The Medieval Academy Blog

To the members of the Medieval Academy of America:
I am very pleased to announce the results of the 2020 governance election, which closed at 11:59 PM on Jan. 2:

President: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (French & Italian, Univ. of Pittsburgh (Emerita))
1st VP: Thomas Dale (Art History, Univ. of Wisconsin)
2nd VP: Maureen Miller (History, Univ. of California at Berkeley)

Council:

Lisa Bitel (Religion, University of Southern California)
Seeta Chaganti (English, Univ. of California, Davis)
Geraldine Heng (English & Comparative Literature, Middle Eastern Studies & Women’s Studies, Univ. of Texas at Austin)
Laura Morreale (French and Italian, Independent Scholar)

Nominating Committee:

Alison Beach (History, The Ohio State University)
Cord Whitaker (English, Wellesley College)

627 ballots were cast electronically and 9 were submitted by mail. This represents voter turnout of about 19%.

My thanks to all who voted and to all who stood for election, and my congratulations to all who were elected.

Lisa Fagin Davis
Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America

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.

The online Program has been updated to include the CARA Meeting on Sunday morning 29 March. 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.

The 2020 CARA Meeting takes up the charge opened to the MAA during the 2019-2020 year to make room for medievalists of all professional standing. Drawing on CARA’s goal of generating greater connectivity between independent, unaffiliated, and practicing medievalists working off the tenure-track to deepen the networks that facilitate the kinds of questions and pursuits ALL medievalists engage, this year’s meeting will address ways of expanding the MedievALL Conversation. To this end, not only will we hear from several panelists who are medievalists by training and intent, but who also pursue professional lives beyond the typical tenure-track. We will also hear from members of the MAA’s Ad Hoc committee on Professional Diversity convened to address all medievalists, and we will discuss ways to implement significant strategic changes to expand the programing of Medieval Centers and Programs to find pathways toward greater inclusivity, inter-connection, and community. We will hear from panelists who can speak to professional lives outside the traditional academic track and will address the mutual benefits of learning what medievalists in all jobs and professional setting do. We will learn how their skills have helped them and what their professional pathways have encouraged them to do that a traditional trajectory would not have. In other words, this CARA conference especially seeks to delve to the very core of CARA’s mission and what it can do to expand the reach and support of medievalists at large. Ours will be, it is hoped, the beginning of a longer, more fruitful, and expansive conversation and commitment as we move toward the MAA’s 2025 Centennial year.

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!

The latest issue of Speculum is now available on the University of Chicago Press Journals website.

To access your members-only journal subscription, log in to the MAA website using your username and password associated with your membership (contact us at info@themedievalacademy.org  if you have forgotten either), and choose “Speculum Online” from the “Speculum” menu.  As a reminder, your MAA membership provides exclusive online access to the full run of Speculum in full text, PDF, and e-Book editions – at no additional charge.

Speculum, Volume 95, Number 1 (January 2020)
Articles

Medieval Studies in Troubled Times: The 1930s
David Wallace

Agronomy and Affect in Duke Humfrey’s On Husbondrie
Lisa H. Cooper

The People of God and the Law: Biblical Models in Carolingian Legislation
Gerda Heydemann

Revelatio on the Origins of Mont Saint-Michel (Fifth-Ninth Centuries)
George N. Gandy

“I Need to Be Individually Loved, Lord, Let Me Recognize Your Gift!”: The Gifts of Love in the Soliloquy of Hugh of Saint-Victor (d. 1141)
Ritva Palmén

Book Reviews
This issue of Speculum features more than 70 book reviews, including:

Marcus Bull, Eyewitness and Crusade Narrative: Perception and Narration in Accounts of the Second, Third, and Fourth Crusades
Reviewed by Andrew Buck

Seeta Chaganti, Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages
Reviewed by John C. Hirsh

Kari Ellen Gade, ed., Poetry from Treatises on Poetics; Margaret Clunies Ross, ed., Poetry in “Fornaldarsögur”
Reviewed by Martin Chase

Elina Gertsman and Barbara H. Rosenwein, The Middle Ages in 50 Objects
Reviewed by Karl Whittington

Michael Lapidge, The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translations, and Commentary
Reviewed by Raymond Van Dam

Robert Mills, Derek Jarman’s Medieval Modern
Reviewed by David Clark

Andrew Scheil, Babylon under Western Eyes: A Study of Allusion and Myth
Reviewed by Mary Kate Hurley

MAA members also receive a 30% discount on all books and e-Books published by the University of Chicago Press, and a 20% discount on individual  Chicago Manual of Style Online subscriptions. To access your discount code, log in to your MAA account, and  click here.  Please include this code while checking out from the  University of Chicago Press website.

Sincerely,
The Medieval Academy of America

The Medieval Academy of America invites proposals for panels at the 2021 meeting of the American Historical Association in Seattle, January 7-10.

Each year the Medieval Academy co-sponsors with the AHA several sessions at this meeting that are likely to be of particular interest to MAA members and general interest to a broader audience.

There is a two-stage process:

1) Members of the Medieval Academy submit draft session descriptions to the MAA’s AHA Program Committee by emailing them to the committee chair, Professor Jeffrey Bowman, by January 20, 2020. Descriptions should include the session title, session abstract, paper titles, names and affiliations of the organizer, presenters, and (if relevant) respondent. Individual paper abstracts are requested but not required. Guidelines for sessions and submitting proposals can be found on the AHA website here.

2) If the session proposal is approved by the MAA AHA Committee, the organizer submits the proposal directly to the AHA (using their on-line system) before the deadline of February 15, 2020, indicating that the session has the sponsorship of the Medieval Academy of America.

Please note that only sessions approved by the AHA Program Committee will appear as sponsored by the MAA and AHA on the program and that the MAA does not independently sponsor sessions.