The Medieval Academy Blog

The 2020 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place at the University of California, Berkeley from 26-28 March 2020. The program, registration, and hotel information are available here. Register by February 21 to take advantage of the early-bird discount, and make your hotel reservations as soon as possible. MAA members: be sure to log into your MAA account before you begin the registration process so that you will receive your member discount.  If you cannot recall your username or password, please email info@themedievalacademy.org.

We invite you to join us for the CARA Meeting on Sunday morning 29 March, at the Hotel Shattuck in Berkeley. CARA (the Committee for Centers and Regional Associations) is the Medieval Academy’s forum for those who are concerned with the administration of institutes, graduate centers, undergraduate programs and committees, and research libraries; with the organization of regional and local groups of medievalists; and with teaching. CARA assists institutions and individual medievalists in meeting the challenges that face medieval studies in the classroom, the library, and other institutional settings locally and nationally. It supports those who work to develop special projects and programs of instruction, local and regional networks of medievalists, and centers of research and institutions in medieval studies. It is concerned with pedagogy at all levels. Institutions and individuals who wish to support and enhance medieval studies are invited to join CARA and participate in its meetings and programs.

You may register for the CARA Meeting when you register online for the MAA Annual Meeting. Please note that pre-registration is required. If you have already registered for the MAA Annual Meeting and wish to add the CARA Meeting to your registration, please contact Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis for assistance.

Click here for more information and to register for the Annual Meeting and the CARA Meeting:
https://www.medievalacademy.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1125497

We look forward to seeing you at Berkeley!

96th Annual Meeting
Medieval Academy of America
Indiana University, Bloomington
15-18 April, 2021

Call for Papers

The 96th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on the campus of the Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. The meeting is jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America and the Medieval Studies Institute of the Indiana University.  The conference program will feature a diverse range of sessions highlighting innovative scholarship across the many disciplines contributing to medieval studies.

The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies. Any member of the Medieval Academy may submit a paper proposal; others may submit proposals as well but must become members in order to present papers at the meeting. Special consideration will be given to individuals whose field would not normally involve membership in the Medieval Academy.

The program committee encourages medievalists of all professional standing to submit abstracts. We are particularly interested in receiving submissions from those working outside of traditional academic positions, including independent scholars , emeritus or adjunct faculty, university administrators, those working in academic-adjacent institutions (libraries, archives, museums, scholarly societies, or cultural research centers), editors and publishers, and other fellow medievalists.

Click here for the Call for Papers and submission instructions: https://maa2021.indiana.edu/

Dear colleague,

The new year has begun, and it is time to renew your membership in the Medieval Academy of America for 2020. You must be a member in good standing to apply for grants and fellowships given out by the Academy, to speak at the Medieval Academy Annual Meeting, or to participate in its governance. 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

Other memberships perquisites are listed here.

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. Your gift helps subsidize lower membership rates for student, contingent, and unaffiliated medievalists and also supports 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).

With your help, the Academy increased its support of members in 2019, especially student, independent, and contingent scholars, through the numerous awards and fellowships offered annually. We have recently implemented programming in support of medievalists of color and of medievalists working in various professional contexts, and we are working to improve the representation of the Middle Ages in K-12 classrooms. As we work towards a more expansive Middle Ages, we are also working to build a more inclusive Medieval Studies. We sincerely hope that you will renew your valued membership in the Academy as we continue this work in 2020.

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 (info@themedievalacademy.org) for assistance.

Thank you for your support. We look forward to working with you in 2020 and hope to see you at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy at UC Berkeley (26-28 March).

Ruth Mazo Karras, President
Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director

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

Belle Da Costa Greene Award (deadline 15 February)
Applications are now being accepted for the 2nd annual Belle Da Costa Greene Award supporting research by medievalists of color.

The Belle Da Costa Greene Award of $2,000 will be granted annually to a member of the Medieval Academy of America 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.

Olivia Remie Constable Award (deadline 15 February):
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.

MAA Dissertation Grants (deadline 15 February):
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.

Schallek Awards (deadline 15 February):
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.

MAA/GSC Grant for Innovation in Community-Building and Professionalization (deadline 15 February):
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.

MAA/CARA Summer Scholarships (deadline 15 March):
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 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 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. The deadline for proposals is 1 May 2020. Click here for more information.

The Medieval Academy of America congratulates the winners of the 2020 Medieval Academy Publication Prizes:

Haskins Medal: Richard F. Green. Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)

Karen Gould Prize in Art History: Benjamin Anderson. Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017)

Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Prize: vHMML  (Columba Stewart, OSB, and Daniel Gullo, Principal Investigators).

John Nicholas Brown Prize: Steven A. Schoenig. Bonds of Wool: The Pallium and Papal Power in the Middle Ages (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016).

Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize: Randall Todd Pippenger. “Lives on hold: the Dampierre family, captivity and the crusades in thirteenth-century Champagne,” Journal of Medieval History 44 (2018), 507-528.

Please join us for the publication prize ceremony on Saturday, 28 March, at 10:45 AM in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union’s West Pauley Ballroom, University of California at Berkeley, in conjunction with the  Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting.

We are very pleased to announce the 2020 CARA Awards:

Robert L. Kindrick-CARA Awards for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies: Eugene Lyman (Treasurer, Medieval Academy of America) and Deborah Deliyannis (Indiana University and The Medieval Review)
CARA Awards for Excellence in Teaching: Sean Field (Univ. of Vermont) and Frank Klaassen (Univ. of Saskatchewan)

These prizes will be awarded during the CARA-MAP Plenary Session at the upcoming Medieval Academy Annual Meeting at the University of California, Berkeley on Friday, 27 March at 10:45 AM.

The annual Inclusivity and Diversity Travel Grant is awarded to a participant in the Medieval Academy’s Annual Meeting presenting on the study of diversity and inclusivity in the Middle Ages, broadly conceived. In 2020, an anonymous donation has made it possible to present two Travel Grants instead of one.

We are very pleased to announce that the 2020 Inclusivity and Diversity Travel Grants have been awarded to Tirumular Narayanan (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) for his paper “‘As Black as Ink’: Text-Image Mismatches in Les Grandes Chroniques de France (Royal MS 16 G VI) and to Tarrell Campbell (St. Louis Univ.) for his round-table presentation on “Celebrating Belle da Costa Greene: An Examination of Medievalists of Color within the Field”. The Travel Grants were adjudicated by the Academy’s Inclusivity and Diversity Prize Committee and will be presented during the MAA Annual Meeting’s Business Meeting in Berkeley on Friday, 27 March, at 12:45 PM.