robin Fleming (Boston College), Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford), and Jack Tannous (Princeton).

Sixty concurrent sessions will represent a range of threads, including “Digitally Mapping the Middle Ages,” “Sacred Interiors,” “Islamic Epistemology,” “Mapping Real and Imaginary Travel,” “Mobile Bodies,” and “Border Crossings,” and cover topics addressing material culture, literary studies, cosmology, architecture, liturgy, and pandemics, to name a few. Roundtables and workshops will highlight union organizing in higher education, writing for a public audience, and publishing on the Middle Ages.

Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute has one of the preeminent library collections for medieval studies in North America. You are welcome to visit the Medieval Institute during your stay on campus. You can find it on the 7th floor of the University’s Theodore M. Hesburgh Library.

Beyond the conference and its sessions, other attractions are available to you before and during the meeting. On Wednesday, March 13, workshops on sacred chant, digital medieval studies, and fragmentology will be offered. Notre Dame Library’s Special Collections will showcase an exhibit entitled “Mapping the Middle Ages: Marking Time, Space, and Knowledge,” while the campus Digital Visualization Theater will host a 360-degree visual and aural presentation on the cosmology of Hildegard of Bingen. Visit the newly-opened Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and while there enjoy a special exhibit of early woodcuts and engravings, including Albrecht Dürer’s famous Apocalypse series. The Morris Inn will host an Irish Céilí dance on Saturday evening.

Registration will open in January. Click here for more information

As a collaborative effort between the University of Notre Dame, Digital Medievalist, and the Medieval Academy of America, a one-day, pre-conference workshop in digital scholarly methods will be held before the annual MAA meeting in March 2024. The event is tailored especially to medievalists, their sources, and their scholarly concerns and will feature established approaches in digital medieval studies.

There are two ways to participate in DMSI 2024.

First, five separate day-long workshops will be offered accompanied by two sessions of lightning talks, followed by a social hour.

Second, participants can give a short presentation about any project in digital medieval studies they have been involved in; the topic of a short presentation does not have to be the same as the workshop in which the participant enrolls. Participants will be able to present a lightning talk only if they are accepted to attend the full-day workshop. Click here for more information and to apply.

If you have recently seen a major research project to completion, please let us know! The 2024 Medieval Academy meeting at the University of Notre Dame (March 14-17, 2024) will feature two sessions celebrating “New Scholarship.” The sessions will take place during the regularly scheduled MAA program and will provide an opportunity for us to learn about each other’s recent publications or other projects and to celebrate these research milestones together. If you would like to participate in this new session, in which individual members will briefly present (ca. 5-10 mins) a major publication or publicly available project, please reach out to Fiona Griffiths (fgriffit@stanford.edu) by December 15, 2023 with an expression of interest and brief description of the work. All members with recently completed major projects are warmly invited to participate. Notifications will be sent out by January 15, 2024.

We are very pleased to announce that the first annual Fellows Research Awards have been granted to Bermet Nishanova (University of California, Irvine) to support her research in Uzbekistan on Islamic Textiles in Central Asia, and Sara Victoria Torres, a freelance editor, to support her project “Demanding Peace During the Hundred Years War.” Congratulations!

The Fellows Research Awards of $5,000 each are made possible by the generosity of the Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America, who both fund and administer these annual Awards. The MAA is exceedingly grateful to the Fellows for their support of these early-career scholars.

Join the GSC!

The Medieval Academy of America is currently accepting self-nominations for vacancies opening up on the Graduate Student Committee (GSC) for the 2024-2026 term. The GSC comprises six members appointed for a two-year term on a rotating basis. There are three openings to be filled. Self-nominations are open to all graduate students, worldwide, who are members of the MAA and have at least two years remaining in their program of study.

The GSC represents and promotes the participation of graduate student medievalists within the MAA and the broader academic community. In addition to fostering international and interdisciplinary exchange, the GSC is dedicated to providing guidance on research, teaching, publishing, professionalization, funding, and employment, as well as offering a forum for the expression of the concerns and interests of our colleagues. Our responsibilities, thus, include organizing pre-professionalizing panels and social events annually at ICMS Kalamazoo, the MAA Annual Meeting, and IMC Leeds. We also run a successful and popular Mentorship Program that pairs graduate students with faculty to discuss any aspect of our profession such as teaching, publishing, finding a successful work/life balance, maneuvering the job market, and more. In addition, we seek to bring together graduate students through virtual communities such as the growing Graduate Student Group on the MAA website, Facebook, Twitter, the med-grad listserv, and a regular newsletter.

GSC members are asked to attend the Committee’s annual business meeting at Kalamazoo (either in person or virtually) during their term and to communicate regularly with the group via email and virtually. Ideal applicants are expected to work well both independently and as part of a team in a collaborative environment. Previous experience with organizing conference panels and social events, exposure and/or interest in podcasting, as well as facility with social and digital media are not required, but may be a benefit.

Interested applicants should submit the following by January 15, 2024:

– The Self-Nomination Form;

– A brief CV (2 pages maximum) uploaded as part of the Nomination Form;

– A recommendation letter from your faculty advisor, sent to the Executive Director of the Medieval Academy by mail or (preferably) as a PDF attachment (on letterhead with signature), to LFD@TheMedievalAcademy.org.

New members will be selected by the MAA Council (in consultation with the current GSC) at the 2024 Annual Meeting in Notre Dame, IN. If you have any questions, please contact us at gsc@themedievalacademy.org and GSC Chair Will Beattie.