The Medieval Academy Blog

In the aftermath of the recent presidential election in the United States, the Medieval Academy of America reaffirms its commitment “to foster an environment of diversity, inclusion, and academic freedom,” as expressed in our “Statement on Diversity and Academic Freedom” published in February 2016 and available on our website. We join other scholarly associations which have recognized that in our role as teachers, scholars, and students of the humanities we can play an essential role in promoting mutual respect and understanding.

To the Members of the Medieval Academy,

The end of the year is now quickly approaching, and we encourage you to renew your membership in the Medieval Academy for 2017 as soon as possible. If you have not already paid your 2017 membership dues, please do so by 31 December 2016.

We hope you will renew your membership and support our worldwide community of more than 3,400 medievalists. The Academy’s mission is to foster the study of the Middle Ages at all levels throughout North America, a mandate reflected in our newly-codified Values Statement:

Membership in the Medieval Academy is open to all persons concerned with the study and teaching of the Middle Ages, including, but not limited to, independent scholars, secondary teachers, graduate students, curators, librarians, and college and university professors of all ranks and at all types of institutions. We aim to foster an environment of diversity, inclusion, and academic freedom for all medievalists. Further, we affirm the right of students and junior faculty to receive supportive, professional mentoring that respects their intellectual freedom and personal integrity.

Click here to renew online for 2017. You will need to sign in with your username and password; if you have forgotten either, please contact us at info@themedievalacademy.org. While you’re online, don’t forget to take advantage of the reduced subscriptions to several online bibliographies and the ACLS Humanities E-Book Library that are available to Medieval Academy members. 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 are pleased to report that in 2016, with your contribution, the Academy increased its support of members, especially graduate students, independent scholars, and adjunct faculty, through the numerous awards and fellowships offered annually. Funds awarded topped $100,000 this year, with the Olivia Remie Constable Awards, GSC/MAA Grant for Innovation, and the broadened MAA/CARA Summer Language Stipends program, among others. In 2017, the Academy will also be able to offer increased support to the efforts of its numerous volunteer committees that are responsible for so much of the work of the Academy, from the Speculum boards to the many awards committees, from the Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) to the Graduate Student Committee. We are doing all this while continuing to streamline administrative functions and expand digital offerings. As always, online access to the entire Speculum archive remains a perquisite of membership. In addition, members receive a 30% discount on all University of Chicago Press publications.

You can easily pay your dues through the MAA website. The dues and donations categories are outlined on the website with links you can follow for further explanation. If you have already renewed, thank you. If you are a Corresponding Fellow, an Honorary Life Member, or a Life Member, no dues are payable, but we hope that you will consider making a gift to the Academy here. 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.

If you prefer to renew by mail, our traditional paper membership form can be printed here.

As we begin preparing for our 2025 centennial, the Academy welcomes the opportunity to think about our mission for the future and how we can best serve our members and the greater community of medievalists. We look forward to your participation in this important process as a member of the MAA. We sincerely hope that you will renew soon and continue your valued membership in the Academy. Click here to renew.

Carmela Vircillo Franklin, President
Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director

The 92nd Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on 6-8 April 2017 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The MAA has met at the University of Toronto every decade (on the ‘7’ year) since 1967, and was first hosted at Toronto by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in 1949.

The 2017 program will feature three plenary speakers: Marina Rustow (Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East, Princeton University); Monica Green (Professor of History, Arizona State University); and Carmela Vircillo Franklin (President of the Medieval Academy of America; Professor of Classics, Columbia University). In addition, the program will include fifty concurrent sessions in a wide variety of formats and covering a broad array of disciplines. Threads include Manuscript Studies (digital and otherwise), Old English, Monasticism, The North, Soundscapes, Glossing and Commentary, and the Medieval Mediterranean.

The Annual Meeting will take place on the downtown (St. George) campus of the University of Toronto. Reception venues will include the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Aga Khan Museum. The conference website and program will become available in early January, with registration and discounted hotel reservations available. Please make sure that your passport is up to date, and join us in Toronto for what is sure to be an excellent Annual Meeting.

Deadline: 15 December 2016

The Medieval Academy of America is currently accepting self-nominations for vacancies opening up on the Graduate Student Committee (GSC) for the 2017-2019 term. The GSC comprises six members appointed for a two- year term on a rotating basis. There are three openings to be filled. Self-nominations are open to all graduate students, worldwide, who are members of the MAA and have at least two years remaining in their program of study.

