The Medieval Academy Blog

On December 3, most members of the Medieval Academy received an email with the subject line “Please share your opinion about the Medieval Academy of America.” I hope you didn’t delete it, because we very much want to hear from you! As we approach our Centennial in 2025, the Medieval Academy is evaluating the feasibility and timing of a Centennial Campaign that will help to position the Medieval Academy to transform the world of medieval studies for the better.

We hope you will take 10- 15 minutes to complete the online survey. Your feedback regarding our vision and plans is critical to the success of our efforts. Survey results will be collected and analyzed by Campbell & Company, the consulting firm we have hired to conduct this feasibility study. The survey, which will close at midnight on December 18, is only accessible through the email message you received.

Information about our campaign goals and priorities is presented in the  Campaign Preview.

Thank you for your input!

– Lisa

Lisa Fagin Davis
Executive Director

>p.s. if you didn’t receive the message on Dec. 3rd, you’ll find it in your inbox next week.

The meeting 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. Please make sure you are logged into your MAA account so that you receive your member discount.  If you cannot recall your username or password, please email info@themedievalacademy.org.

https://www.medievalacademy.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1125497 

We look forward to seeing you at Berkeley!

Belle Da Costa Greene Award (deadline 15 February)
Applications are now being accepted for the inaugural 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.

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.

To the Members of the Medieval Academy,

Voting in the Medieval Academy governance election is one of the most important means that members have to impact both the Academy and the future of medieval studies in North America. I am very pleased to announce the names of the Medieval Academy members who have generously agreed to stand for election to office in 2020:

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

Councillors (four seats available, three-year term):

Lisa Bitel (Religion, University of Southern California)
Travis Bruce (History (Mediterranean Studies), McGill University)
William Caferro (History, Vanderbilt Univ.)
Seeta Chaganti (English, Univ. of California, Davis)
Elina Gertsman (Art History, Case Western Reserve Univ.)
Geraldine Heng (English & Comparative Literature, Univ. of Texas at Austin)
Laura Morreale (English and French, Independent Scholar)
Luisa Nardini (Musicology, Univ. of Texas at Austin)
Alison Perchuk (Art History, California State Univ. Channel Islands)
Sebastian Sobecki (English, University of Groningen)

Nominating Committee (two seats available, three-year term):

Alison Beach (History, The Ohio State University)
Matthew Desing (Spanish, Univ. of Texas, El Paso)
Andrew Rabin (English, Univ. of Louisville)
Cord Whitaker (English, Wellesley College)

Click here for more information about these candidates.

The election will be conducted in accordance with our By-Laws. The Nominating Committee is charged with nominating eight candidates for the four positions on the Council, balancing racial, gender, geographic, professional, and specialization diversity while also considering the same facets of the incumbents. A ninth candidate has been nominated by petition (see below). There are four candidates for two openings on the Nominating Committee. As is our practice, the slate of three Presidential Officers is presented unopposed (this will change next year). Additional information about the governance of the Academy can be found on our FAQ page.

In addition to biographical information, each candidate has submitted a statement detailing their vision for the Academy and their reasons for wanting to participate in its governance. It is our hope that these statements will assist members in making informed choices about the governance of the Medieval Academy. These statements are online here: https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/2020Ballot

As you consider these candidates, you may wish to take into account the demographics and specializations of the incumbents:

Council:
2018-2021:
Ray Clemens (Manuscript Studies, Beinecke Library, Yale Univ.)
Valerie Garver (History, Northern Illinois Univ.-DeKalb)
Lucy Pick (Religion, Univ. of Chicago)
Kathryn Smith (Art History, New York Univ.)

2019-2022:
Lynda Coon (History, Univ. of Arkansas)
Hussein Fancy (History, Univ. of Michigan)
Fiona Griffiths (History, Stanford Univ.)
Anne Latowsky (French/Latin, Univ. of South Florida)

Nominating Committee (2019-2020):
Sean Field (History, Univ. of Vermont) (Chair)
Jessica Goldberg (History, Univ. of California, Los Angeles)
Sif Rikhardsdottir (Comparative Literature, Univ. of Iceland)

My thanks to the Nominating Committee for their careful and thoughtful work in establishing the slate of Council candidates: Nicholas Watson (Chair), Robin Fleming, Jessica Goldberg, Sif Ríkharðsdóttir, and Catherine Saucier. My thanks as well to President Ruth Mazo Karras for proposing the slate of Nominating Committee candidates.

We are introducing a more secure online voting platform this year to ensure that voting is restricted to members of the Medieval Academy of America. When you follow the ballot link below, you will be asked to sign into your MAA account on our website in order to cast your vote. If you have forgotten your username or password, please contact us. You may only cast one ballot, and your ballot will be invalid if you vote for more than the allowable number of candidates indicated. The deadline for receipt of your vote is 2 January 2020. Finally, if you would prefer a paper ballot and have not requested one in the past, please let me know.

Click here to cast your vote in the 2020 MAA Governance Election:

https://www.medievalacademy.org/surveys/default.asp?id=2020_Election

Thank you for participating in the election.

– Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director

Dear colleague,

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!

Seeta Chaganti (University of California, Davis) has been awarded the MLA’S  Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies for her book Strange Footing: Poetic Form and Dance in the Late Middle Ages, published by the University of Chicago Press. The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding scholarly work that is written by a member of the association and that involves at least two literatures. Click here  for the full citation.

Alice Isabella Sullivan has been awarded an Emerging Scholar Prize from The Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) for her article “The Athonite Patronage of Stephen III of Moldavia, 1457-1504” Speculum 94.1 (2019): 1-46. The Prize recognizes and encourages original and innovative scholarship in the field of East European, Eurasian, and Russian art and architecture. Click here to read the article in Speculum.

MAA Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis has been elected to the Comité international de paléographie latine. CIPL members are scholars who have “contributed with distinction to the study of Latin palaeography through research, teaching or conservation.”

The Medieval Academy office will be closed from Monday, December 23 – Thursday, January 2. We wish you a restful and joyous holiday season and look forward to working with you in 2020.