The Medieval Academy Blog

We all know that training for medievalists is becoming more challenging, with cuts to language instruction and the inaccessibility of courses in paleography and other research methodologies. Professional development for PhD students has been severely impacted by cuts to funding and staffing. To try to fill some of these gaps, the MAA is offering several exciting learning opportunities for medievalists this summer:

1) The Mentorship Program Committee is thrilled to be able to offer a third installment of our Summer Research Program, which will bring together twelve students and a group of mentors for an online program dedicated to targeted grant- and abstract-writing. Thanks to the success of the recent two-year fundraising Campaign, all participants will receive a $1,500 honorarium and a free one-year MAA membership (or renewal). See below, and click here for more information.

2) Under President Sara Lipton’s leadership, and thanks to a generous anonymous donation, we are debuting three MAA Summer Skills Workshops this year: Old French (instructor: Terry Cullen, Vassar University), Latin Paleography (instructor: Sean Gilsdorf, Harvard University), and Medieval Latin (instructor: Diane Warne Anderson, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston)! Fees will be only $125 for each five-week course, making this an extraordinarily affordable opportunity to learn from these experts! More information about these online workshops will be available soon.

3) As always, we offer significant funding opportunities for other summer programs through the MAA/CARA Summer Scholarships program. See below, and click here for more information.

We are able to offer these programs thanks to the support and generosity of our members. Thank you for helping us help medievalists!

Discounted hotel rooms are going fast…register today!

Registration is open for the Centennial Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, which will take place on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 20-22 March 2025. This year’s Centennial program, hosted by Harvard University in collaboration with Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Fitchburg State University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stonehill College, Tufts University, and Wellesley College, will bring together nearly 500 scholars from three continents, 23 countries, over 200 academic institutions, and a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds for 114 paper sessions, four plenary lectures, and a host of associated workshops and events, addressing the medieval world from the North Atlantic to the Sea of Japan as well as the histories and possible futures of Medieval Studies itself. While this will be an in-person meeting, our plenary lectures—given by Kristina Richardson (Professor of History and Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia), Sara Lipton (President of the Medieval Academy of America and Professor of History at Stony Brook University), Wendy Belcher (Professor of Comparative Literature and African American Studies at Princeton University), and a diverse group of medieval scholars and administrators—will be live streamed.

We are excited to welcome you to Cambridge, and look forward to meeting you, learning from you, and celebrating our shared commitment to Medieval Studies. In an effort to make the Centennial meeting accessible to as many scholars as possible, the general registration fee will be $100 for members ($125 for non-members), with the registration fee for members who are graduate students, contingent faculty, or independent scholars set at $50 ($75 non-member). These rates will increase by $50 on Monday, 17 February, so be sure to register early!

Click here for more information and to register!

Every month, we’ll be spotlighting two MAA Centennial Grant Projects. These twenty-one projects span the continent and reflect some of the best that Medieval Studies has to offer. We are so pleased to be able to support these symposia, performances, and digital initiatives as part of our Centennial celebrations.

Virginia: Public Medieval: A Workshop for Graduate Students, ECRs, and Underemployed Medievalists (Virginia Tech). Spearheaded by mentors Sarah Bond, Matt Gabriele, Eleanor Janega, David Perry, and Cord Whitaker, the October 2024 workshop focused on public writing and outreach.

New Jersey: The Middle Ages for Educators Open Access Resource (OAR) Sweet Sixteen Playoffs, Sixteen digital humanities projects faced off in this challenge, and after a few rounds of voting, we’re down to the Final Four. Join us at the MAA Annual Meeting as our judges select the top two competitors, and cast your vote for the champion!

The Medieval Academy of America’s Mentoring Program Committee is excited to announce the 2025 Summer Research and Professional Development Workshop for PhD-track students. This program is designed to foster the growth of essential skills and mentorship relationships and improve the educational experiences for graduate students in fields intersecting with Medieval Studies. Our primary goals are to facilitate the development of successful dissertation projects, foster networking and community-building, and improve competitiveness for grants and academic positions.

The 2025 workshop will be entirely virtual. We will host a series of 6-8 sessions between 15 July and 15 August. The goal of the workshop will be to help participants learn to explain their research and its significance to others. Effectively communicating one’s research is beneficial in securing grants, publishing articles, and finishing a dissertation. In the latter sessions, participants will break into two cohorts, and leaders will help them each develop a targeted written work relating to their dissertation project: this project could be a dissertation prospectus, a grant proposal, or an introduction to an article addressing and contextualizing the broader goals of the project. Workshop leaders will aspire to provide guidance or tips on library and archival research, writing strategies and techniques, networking, community-building, and other vital professional skills, as well.

We seek twelve graduate students who are currently enrolled in PhD programs in some Medieval Studies discipline, who have finished their PhD coursework but have yet to defend their dissertation. There are no disciplinary or geographical limitations. MA students are ineligible to apply. In keeping with the MAA’s ambition to incorporate and enable access to resources for people from underrepresented groups, we especially encourage applicants from communities and backgrounds that have been traditionally underrepresented or marginalized within Medieval Studies. Preference will also be given to applicants with more limited access to the resources this program seeks to offer. Participants will receive a stipend of $1,500 and a complimentary one-year MAA membership.

