The Medieval Academy Blog

As the semester winds down and restrictions begin to be lifted in different locales, we hope you are all well and that you are staying safe. Although we cannot greet each other at Kalamazoo or Leeds, we hope you will join us for two upcoming webinars:

In and Beyond the Digital: Career Pathways for Humanists (13 May 2020, 12-1 PM EDT)

The Mother of All Pandemics: The State of Black Death Research in the Era of Covid-19  (15 May 2020, 1 – 3 PM EDT)

Both webinars are open to the public and do not require registration. Click the links above for more information and instructions for attending the webinars.

Thanks to an extraordinary anonymous donation, 2020 membership dues will be waived for all members in the following membership categories: Students, Retired, Independent, Unemployed, Part-Time, and K-12 Educator. Members in these categories who have already renewed for 2020 will have their membership automatically extended to 31 Dec. 2021. We are extremely grateful to this generous MAA member for providing dues relief to members who may be suffering from financial precarity during this difficult period.

Please note that it may take several weeks before all of the impacted memberships are updated.

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/

We are very pleased to announce that the 2020 Dissertation Grants are being awarded as follows:

Amy W. Clark (UC Berkeley), “Familiar Distances: Beating the Bounds of Early English Identity” (John Boswell Dissertation Grant)

Robert Edward Cutrer (University of Sydney), “Myrkaurriða Markar: the Transformation of Dragons in Old Norse Literature” (E. K. Rand Dissertation Grant)

Richard Paul Ibarra (UCLA), “Ambiguous Integration: The Importance of Ambiguity for Italian Merchants and Its Restriction in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Seville” (Frederick C. Lane Dissertation Grant)

Dana L. Key (University College London), “From Medieval Morality Play to Jacobean City Comedy: The Afterlife of the Seven Deadly Sins” (Robert and Janet Lumiansky Dissertation Grant)

Clint E. Morrison (Ohio State University), “Dancing Descriptions: Choreographing Middle English Romance” (Hope Emily Allen Dissertation Grant)

Emily Parrent (McGill University and Université d’Avignon), “Creators and Creation: Negotiating Nature in Late Medieval Courts” (Grace Frank Dissertation Grant)

Eduardo Ramos (Penn State), “Saracen Vikings: Narratives of Invasion in Medieval England” (Charles Tuttle Wood Dissertation Grant)

Tyler Davis Sampson (The Catholic University of America), “The ordines romani and Liturgical Formation in the Early Middle Ages: Education, Practice, and Theology” (Etienne Gilson Dissertation Grant)

Meghan Woolley (Duke University), “The Heart of the Court: The Role of Emotions in Shaping English Law, 1154-1272” (Helen Maud Cam Dissertation Grant)

The nine endowed and named Medieval Academy Dissertation Grants support advanced graduate students in medieval studies.

The 2020 Schallek Awards, granted in collaboration with the Richard III Society-American Branch to support dissertation research in any relevant discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain, have been awarded to:

Ariana Ellis (University of Toronto), “Curtain Call: The Performative Sensory-Scape of Public Executionin England and Italy between 1400-1600”

Brandon Fathy (University of Leicester), “Performing Ports: a Comparative Analysis of Early Medieval Ipswich and London”

Tobias Hrynick (Fordham University), “‘According to the Law of the Marsh’: Medieval Wetland Drainage, Environmental Crisis, and the Invention of the Customs of Romney Marsh”

Jordan Michelle Schoonover (The Ohio State University), “‘The Man is the Head, But the Woman is the Neck, and She Can Turn the Head Any Way She Wants’: Hospitality, Gender, and Power for Elite Women in Late Medieval England”

Caitlin Branum Thrash (University of Tennessee, Knoxville), “Books of Feminine Devotion: Feminine Influences on Meditative Lives of Christ and their Readers in Late-Medieval England”

MAA/CARA 2020 Summer Scholarships are being awarded to the following students:

Marcel Camprubí (Princeton University), Qasid Institute

Meredith Day Cutrer (University College Dublin), Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

Spencer T. B. Hunt (University of Notre Dame), Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial

Maybelle Leung (York University), Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto

Eileen Marie Wehrle Morgan (University of Notre Dame), Qasid Arabic Institute

Ahmed Seif (Harvard University), Groningen University

Andrew Robert Smith (Saint Louis University), Royal Library of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial

Nicole Songstad (University of Missouri-Columbia), University of New Mexico, Institute for Medieval Studies, Paleography Program

Mary Frances Wheaton (University College Dublin), School of Advanced Study – University of London

The 2020 Graduate Student Committee Grant is being awarded to the 2021 Vagantes Medieval Graduate Student Conference at UW-Madison.

At this moment in particular, it gives us all great joy to announce some good news. Two of our members have been awarded Guggenheim Fellowships:

Dyan Elliott (Northwestern University), The Quick and the Dead: the Medieval Church and the Exhumation of Christians

Elina Gertsman (Case Western Reserve University), Withdrawal and Presence: Visualizing Medieval Abstraction