The Medieval Academy Blog

The Medieval Academy of America had a larger presence than ever at the International Medieval Congress at Leeds this year, with a contingent that included President David Wallace, First Vice-President Ruth Mazo Karras, several Councilors, members of the administrative and Speculum staff, and several dozen MAA members. Our plenarist, Anne D. Hedeman (Univ. of Kansas), delivered a brilliant and well-attended lecture on Wednesday night that was followed by a convivial reception. Join us next year, when our plenarist will be Aden Kumler (Univ. of Chicago).

GSC @Leeds:

The Graduate Student Committee (GSC) held a roundtable at IMC Leeds 2018 titled “The Academic Work-Life Imbalance: Tips and Techniques for Managing Graduate School and Your Personal Life.” Chaired by Dr. Lucy Barnhouse (College of Wooster), the roundtable offered insights from Dr. Anna Peterson (Independent Scholar, Valladolid), Dr. Abigail G. Robertson (University of New Mexico), and Dr. Faith Wallis (McGill University). Many different facets of the work-life balance were addressed: funding, job-searching, managing a positive relationship with your advisor, succeeding in academia with mental illness and learning disabilities, the changing nature of the academy and what that means to the futures of graduate students. The discussion was vibrant and interesting with a particular focus on the pros and cons of social media use in graduate school – both as a professional marketing tool and a means to disseminate and engage with current research. Ultimately, the roundtable presented a message of hope for the future: Though there are struggles faced by graduate students in the current climate of academia, there are a multitude of avenues to pursue and many resources available to make the experience a more beneficial and positive one. These are issues that the GSC hopes to follow up on in future roundtables during the 2018-19 academic year! (GSC dispatch submitted by GSC Member Courtney Krolikoski)

The inaugural Medieval Academy of America Digital Humanities Workshop, co-sponsored by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, took place in New Haven from July 10-12. “Mirador for Medievalists: IIIF, Shared Canvas, and Digital Images” was led by Benjamin Albritton (Stanford University) and MAA Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis. The workshop focused on the advantages of working with IIIF-compliant online images in a Mirador shared-canvas workspace. Participants learned how to use new open-access tools to make images interoperable, create their own shared-canvas workspaces, load their images into the workspace, and engage with those images by using digitally-sustainable methodologies to facilitate image comparison, annotation, tagging, and manipulation. The fifteen medievalist participants came from as far away as New Zealand, Portugal, and Ireland, and ranged from undergraduate and graduate students to librarians, unaffiliated scholars, junior and senior faculty. All non-local participants received travel bursaries generously provided by the Beinecke Library. For more details about the workshop, search #MirMed2018 on Twitter or click here.

The Medieval Academy of America invites submissions for the following prizes to be awarded at the 2019 MAA Annual Meeting (University of Pennsylvania, 7-9 March). Submission instructions vary, but all dossiers must complete by 15 October 2018.

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.

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 2018)

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 2018 for meetings to be held between 16 February and 31 August 2019)

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 2019. (Deadline 15 October 2018)

Kindrick-CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies
The Robert L. Kindrick-CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies recognizes Medieval Academy members who have provided leadership in developing, organizing, promoting, and sponsoring medieval studies through the extensive administrative work that is so crucial to the health of medieval studies but that often goes unrecognized by the profession at large.

CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching
The CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies recognizes Medieval Academy members who are outstanding teachers and who have contributed to the profession by inspiring students at the undergraduate or graduate levels or by creating innovative and influential textbooks or other materials for teaching medieval subjects.

Nominations and supporting materials must be received by Nov. 15.

The Medieval Academy of America is very pleased to announce the establishment of the Belle Da Costa Greene Fund, which has raised more than $10,000 since its inception. We need your help to reach our goal of $45,000!

Belle Da Costa Greene (1883-1950) was a prominent art historian and the first manuscript librarian of the Pierpont Morgan collection. She was also the first known person of color and second woman to be elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1939). According to the Morgan Library & Museum website, “Greene was barely twenty when Morgan hired her, yet her intelligence, passion, and self-confidence eclipsed her relative inexperience, [and] she managed to help build one of America’s greatest private libraries.” She was, just as importantly, a black woman who had to pass as white in order to gain entrance and acceptance into the racially fraught professional landscape of early twentieth-century New York. Her legacy highlights the professional difficulties faced by medievalists of color, the personal sacrifices they make in order to belong to the field, and their extraordinary contributions to Medieval Studies.

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. This is one of several incipient actions designed to make the Medieval Academy of America a more welcoming place for all medievalists.

Click here to donate to the Belle Da Costa Greene Fund.

The Medieval Academy of America is inaugurating a new travel program this fall, similar to those that universities often run for their communities of lifelong learners. Participants in this October 23-28 trip will join Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis in England to visit two once-in-a-lifetime exhibitions: “Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms” at the British Library and “Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth” at Oxford’s Bodleian Library, with curatorial introductions and expert guides. These exhibitions overlap for only one week, making this trip a unique opportunity for visitors to see them together.

For more information, please see the brochure here.

Proceeds benefit Medieval Academy of America programs in support of student, adjunct, unaffiliated, and junior scholars.

Please feel free to forward this link to anyone you know who might be interested, whether or not they are academics. Travelers do not need to be Medieval Academy members to participate. The trip is limited to twenty travelers, so interested participants should register as soon as possible and no later than August 23!