The Medieval Academy Blog

The 95th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley on 26-28 March 2020. The meeting is jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America, the Program in Medieval Studies of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Medieval Association of the Pacific. The Call for Papers is online here. Submissions are due on 1 June.

As always, the Medieval Academy of America will have a strong presence at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo (May 9-12).

1) The Friday morning plenary, sponsored by the Medieval Academy, will be delivered by Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford University), “Icons of Sound and the Exultet Liturgy of Southern Italy” (Session 151, Friday, 8:30 AM, Bernhard, East Ballroom). Two related sessions organized by Prof. Pentcheva will take place on Friday at 1:30 PM (Session 236) and 3:30 PM (Session 294). Both sessions will take place in Sangren 1750.

2) On Friday at 3:30 PM, the Graduate Student Committee is sponsoring a roundtable titled “Stepping into the Professions: Tips on Navigating a Variety of Career Paths for Medievalist Graduate Students and Early Career Scholars” (Session 285, Fetzer 2016). The GSC reception will take place immediately afterwards in the same room.

3) On Thursday at 1:30 PM, the Committee for Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) is sponsoring a roundtable on “Teaching a Diverse and Inclusive Middle Ages” (Session 58, Fetzer 1005).

4) The annual CARA Luncheon will take place on Friday at noon (Bernhard, President’s Dining Room). We hope you will attend as a representative of your institution, center, program, or institution. There is no fee to attend, but pre-registration is required. All are welcome! Click here to register.

5) Finally, we invite you to stop by our staffed table in the exhibit hall to introduce yourself, transact any Medieval Academy business you may have, or pick up some chocolate to keep you going during those long afternoon sessions.

See you at the ‘Zoo!

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 94, Issue 2 (April 2019)
Articles
“Scholastic Debates on Beatific Union with God: Henry of Ghent (c. 1217-93) and His Interlocutors”
Richard Cross”A Lesson in Patronage: King Henry III, the Knights Templar, and a Royal Mausoleum at the Temple Church in London”
Zachary Stewart

“Mynne tzeichen und ir don: The Text and Music of Meister Alexander’s Minneleich in the Jena Songbook”
Racha Kirakosian and David William Hughes

“In the Name of Charlemagne, Roland, and Turpin: Reading the Oxford Roland as a Trinitarian Text”
Adrian McClure

“Strange Fruits: Grafting, Foreigners, and the Garden Imaginary in Northern France and Germany, 1250-1350”
Liz Herbert McAvoy, Patricia Skinner, and Theresa Tyers

Luca Cadioli, ed., Lancellotto. Versione italiana inedita del “Lancelot en prose” 
Reviewed by Alison Cornish

Christine de Pizan, Othea’s Letter to Hector
Reviewed by Nancy Freeman Regalado

Élisabeth Lusset, Crime, châtiment et grâce dans les monastères au Moyen Âge (XIIe-XVe siècle) 
Reviewed by Katherine Allen Smith

Hollie L. S. Morgan, Beds and Chambers in Late Medieval England: Readings, Representations and Realities 
Reviewed by Sarah Stanbury

Unn Pedersen, Into the Melting Pot: Non-ferrous Metalworkers in Viking-period Kaupang 
Reviewed by Jane Kershaw

Daniela Wagner, Die Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht: Spätmittelalterliche Bildkonzepte für das Seelenheil 
Reviewed by Concetta Giliberto

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

Interoperability and Medieval Manuscripts: A Digital Humanities Workshop

The Medieval Academy of America is now accepting applications for “Interoperability and Medieval Manuscripts,” a three-day digital humanities workshop co-sponsored by The Medieval Academy and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Co-taught by Benjamin Albritton (Computing Info Systems Analyst, Stanford University Libraries) and Lisa Fagin Davis (Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America), the workshop will take place at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library from 9-11 July 2019.

Participants in this three-day intensive workshop will be introduced to the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) in combination with shared-canvas viewers and annotation servers, learning how this technology can facilitate new methodologies in manuscript and art history research. Working with their own images, participants will 1) upload their images into a IIIF server (if they aren’t already served by a IIIF-compliant platform); 2) present the images in a shared-canvas viewer; 3) work with the instructors to develop annotations and tags in keeping with their research project. Due to physical space limitations, the course is limited to twelve participants. Applications are welcomed from medievalists at all levels and will be judged primarily on the potential that interoperable images hold for the applicant’s research project or professional goals. Participants should already have access to or possession of the images they will be working with, if the images are not already online and IIIF-compliant. The workshop is tuition-free, but participants are responsible for travel, lodging, and incidental expenses. To help offset these costs, all participants traveling and staying overnight for the workshop will receive a $300 stipend courtesy of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Applications must be received by June 1. Click here for more information and to apply.

MAA Book Subventions

The Medieval Academy Book Subvention Program provides grants of up to $2,500 to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of first books by Medieval Academy members. The deadline for proposals is 1 May 2019. Click here for more information.

The 2019 Dissertation Grants have been awarded to:

Hope Emily Allen Dissertation Grant: Timi Sgouros (Binghamton University), “Mobile Nuns: The Transgressing of Cloister Walls in the Later Middle Ages”

John Boswell Dissertation Grant: Emma Snowden (University of Minnesota), “Bridging the Strait: The Shared History of Iberia and North Africa in Medieval Muslim and Christian Chronicles”

Helen Maud Cam Dissertation Grant: Casey Ireland (University Of Virginia), “Remains of the Hunt in Middle English Literature”

Grace Frank Dissertation Grant: Rachel Anne Ruisard (University of Maryland, College Park), “The Lady in the Lover’s Clothes: Music and Gender Performance in Lorraine, 1150-1350”

Etienne Gilson Dissertation Grant: Dustin S. Aaron (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University), “Confronting Wilderness and Self in the Art of the Medieval German Frontier, 1130-1220”

Frederic C. Lane Dissertation Grant: Elizabeth Comuzzi (Univ. of California, Los Angeles), “The Economy and Economic Connections of Puigcerdà, 1260-1360”

Robert and Janet Lumiansky Dissertation Grant: Shireen Hamza (Harvard University), “Making ṭibb: Medical Exchanges in the Indian Ocean World, 1200-1550 CE”

E. K. Rand Dissertation Grant: Christopher Bonura (Univ. of California, Berkeley), “The ‘Apocalypse of Methodius of Patara’: Reimagining Christian History, Empire, and Eschatology in the Wake of Islam”

Charles Tuttle Wood Dissertation Grant: Jon Paul Heyne (The Catholic University of America), “The Franciscans of the Holy Land: Religion and Politics of the Mediterranean in the Age of Queen Sancia”

The 2019 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:

Louisa Foroughi (Fordham University), “What Makes a Yeoman? Status, Religion, and Material Culture in Later Medieval England”

Emmamarie Haasl (University of Michigan), “‘Belonging to London Bridge’: Religion and Commerce in the London Bridge House, c.1209-1592”

Katherine Anne Leach (Harvard University), “Medieval Welsh Healing Charms”

Joanna E. Murdoch (Duke University), “Verse Into Poetry: Middle English Religious ‘Lyric’ and the Poetics of Manuscript Witness”

Chelsea Rae Silva (Univ. of California, Riverside), “Bedwritten: Middle English Medicine and the Ailing Author”

Several Medieval Academy members have recently been awarded Summer Stipends from the National Endowment for the Humanities or have been named Fellows of the American Council of Learned Societies:

NEH Summer Stipends: 

Abigail Firey (University of Kentucky Research Foundation), “Lady Justice’s Schoolrooms: Learning Law in the Holy Roman Empire (Germany and Italy, ca. 800-1000)” [preparation of a three-volume history of law in medieval western Europe]

John Ott (Portland State University), “Scandal, Reform, and the Compilation of Canon Law in Eleventh-Century Reims” [Research and preparation for editions and translations of two major documents on church and civil legal history in medieval France, the Apologia of Archbishop Manasses I of Reims (c. 1069-1080) and the legal collection Sinemuriensi produced at Reims in the tenth and eleventh centuries]

Phillip Lieberman (Vanderbilt University), “The Shifting Fate of World Jewry from Iraq to North Africa in the Early Islamic Period” [a book-length project about the dynamics of Jewish life in the medieval Islamic world]

Isabel Moreira (University of Utah), “A Cultural Biography of Queen Balthild of Neustria, France (c.626-80)” [completion of a biography of Queen Balthild of northern France (c. 626-680), who was born an Anglo-Saxon slave, married King Clovis II, was regent to her sons, and after her death was venerated as a saint at the French convent she founded]

ACLS Fellows: 

Catherine Conybeare (Professor of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies, Bryn Mawr College), “Augustine the African”

Jennifer Jahner (Assistant Professor of Humanities, California Institute of Technology), “The Medieval Experimental Imagination: Scientific and Literary Method in Later Medieval England”

Sara Ritchey (Associate Professor of History, University of Tennessee, Knoxville), “Communities of Care: Women, Healing, and Prayer in the Late Medieval Lowlands”

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