The Medieval Academy Blog

Greetings from the Editor’s Desk at Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies. Though the October issue (99/4) marks the last publication of the year for the journal, it nonetheless contains an abundance of riches, beginning with a cluster of articles entitled “The Textual Cult of Richard Rolle: Writing Contemplation in Later Medieval England,” edited by Andrew Albin and Andrew Kraebel.  As the editors’ introduction explains, the essays aim to reassess the works of the Hermit of Hampole (d. 1349) in light of a generation of scholarship dedicated to this charismatic ascetic.  The essays by Timothy Glover, “‘Strange in His Ways, Strange in His Words’: Eccentricity, Eremitism, and Autobiography in the Works of Richard Rolle,” Katherine Zieman, “Resonant Charisma: Richard Rolle as Public Contemplative,” Andrew Kraebel, “Hermit Libraries: Material Sources and the Making of Richard Rolle’s Prose,” Ann Killian, “Lyric Anonymity: Songs of Love and Pastoral Care in Lambeth 853,” Tekla Bude, “Solitary Lives and Social Texts: Carthusian Responses to Richard Rolle’s Amore langueo,” Andrew Albin, “Theorizing Richard Rolle’s Sound Art,” and Nicholas Watson’s afterword, “The Nightingale and the Cuckoo,” examine Rolle’s construction as an eremitical writer and as a “public contemplative,” while also analyzing his reception by the laity, his spiritual heirs, and indeed by contemporary scholars. The essays are an invitation to medievalists—not just literary scholars—to (re)discover Rolle’s works and contributions to the religious sensibility of later medieval Europe. The cluster is also the subject of our Speculum Spotlight podcast that features a lively interview in which our host and producer, Jonathan Correa-Reyes, goes behind the scenes to interview the editors about the making of this collection of essays.

This issue also contains three further articles, each a world unto its own, and each offering a different disciplinary perspective. The first, “Dukus Horant: The Codicology of a Mediterranean Epic,” by Uri Zvi Shachar, takes a close look at the material support—the paper—of the Cairo Genizah manuscript containing the epic poem, Dukus Horant, to argue, contrary to prevailing scholarship, that it was created in the eastern Mediterranean for a community of displaced Ashkenazi Jews. Christoph T. Maier’s “How Modern Are Modern Crusade Studies?” is a critical reflection on the historiography of the crusades that has tended to foreground methodological debates at the cost of obscuring the truly innovative work that is being done in the field. And finally, like Albin’s analysis of Rolle’s “sound art” in the cluster, Julie Singer’s “Hearing an Urban Plague Soundscape: Gilles li Muisis in Tournai, 1349–50” turns our ears toward the sonic world the blind chronicler Gilles amplifies in his account of the arrival of the Black Death in Tournai.

In addition to the articles and eighty-eight book reviews, readers will notice our first publication of the list of materials added this year to the Medieval Digital Resources site, a peer-reviewed database of digital projects for studying the Middle Ages, housed on the MAA website. And apropos of digital resources, the ad hoc committee of the Editorial Board has recently drafted guidelines for reviewers of DH projects that can be found here. My thanks to Caroline Goodson, Sierra Lomuto, Samantha Seal, and Máire ní Mhaonaigh, chair of the committee, for their work on this initiative.

In looking forward to next year, as readers of this newsletter have now seen, 2025 marks the centennial year of the Medieval Academy of America and many initiatives are waiting in the wings to mark the occasion, including the January issue of Speculum, guest edited by Roland Betancourt and Karla Mallette. The invited essays look at the “role of our institutions in the practices of knowledge making.” The issue promises to be a critical examination of our institutions and ourselves.

Though we are indeed looking forward to 2025, we must also look backward for a moment, in this case to congratulate Justin Willson, whose article, “On the Aesthetic of Diagrams in Byzantine Art,” Speculum 98/3 (2023) was awarded the 2023 Emerging Scholar Prize by the Society for Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art & Architecture (SHERA). Please do let us know if your article wins a prize so that we can congratulate you in this newsletter.

And finally, as always, we invite your article submissions to the journal. If you find yourself at the Haskins Society conference in November, I’ll be happy to discuss your prospective essay in person, there and then.

Until next year,

Katherine L. Jansen
Editor, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies

The Medieval Academy of America’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) invites nominations to fill three upcoming vacancies on its Executive Committee. With a special focus upon teaching at all levels, CARA strives to assist institutions and individual medievalists in meeting the challenges that face medieval studies in the classroom, the library, and other institutional settings locally and nationally.

