The Medieval Academy Blog

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 medievalist of color 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.

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 passed 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.

Applications must be submitted by 15 February and will be adjudicated by the Academy’s Inclusivity and Diversity Prize Committee. The application will consist of a biographical form, CV, a one-page proposal, and a simple budget. Letters of recommendation (no more than two) are optional. So as not to burden the applicant, it is perfectly appropriate to include material and letters prepared for other grant applications. Applicants must be members in good standing of the Medieval Academy as of 15 January of the year in which they apply. Click here to apply.

To make a donation in support of the Greene Award, please visit the MAA website.

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 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.

“Dante and Virgil in Conversation,” from Oxford: Bodleian Library, MS. Holkham Misc. 48, p. 67. © Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

To all Members of the Medieval Academy of America:

Members are hereby invited to submit nominations for the election of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America for 2019.

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. Nominations are encouraged in all the varied fields encompassed by Medieval Studies, and all members of the Medieval Academy are free to submit nominations. Those 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 2019 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, four (4) slots are available for the year 2019, for which there must be at least eight (8) 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
17 Dunster St., Suite 202
Cambridge, Mass. 02138

Nominations for the 2019 elections must be received by 31 October 2018.  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

Katie Bugyis has been selected to be a Joy Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University for 2018-19. The Fellowship will support research for her current book project, Liturgy Matters: Benedictine Women’s Communities in Medieval England.

Jennifer Speed (Univ. of Dayton) and two project co-directors have been awarded an NEH Community Connections Planning Grant at the University of Dayton. This one-year curricular project will revise courses in computer science, sociology, history, and music using the life and work of Paul Laurence Dunbar to examine significant themes in American history and culture.

If you have good news to share, please contact Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis.