The Medieval Academy Blog

We are now accepting applications for this digital humanities workshop co-sponsored by The Medieval Academy of America and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. 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 at Yale University from 10-12 July 2018.

So much of the work currently being undertaken by medievalists is dependent on primary resources that may not be close at hand, and digital imagery alone can only take us so far. We have limited storage space for the enormous images we want to work with, and so we need to work in an online environment. In keeping with digital best-practices, we want to avoid siloing of files in sealed-off digital repositories. We need to make these images, and our work, discoverable, and so we need consistent metadata and annotation tools. We want to work with open data, including our own, data that can be shared, downloaded, manipulated, visualized, and mined. As scholars, we have limited funding and technical support, and so we need tools that are free, open-access, and easily implemented. The combination of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and a shared canvas viewer such as Mirador opens new avenues for researchers and students to discover, access, compare, annotate, and share images of and data pertaining to artifacts and manuscripts. Cloud-based, flexible, open-access, and easily implementable, IIIF and Mirador are a particularly powerful combination.

Participants in this three-day intensive workshop will have the opportunity to learn about the International Image Interoperability Framework and Mirador, and learn 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) work with the instructors to develop annotations and tags in keeping with their research project; 3) save the annotation layers for future use.

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

The Medieval Academy of America is very pleased to announce the establishment of the Belle Da Costa Greene Fund.

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.

Once the endowment goal of $45,000 has been reached, 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 seeks to appoint an Editor for Speculum.  The position is configured as part-time, requiring around 25 hours per week. The Editor is appointed for an expected five-year term, subject to acceptable yearly performance reviews, with the possibility of a second five-year term by mutual agreement. The editor should be an established scholar with academic credentials in some field(s) of medieval studies, broadly defined, with good organizational and decision-making skills. Experience in journal or book editing will be helpful but not necessary. The new editor should plan on taking office in the late Spring of 2019, and at the latest by July 1, 2019. Terms and conditions are to be negotiated, as is the physical location of the Editor.

Applications should be sent to the MAA by July 30, 2018. There will be electronic interviews in Fall 2018 and interviews with finalists in early December, 2018. Cover letters may be addressed to David Wallace, Chair of the Search Committee. In addition to a curriculum vitae, the cover letter should include ideas about future directions for the journal, and discussion of how s/he envisions setting up the position, either in the MAA office, now in Cambridge, MA, or by moving the operation to a university campus. If the latter, s/he will describe possible institutional support. The search committee wants to identify the best pool of candidates, and the MAA is willing to be flexible in finding ways to accommodate the various modes of professional life encountered in the searching process. However, wherever the ultimate location of the Editor, there will need to be access to a major research library and to graduate students who can be hired for assistance. Candidates should also include the names and email addresses of three scholars who can speak to the candidate’s editorial experience and scholarship; these references will only be contacted for long-listed candidates. The MAA President would be happy to respond to immediate questions about the duties involved, but candidates should also consult the fuller description of duties posted on the Academy website. The MAA also encourages nominations for the position, and there is a place to submit these on the website as well; all nominees will be sent a letter encouraging application.

For additional information, contact:
EditorSearch@TheMedievalAcademy.org

Click here for a full job description and to apply.

Click here to submit a nomination.

The four Constable Awards, presented in memory of Olivia Remie Constable, support the research of junior, contingent, or unaffiliated scholars:

Lindsay Cook (Columbia Univ.), “The Geography, Architecture, and Visual Culture of the Trinitarian Order”

Sarah Ifft Decker (Indiana Univ.), “Jewish and Christian Women’s Economic Activities in Medieval Catalonia”

Sarah Bridget Lynch (Angelo State Univ.), “Pupils, Teachers, and Schools in Late-Medieval French Wills”

Paul Bernard Sturtevant (The Public Medievalist), “The Public Medievalist: Bringing Medieval Studies to a Broader Audience”

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

Nicole Genevieve Corrigan (Emory University), “Inventing the Virgen del Sagrario: Castilian Images of the Virgin and Visual Strategies of Devotion” (Hope Emily Allen Dissertation Grant)

Dominique DeLuca (Case Western Reserve University), “Shadows in Fifteenth-Century Secular Manuscripts” (Etienne Gilson Dissertation Grant)

Jacob Westbrook Doss (University of Texas at Austin), “Making Monastic Men: Reforming the Novitiate in the Long Twelfth Century” (John Boswell Dissertation Grant)

Shannon Emily Gilmore (University of California, Santa Barbara), “Miracles at the Margins: The Popular Piety of Miraculous Images in Quattrocento Tuscany” (Grace Frank Dissertation Grant)

Rachel McNellis (Case Western Reserve University), “Imitating Christ in Late-Medieval Picture Music: Notated Scores as Visual Images and Transformative Spaces” (E. K. Rand Dissertation Grant)

Adam C. Matthews (Columbia University), “Law, Liturgy, and Space in Medieval Catalonia, 850-1100” (Helen Maud Cam Dissertation Grant)

Leah Pope Parker (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Body Eschatology: Disability, Death, and the Afterlife in Early Medieval England” (Robert and Janet Lumiansky Dissertation Grant)

Jake Purcell (Columbia University), “Parsing Truth in Merovingian Gaul: Evidence and the Early Medieval Critic” (Charles Tuttle Wood Dissertation Grant)

Kalina Yamboliev (University of California, Santa Barbara), “Narratives of Belonging: Hagiography and Community Identity in Southern Italy and Sicily, c. 950-1150” (Frederic C. Lane Dissertation Grant)

Medieval Academy Publication Subventions:
Applications Due May 1

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 2018.

Click here for more information

The Medieval Academy provides a limited number of 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 May for meetings to be held between 1 September 2018 and 15 February 2019. Click here for more information and to apply.