The Medieval Academy Blog

If you’re going to be at the Leeds International Medieval Congress this year, please join us Tuesday evening (4 July) at 7 PM for the MAA Annual Lecture:

Jeffrey J. Cohen (George Washington Univ.), “Outside Noah’s Ark: Sympathy and Survival as the Waters Rise.”

Afterwards, join Prof. Cohen and MAA Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis for the Medieval Academy’s open-bar wine reception. We hope to see you there!

The July 2017 issue of Speculum will soon be available on the University of Chicago Press Journals website. The forthcoming issue will include the following articles:

Carmela Vircillo Franklin, “Reading the Popes: The Liber pontificalis and its Editors” (Presidential Address)

Sebastian Sobecki, “A Southwark Tale: Gower, the 1381 Poll Tax, and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales”

Catherine Anne Bradley, “Song and Citation in Two-Voice Motets for Saint Elizabeth of Hungary”

Deeana Copeland Klepper, “Pastoral Literature in Local Context: Albert of Diessen’s Mirror of Priests on Christian-Jewish Coexistence”

James Morton, “A Byzantine Canon Law Scholar in Norman Sicily: Revisiting Neilos Doxapatres’ Order of the Patriarchal Thrones”

Lisa Collinson, “Welsh Law in Thirteenth-Century Sweden: Women, Beasts, and Players”

The issue features more than seventy-eight reviews, including:

Robert Mills’s review of: Robert S. Sturges, The Circulation of Power in Medieval Biblical Drama: Theaters of Authority.

Debby Banham’s review of: David Hall: The Open Fields of England.

Kimberly Lynn’s review of: Seth Kimmel, Parables of Coercion: Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain.

Ann W. Astell’s review of: Chad D. Schrock, Consolation in Medieval Narrative: Augustinian Authority and Open Form.

John M. Ganim’s review of: Thomas A. Prendergast, Poetical Dust: Poets’ Corner and the Making of Britain.

Anthony Kaldellis’s review of: Alexander Sarantis, Justinian’s Balkan Wars: Campaigning, Diplomacy and Development in Illyricum, Thrace and the Northern World, A.D. 527-65.

The July issue will also include Fellows Memoirs and the proceedings of the 2017 Annual Meeting, held at the University of Toronto on April 6-8.

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. 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.

Don’t let the July issue of Speculum be your last. If you haven’t yet renewed for 2017, please do so by June 30 to avoid a disruption in your subscription and other MAA benefits.

If you attended our recent Annual Meeting in Toronto, you will have seen first-hand how the Academy is working to support all medievalists everywhere, a mandate codified by our values statement (online here: https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/?page=Policies). To demonstrate our continued commitment to these values, and with your help, the Academy increased its support of members in 2016, especially student, independent, and contingent scholars, through the numerous awards and fellowships offered annually. We inaugurated an annual Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Prize in 2016 and will be launching several new prizes, grants, and initiatives in 2017. We hope you will renew your membership and participate in the Academy’s efforts.

You can easily pay your dues through the MAA website (http://medievalacademy.org) or by returning this form. We invite you to take this opportunity to explore our website and, after signing in with your username and password, update your personal homepage so that you can connect with other members with similar interests. Members can now use their personal MAA homepage to indicate an interest in being considered to serve on one of our committees or to review books for Speculum. In this way we hope to engage more members in our work.

Since the Medieval Academy is a membership organization not affiliated with any other institution, we rely on the income received annually from member dues to maintain our program of publications, awards, grants, and conferences. We encourage all members to consider supplementing their membership by becoming a Sustaining or Contributing member or by remembering the Academy with a bequest as part of our Legacy Society. In addition, you may want to give a gift membership to a colleague or student; please contact us at info@themedievalacademy.org for more information.

A healthy fiscal outlook and a solid membership base will ensure that the Medieval Academy can continue to offer valuable services and programs to all of its members.  If you haven’t already, we sincerely hope that you will renew soon and continue your valued membership in the Academy. We look forward to working with you in developing the future of the Medieval Academy of America and of medieval studies in North America and beyond.

Margot Fassler, President
Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director

More than a dozen associations, programs, centers, and departments have recently sent us reports of medieval goings-on, all of which are posted on the Medieval Academy blog. Check them out here:
https://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/category/cara/

Submitting your news and announcements to the Medieval Academy blog is an effective way to publicize your events and programming. Everything posted to the blog also goes out to our 9,700+ Twitter followers and is posted on Facebook. Please send announcements and URLs (no file attachments) to info@themedievalacademy.org.

For more information about CARA, please visit our website:
https://medievalacademy.site-ym.com/?page=CARA

Tripoli, Bohemond VI or VII, gold bezant, 1251-87. Courtesy of Princeton University Numismatic Collection.

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.

Birgit Baldwin Fellowship
The Birgit Baldwin Fellowship provides a grant of $20,000 to support a graduate student in a North American university who is researching and writing a dissertation for the Ph.D. on any subject in French medieval history that can be realized only by sustained research in the archives and libraries of France. It may be renewed for a second year upon demonstration of satisfactory progress. (Deadline 15 November 2017)

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 2017)

Travel Grants
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 November 2017 for meetings to be held between 16 February and 31 August 2018)

Please feel free to print and post this announcement.

Photo: The Haskins Medal. The Medieval Academy of America

The Medieval Academy of America invites submissions for the following prizes, to be awarded at the 2018 MAA Annual Meeting (Emory University, 1-3 March). Submission instructions vary, but all dossiers must complete by 15 October 2017.

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 [NEW]
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.

Please feel free to print and post this announcement.

MAA/CARA Summer Scholarships support students completing interterm coursework in paleography, languages, or manuscript studies. The 2017 MAA/CARA Summer Scholarships have been awarded to:

Michelle Al-Ferzly (Univ. of Michigan),  studying Classical Arabic at the Qasid Institute (Amman, Jordan).

Deanna Elizabeth Brook’s, studying Old Irish at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Brianna Daigneault (Univ. of Toronto), studying Breton at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale.

Meghan Catherine Lescault (Brown Univ.), studying Medieval Latin at The University of Notre Dame.

Sarah Luginbill (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder), studying Latin paleography at Durham University.

Nicole Danielle Pulichene (Harvard Univ.), studying Medieval Latin at The University of Notre Dame.

Matthew Harold Roby (Univ. of Oxford), studying Icelandic at Háskólasetur Vestfjarða.

Rachel Ruisard (Univ. of Maryland), studying Latin at the Paideia Institute (Rome).

Mimi Zhou (New York Univ.), studying Advanced Manuscript Studies at the Rare Book School (Yale University).

MAA Travel Grants support travel to conferences by contingent or unaffiliated scholars to present their work. The spring 2017 Travel Grants have been awarded to:

R. Natasha Amendola, “The Virgin Spins the Veil of the Temple: Medieval Use of the Protoevangelion,” International Medieval Congress, 3-6 July 2017, Leeds, UK.

Sarah Peters Kernan, “Reading the Whole Book: Cookbooks in Late Medieval English Professional Manuscripts,” Bibliography Among the Disciplines, 12-15 October 2017, Philadelphia, PA.

Joe Stadolnik, “Forms of Mercy,” Biennial London Chaucer Conference: “Chaucer and the Law,” June 30 to July 1, 2017, London, UK.

Congratulations! The Medieval Academy is very pleased to be able to support the work of these emerging scholars.