The Medieval Academy Blog

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.