The Medieval Academy Blog

It is nearly time to renew your membership in the Medieval Academy of America. Our renewal season begins on October 1, so you will be hearing from us soon. At its meeting in Philadelphia last March, the Council of the Medieval Academy approved several important changes to our dues structure for Active members (the dues for student, independent, retired, and other members will be unchanged). The following changes will be in force as of October 1:

1) <$60,000 annual income: dues reduced from $100 to $80; 2) $60,001-$90,000 annual income: dues unchanged at $120; 3) $90,001-$130,000 category: dues increased from $145 to $175; 4) The >$130,000 category will be changed to a range of $130,001-$170,000 and the dues for that category will be set at $230;
5) The highest income category will be set at >$170,000, with a dues rate of $275;
6) The designation “Friend” will be added to the “Independent, Contingent, Part-Time, K-12 Educator, Retired” category, for non-academics with an interest in the Middle Ages.

We hope that by reducing dues for our Active members who earn less than $60,000/year, we can make MAA membership more affordable for those who may be in financially precarious situations. To help compensate for this reduction, we are asking members who earn greater than $90,000/year to pay slightly more in dues.

As of October 1, the Dues structure will be a follows:

ACTIVE (the base dues rate):
Salary up to $60,000: $80
Salary $60,001 – $90,000: $120
Salary $90,001 – $130,000: $175
Salary $130,001 – $170,000: $230
Salary greater than $170,000: $275

Independent, Contingent, Part-Time, K-12 Educator, Retired, Friend: $60

Student: $30

For more information about membership, please visit our website: https://medievalacademy.org.

The Medieval Academy of America invites applications for the following grants. Please note that applicants must be members in good standing as of September 15 in order to be eligible for Medieval Academy awards.

Schallek Fellowship
The Schallek Fellowship provides a one-year grant of $30,000 to support Ph.D. dissertation research in any relevant discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain (ca. 1350-1500). (Deadline 15 October 2019)

Baldwin Fellowship
The Birgit Baldwin Fellowship provides a grant of $20,000 to support a graduate student in a North American university who is researching and writing a dissertation for the Ph.D. on any subject in French medieval history that can be realized only by sustained research in the archives and libraries of France. It may be renewed for a second year upon demonstration of satisfactory progress. (Deadline 15 November 2019)

Travel Grants
The Medieval Academy provides travel grants to help Academy members who hold doctorates but are not in full-time faculty positions, or are contingent faculty without access to institutional funding, attend conferences to present their work. (Deadline 1 November 2019 for meetings to be held between 16 February and 31 August 2020)

MAA/CARA Conference Grant
The MAA/CARA Conference Grant for Regional Associations and Programs awards $1,000 to help support a regional or consortial conference taking place in 2020. (Deadline 15 October 2019)

The Medieval Academy of America invites submissions for the following prizes to be awarded at the 2020 MAA Annual Meeting (University of California, Berkeley, 26-28 March). Submission instructions vary, but all dossiers must complete by 15 October 2019.

Haskins Medal
Awarded to a distinguished monograph in the field of medieval studies.

Digital Humanities Prize
Awarded to an outstanding digital research project or resource in the field of medieval studies.

Karen Gould Prize
Awarded to a monograph of outstanding quality in medieval art history.

John Nicholas Brown Prize
Awarded to a first monograph of outstanding quality in the field of medieval studies.

Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize
Awarded to a first article of outstanding quality in the field of medieval studies.

Members of the MAA are hereby invited to submit nominations for the election of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America for 2020.

The title of Fellow was created in 1926 to recognize and honor those scholars among us who over the years have made outstanding contributions to Medieval Studies through their teaching, scholarship, and service. These are normally senior scholars with an outstanding record of accomplishments, and ideally with work that manifests interdisciplinary interests.

Nominations are encouraged in all the varied fields encompassed by Medieval Studies. The nomination itself should be written in ways to make the nominee’s contributions to the field intelligible to a multi-disciplinary body of Fellows. All members of the Medieval Academy are free to submit nominations.

The nominations are overseen by the Fellows Nominating Committee, which is empowered to intervene only if there is some notable inequity in the list of proposed nominees. Existing Fellows will cast their ballots in December and January. The election of 2020 will operate under the by-laws and procedures adopted in 2013 and revised in 2015.

Existing Fellows may also have chosen to become Emeriti or Emeritae Fellows, which has the effect of opening up additional slots the following year for the election of new Fellows. Such Emeriti/Emeritae Fellows retain the position of Fellow in every respect but relinquish their right to vote in the election of new Fellows.

Current bylaws prescribe that there may be a total of up to 125 Fellows who at the time of election are members of the Academy and residents of North America, and in addition up to 75 Corresponding Fellows who at the time of election are residents of countries outside of North America. Following the rules established by the current bylaws, six (6) slots are available for the year 2020, for which there must be at least twelve (12) nominations. For the nomination of Corresponding Fellows no established minimum number of nominations is required.

Instructions for submitting nominations are available here: https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/?page=Election_Procedure

Please refer to the lists of current Fellows before proposing a nomination:

Current Fellows: https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/?page=Fellows_List

Current Corresponding Fellows: https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/page/CorrFellows

Nominations may be submitted by email (as a PDF attachment) to the Executive Director at <LFD@TheMedievalAcademy.org> or by mail to:

Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director
Medieval Academy of America
6 Beacon St., Suite 500
Boston, Mass. 02108

Nominations for the 2020 elections must be received by 15 October 2019. Unsuccessful nominations from previous years may be resubmitted. Please contact the Executive Director for further information.

Finally, please note that nominations are to be kept in strictest confidence, from the nominee as well as from others.

– John Van Engen, President of the Fellows

Former Medieval Academy President David Wallace (Univ. of Pennsylvania) has been awarded the British Academy’s Israel Gollancz Prize in honor of his lifetime contributions to the study of Chaucer and Medieval Europe.

Stuart Manning (Cornell Univ.) has been awarded an NEH Collaborative Research grant for his project, “Medieval Monuments and Wooden Cultural Heritage on Cyprus: Building History with Tree-Rings.” The grant will facilitate field research to establish a chronology of Late Byzantine and Medieval churches and icons in Cyprus based on tree-ring analysis (dendrochronology).

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