Members of the Executive Committee serve four-year terms; in addition to working with the CARA Chair on programming, outreach, and curricular initiatives, each member serves on two of CARA’s four subcommittees responsible for the CARA Teaching Award, the CARA Robert Kendrick Service Prize, the CARA Regional Conference Grant, and the MAA-CARA Graduate Student Summer Scholarships.

Service on the CARA Executive Committee is open to all members in good standing of the Medieval Academy of America, who may nominate themselves or be nominated by another individual. Given our goals to have regional representation on the Executive Committee, we are particularly encouraging medievalists with experience or appointments in the southwest, southeast, or on the west coast to apply. Nominations should include the following:

1. Name of nominee;

2. Nominee’s institutional or professional affiliation (including that of independent scholar);

3. A brief (c. 250-word) statement indicating the nominee’s qualifications for Executive Committee service, including their contributions to the areas of teaching, center or program administration, and/or professional collaboration and development in the field of Medieval Studies.

In accordance with CARA’s Policies and Procedures, nominations will be accepted until 1 November 2024 and reviewed thereafter by the CARA Executive Committee, which will forward its recommended candidate for approval by the Medieval Academy’s Council. The term of service for new members will begin at the conclusion of CARA’s annual meeting at Harvard University in March 2025. Please send nominations, as well as any questions or requests for further information, to the CARA Chair, Lauren Mancia (LaurenMancia@brooklyn.cuny.edu).

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
Funded by the Richard III Society, American Branch. As of July 2024, the scope and amount of the Schallek program have changed in accordance with the Society’s instructions, as follows: “Applications will be solicited from graduate students whose work, in any relevant discipline, focuses primarily on the late medieval period in England or any of the British Isles, or which involves British connections to the European Continent in the late medieval period. ‘Late Medieval’ will be defined broadly as the period c.1350-1500 or so.” The Schallek Fellowship provides a one-year grant of $40,000 to support Ph.D. dissertation research. (Deadline 15 October 2024)

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 2024 for meetings to be held between 16 February and 31 August 2024)

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 2024. (Deadline 15 October 2024)

The Medieval Academy of America invites submissions for the following prizes to be awarded at the 2025 MAA Annual Meeting. The Medieval Academy warmly encourages the nomination of publications written by scholars working beyond the tenure track as well as those written by faculty. Unless otherwise indicated, submissions are to be made by the publisher. If your project, monograph, or article is eligible, please contact your publisher and ask them to nominate your work. Submission instructions vary, but all dossiers must complete by 15 October 2024.

PLEASE NOTE: PDF review copies of nominated books may be submitted instead of hardcopies (PDFs should be emailed to the Executive Director). In addition, the residency restrictions limiting eligibility for some book prizes to residents of North America have been lifted.

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

Article Prize in Critical Race Studies
Awarded annually to an article in the field of medieval studies that explores questions of race and the medieval world, and which is judged by the selection committee to be of outstanding quality.

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

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

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

Monica H. Green Prize
Awarded to an exceptional project that demonstrates the value of medieval studies in our present day.

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

Jerome Singerman Prize
Awarded to a meritorious second monograph in the field of medieval studies.

Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies: The Medieval Academy of America’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) invites nominations for its annual service prize. The Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies recognizes Academy members who have provided leadership in developing, organizing, promoting, and sponsoring medieval studies through their administrative work—work that is critical to the health of medieval studies, but that often goes unrecognized by the profession at large. This award of $1000 is presented at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy. The annual deadline for nominations is 15 November; please note that three nominators are required, all of whom should have first-hand knowledge of the nominee’s contributions to Medieval Studies. For more information, please visit the CARA Service Award web page.

CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching: The Medieval Academy’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) invites nominations for its annual teaching prize, which recognizes outstanding pedagogical achievement by Medieval Academy members. This can include:

• teaching inspiring courses at the undergraduate or graduate levels;

• creating innovative teaching materials (including textbooks);

• developing courses and curricula;

• scholarship of teaching and learning (including presentations at conferences as well as publications)

• support for K-12 pedagogy and curricula;

• community-oriented or publicly-directed educational initiatives.

Normally, one prize is given for undergraduate and one prize for graduate teaching, each in the amount of $1000. These will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy. The annual deadline for nominations is 15 November. For more information, please visit the CARA Teaching Award web page.