The GSC represents and promotes the participation of graduate student medievalists within the MAA and the broader academic community. In addition to fostering international and interdisciplinary exchange, the GSC is dedicated to providing guidance on research, teaching, publishing, professionalization, funding, and employment, as well as offering a forum for the expression of the concerns and interests of our colleagues. Our responsibilities, thus, include organizing pre-professionalizing panels and social events annually at ICMS Kalamazoo, the MAA Annual Meeting, IMC Leeds, and biennially at ANZAMEMS. We also run a successful and popular Mentorship Program that pairs graduate students with faculty to discuss any aspect of our profession such as teaching, publishing, finding a successful work/life balance, maneuvering the job market, and more. In addition, we seek to bring together graduate students through virtual communities such as the growing Graduate Student Group on the MAA website, Facebook, Twitter, the med-grad listserv, and a regular newsletter.

GSC members are asked to attend the Committee’s annual business meeting at Kalamazoo for the duration of their term and to communicate regularly with the group via email and Skype. Ideal applicants are expected to work well both independently and as part of a team in a collaborative environment. Previous experience with organizing conference panels and social events, as well as facility with social and digital media are not required, but may be a benefit.

Interested applicants should submit the following by December 15, 2016:

– The Nomination Form

– A brief CV (2 pages maximum) uploaded as part of the Nomination Form;

– A recommendation letter from your faculty advisor, sent to the Executive Director of the Medieval Academy by mail or as a PDF attachment (on letterhead with signature, to LFD@TheMedievalAcademy.org).

New members will be selected by the Committee on Committees and confirmed by the Council of the Medieval Academy at the 2017 Annual Meeting in Toronto, 6-8 April 2017. If you have any questions, please contact us at gsc@themedievalacademy.org.

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

MAA Dissertation Grants (deadline 15 February):
The nine annual Medieval Academy Dissertation Grants support advanced graduate students who are writing Ph.D. dissertations on medieval topics. The $2,000 grants help defray research expenses. Click here for more information.

Schallek Awards (deadline 15 February):
The five annual Schallek awards support graduate students conducting doctoral research in any relevant discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain (ca. 1350-1500). The $2,000 awards help defray research expenses. Click here for more information.

MAA/GSC Grant for Innovation in Community-Building and Professionalization (deadline 15 February):
The MAA/GSC Grant(s) will be awarded to an individual or graduate student group from one or more universities. The purpose of this grant is to stimulate new and innovative efforts that support pre-professionalization, encourage communication and collaboration across diverse groups of graduate students, and build communities amongst graduate student medievalists. Click here for more information.

Olivia Remie Constable Award (deadline 15 February):
Four Olivia Remie Constable Awards of $1,500 each will be granted to emerging junior faculty, adjunct or unaffiliated scholars (broadly understood: post-doctoral, pre-tenure) for research and travel. Click here for more information.

Applicants for these and other MAA programs must be members in good standing of the Medieval Academy. Please contact the Executive Director for more information about these and other MAA program.

The Medieval Academy website provides access to several resources of interest to members:

1) MAA Publications
Since 1925, the Medieval Academy of America has published more than 150 monographs in several series. These are available in multiple formats:

* Forty volumes are available as print-on-demand books at Amazon.com;

* Three dozen volumes are available as freely accessible PDF and/or HTML files on the Medieval Academy website;

* Twenty-seven volumes are available as eBooks through the American Council of Learned Society’s Humanities eBook Library (available to members at a discounted subscription rate);

* Many volumes of the Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching (MART) series as well as the most recent Medieval Academy Books monographs can be purchased through our publishing partner, University of Toronto Press;

* Fifty-one out-of-print volumes are available for sale through the Academy website.

The entire corpus of Medieval Academy monographs, with details about the various types of access for each publication, is listed on our website.

2) Speculum online
To access your members-only journal subscription, log in to the MAA website using the 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.

3) Medieval Academy Blog
Visit the Medieval Academy Blog regularly for notices of conferences and symposia, publications, exhibits, job postings, and other announcements and items of interest to medievalists.

Susan Boynton (Columbia University) and Diane Reilly (Indiana University) received the 2016 Ruth A. Solie Award of the American Musicological Society Resounding Images: Medieval Intersections of Art, Music, and Sound Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages for their edited volume, published in 2015 in the series Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages (Brepols).

Christina Maranci (Tufts University) has been awarded the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Sona Aronian award for best English-language monograph in Armenian studies published in 2015, for her monograph Vigilant Powers: Three Churches of Early Medieval Armenia, published in the series Studies in the Visual Cultures of the Middle Ages (Brepols).

Joëlle Rollo-Koster (University of Rhode Island) has been named a Chevalier de l’ordre des palmes académiques by the French government.