The Medieval Academy Blog

Dear members of the Medieval Academy of America,

When I had the honor of accepting the nomination as Second Vice President in 2018 the word pandemic evoked for me a long-distant past or far-away regions. Now we are all living through one of the worst pandemics in history, and we have to find ways of surviving and coping. The organizers of the 2020 annual meeting at UC Berkeley, Maureen Miller and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and their team, showed what this coping could look like: with amazing speed and efficiency they managed to transform a good part of the program into Zoom meetings. Speakers and session chairs adapted quickly and generously, and although we could not meet and chat in person, the intellectual excitement was palpable as we all participated in little rectangular boxes, our new normal, it seems.

The Medieval Academy is made up of many groups: a permanent staff and a large number of volunteers serving on over twenty committees. We are all working together, trying to provide assistance and encouragement in this time of crisis. An extraordinary anonymous gift has made it possible for us to pay the annual membership fees of all of our members who at present do not have full-time faculty positions, which is almost 50% of our total membership. As we all know, medievalists work in many different professions. As we move forward, we want to know more about all the different pathways medievalists have embarked on, and this is why Laura Morreale and I are starting a project that we hope will contribute to making us aware of the many different ways medievalists work: a series of blogs written by medievalists in a variety of professions. How have their paths developed? Is their medieval expertise useful in their current professions? What advice can they share? Look for these blog posts to begin soon.

Our two recent webinars exemplify two of the directions the Medieval Academy wants to pursue more explicitly in the future: “In and Beyond the Digital: Career Pathways for Humanists” featured a digital specialist from the NEH, Hannah Alpert-Abrams, who presented the many avenues of digital work in the humanities, for both research and job development. There are many professions out there that many of us may not even know about and that would be happy to use the special skills of medievalists. The webinar and the forthcoming blog are part of our initiative to highlight and find new ways to support medievalists who are not working in traditional teaching positions. The second webinar “The Mother of All Pandemics: The State of Black Death Research in the Era of COVID-19,” organized by Monica Green and Winston Black, exemplifies our goal of including areas of the world that have not always been at the forefront of medievalists’ interests: experts on China, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire as well as medieval Europe shared the stage, drawing on recent DNA research, archeological finds, and many different artifacts to compose a nuanced picture of the centuries of the Black Plague in relation to our current pandemic. As did so many sessions at the 2019 meeting at Penn with its global focus, this model of interdisciplinary cooperation showed what can be achieved by bringing together people from many areas of expertise. A big thank you to all the organizers and panelists. As I embark on this year of my presidency, I am hopeful that we can all weather this crisis together through the team work and openness that have characterized my first two months on the job. Take care and stay safe!

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, President

Because we cannot greet each other in person this spring or summer, the Medieval Academy has been busily developing, hosting, and promoting scholarship in a digital environment. Development of the Database of Medieval Digital Resources is ongoing, with a streamlined vetting and cataloguing process that will see resources entered into the database in a much more efficient manner. The 2020 Annual Meeting and the ongoing series of MAA Webinars can be viewed on our website or on our YouTube channel. More content will be coming soon, so watch these spaces!

Dear Colleague,

We hope you are well and are staying safe.

In the present crisis, as a growing number of our medievalist colleagues find themselves facing financial precarity, job insecurity, and difficulty accessing research resources, your Medieval Academy membership matters more than ever.  Please renew by June 30 in order to avoid an interruption in your membership benefits.

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.

The combination of the dramatic recent downturn in the stock-market and an anticipated decrease in dues revenue will directly and significantly impact the MAA’s budget. If you are able to renew your membership for 2020, please do. Your membership dues will directly help us continue to award grants and fellowships in 2020 and beyond; keep dues at a lower level for independent, contingent, unemployed, and retired medievalists; and expand our programming.

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. 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).
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 2020 and hope to see you at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Stay safe –

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, President
Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director

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

We are very pleased to announce that the 2020 MAA Publication Subventions have been awarded to: Athi Andronikou, Italy, Cyprus, and Artistic Exchange  (Cambridge University Press) and Joyce Hendrickson, Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa (Harvard University Press).

Jonathan Fruoco has been awarded an MAA Travel Grant to present a paper titled “Geoffrey Chaucer et la plurivocalité urbaine” at the Moscow conference, “‘Littérature urbaine’: une donnée culturelle médiévale ou un concept de l’histoire littéraire contemporaine?”

Our congratulations to Mary Carruthers (F ’96), who has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

If you have good news to share, please send it to Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis (LFD@themedievalacademy.org)

Although Boston is slowly reopening, the MAA Staff will continue to work from home through at least the end of August. In the meantime, we recommend that you contact us by email instead of by phone. We hope you are all well, and we look forward to greeting you in person when it is safe to do so.