If you have recently seen a major research project to completion, please let us know! The 2025 Centennial Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America (20-22 March 2025, on the campus of Harvard University) will feature two sessions celebrating “New Scholarship.” The sessions will take place during the regularly scheduled MAA program and will provide an opportunity for us to learn about each other’s recent publications or other projects and to celebrate these research milestones together. If you would like to participate in these sessions, in which individual members will briefly present (ca. 5-10 mins) a major publication or publicly available project, please reach out to Fiona Griffiths (fgriffit@stanford.edu) and Rowan Dorin (dorin@stanford.edu) by November 1, 2024 with an expression of interest and brief description of the work. All members with recently completed major projects are warmly invited to participate (Note: MAA annual meeting rules specify that speakers can only participate in one roundtable at a given meeting). Notifications will be sent out in late November 2024.

In the calendar year of 2025, the Fellows’ Executive Committee and the leadership of CARA will sponsor a Medieval Academy Centennial Speaker Series, in which certain volunteers among the Fellows will be available to give subsidized and/or free talks and lectures at various venues around North America, either “in person” or on Zoom. Twenty-one Fellows have volunteered and proposed a variety of potential talks for both general and specialized audiences. It is an exciting list, and a fitting way to celebrate the Centennial of the MAA, as well as a means of supporting the Humanities in these challenging times. This series is aimed primarily at venues where scholarly talks from medievalists are not an everyday occurrence.

Click the link below for more information and to learn how your institution can take advantage of this unique opportunity!

https://www.medievalacademy.org/general/custom.asp?page=CentennialSpeakerSeries

After three successful seasons, The Multicultural Middle Ages (MMA) will return for its fourth in 2025. Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America, MMA is an anthology-style podcast that welcomes the global turn in Medieval Studies. This podcast series is a platform from which to continue ongoing conversations and generate new and exciting avenues of inquiry related to the Middle Ages that emphasize its diversity. We seek to highlight thoughtful reflections on culturally responsible approaches to the study of the Middle Ages. This is a space from which to speak to fellow medievalists and, more importantly, the wider public to inform our audience about the multicultural reality of the medieval period and the plurality of voices that comprise the fields of medieval studies.

We invite proposals from individuals and collaborators of all ranks and disciplines, including graduate students, for single podcast episodes aimed at fellow medievalists and the wider public.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Innovative methodological/disciplinary approaches to the Middle Ages
• The future of Medieval Studies
• Research on the multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic Middle Ages
• Discussions of recent scholarship
• Archival discoveries
• Academic activism and responses to misappropriations of the Middle Ages
• Pedagogical approaches
• Medievalisms
• Medieval culture in contemporary political discourse
• Cultural heritage and approaches to curating exhibitions of the Middle Ages

Possible formats may include narrative expositions, interviews, textual analysis, visual analysis, oral performances, and panel discussions.

No previous experience with podcasting is required. The Graduate Student Committee of the MAA has hosted several podcasting workshops, which are now available on the MAA YouTube channel. If accepted, an MMA team member will support you through the episode development process and post-production. If you would like our technical assistance to realize your episode, such as facilitating an interview, helping record the episode, or taking care of the audio editing, please make a note of it in your proposal.

Your application should include a brief description (500 words) of your proposed episode, noting the following:

• The chosen topic and its relevance;
• the plan for adapting the topic to a podcast medium (we encourage 40-50 min. episodes, but also welcome proposals for shorter or longer episodes);
• the episode format (interview, narrative, etc.) with an overview of its structure
• a description of the support you’ll need (if any) from the MMA production team.

This information is not binding but will help the committee assess the potential of the project. Please include the name and CV of each author. Submit your proposals and any questions to mmapodcast1@gmail.com and to Loren Lee (lel7qsf@virginia.edu) by October 11, 2024.

The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast Series Production Team

Will Beattie | wbeattie@nd.edu
Jonathan Correa Reyes | jonatcr@clemson.edu
Loren Lee | lel7qsf@virginia.edu
Reed O’Mara | rao44@case.edu
Logan Quigley | quigleylogan@gmail.com

Jennifer Borland’s book Visualizing Household Health: Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Régime du corps (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), has been named the 2024 Best First Book of Feminist Scholarship on the Middle Ages, from the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship.

Scott Bruce has been appointed the Edwin C. And Elizabeth A. Whitehead Fellow in the School of Historical Studies and will be spending the 2024/25 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

If you have good news to share, please contact the Executive Director.