Applications are due on 1 March. Click here for more information and to apply.

The MAA/CARA Summer Tuition Scholarships support graduate students and especially promising undergraduate students participating in summer courses in medieval languages or manuscript studies.* Applicants must be members of the Medieval Academy in good standing with at least one year of graduate school remaining and must demonstrate both the importance of the summer course to their program of study and their home institution’s inability to offer analogous coursework. Click here for more information.

*Please note that the MAA will soon open application portals for three Summer Skills Workshops to be run under its own auspices (in Old French, Latin Paleography, and Medieval Latin). These workshops are heavily subsidized and will therefore not be eligible for MAA/CARA Tuition Scholarships.

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.

Belle Da Costa Greene Award

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. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2025)

Olivia Remie Constable Award

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. (Deadline 15 February 2025)

MAA Dissertation Grants:

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. (Deadline 15 February 2025)

Schallek Awards

The five annual Schallek awards support graduate students conducting doctoral research in any relevant discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain (ca. 1350-1500). The $5,000 awards help defray research expenses. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2025)

MAA/GSC Grant for Innovation in Community-Building and Professionalization

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. (Deadline 15 February 2025)

Please contact the Executive Director for more information about these and other MAA programs.

Writing Against the Clock: Finding Joy in our Writing Practice (Pt 1)
February 10th at 2PM EST

With this webinar and companion workshop, the GSC aims to get our graduate student community writing frequently and efficiently, while prioritizing the fun of this craft. Between other responsibilities teaching, service, and personal and professional obligations, many of our fellow graduate students do not find “enough” time to write. How can we make the most of the time that we do have to do this important work and do it well? How can we overcome the obstacles to writing that come with writing in the real world? How do some academics strike the right balance and seem to write nonstop? Join the Graduate Student Committee of the MAA for a two part series on writing.

In part one of this event, our guest speakers — all prolific writers of academic books and articles as well as works of creative fiction — will share reflections on the writing process and answer your questions. Join us on February 10th at 2PM EST in conversation with Irina Dumitrescu (Universität Bonn), Bruce Holsinger (University of Virginia), Julia Istomnia (Yale University), and Helen Sword (University of Auckland).

Click here to register.

Writing Against the Clock: Finding Joy in our Writing Practice (Part 2)
February 18th, 2pm-3:30pm EST

We’ll put the advice of our experts into practice at collective writing hour, on February 18th at 2pm-3:30pm EST guided by Camila Marcone (Yale University, GSC). Come with a piece of writing to work on! We will log-in, set an intention, work on our own, and then debrief in small groups at the end.

Click here to register.

Doing Medieval Together: Building Community in Nontraditional Venues 
February 10th, 8pm EST on zoom

In this event, panelists will discuss various ways they are breaking down the walls between the academy and the community. From listening to and living in communities with Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners to engaging with the local medieval enthusiasts of Oklahoma, from pop culture conventions to K-12 classrooms, from digital resources to physical interactions, we will explore partnerships, public programming, and the ways we can all learn from each other.

Featuring:
Kisha Tracy, Fitchburg State University/CARA Executive Board Member
Reid Weber, Chair and Professor, Humanities and Philosophy, University of Central Oklahoma, Faculty Co-sponsor, UCO Medieval Society
Tory Schendel-Vyvoda, Curator, Evansville African American Museum, PhD student, IDSVA, Adjunct Instructor, University of Evansville, Director, Lamasco Microgallery
Karen Jolly, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Click here to register.

As part of the celebrations for the MAA’s Centennial Year, the Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Committee and the Graduate Student Committee have partnered to organize a year-long series of webinars showcasing exciting DH projects. These will be held monthly, ordinarily on a Friday from 1-2pm ET. Each session will feature a moderated discussion of two recent/ongoing DH projects followed by an audience Q&A. Beyond highlighting a diverse array of new and exciting projects in Medieval Studies, this series will also serve as an opportunity to share ideas and best practices within the medieval DH community. Upcoming sessions include:

Friday, February 21: Book of Fortresses (dir. Edward Triplett); Digital Heritage Age (dir. Gary Dempsey)

(and mark your calendars for the subsequent sessions on April 21 and May 16, featuring next text-editing tools, visualizations of medieval women’s networks, and more!)

To register for this webinar series, please fill out the form by clicking here.

On 23 January, Madeline Caviness was inducted into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Several MAA members have recently been awarded funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities:

Therese Cory (Univ. of Notre Dame): Aquinas’s Mind-in-World

Lucy Mookerjee (Johns Hopkins Univ.): The Forme of Cury: A New Critical Edition of a 14th-Century Cookbook

Nicholas Watson (Harvard Univ.): Balaam’s Ass: Vernacular Theology Before the English Reformation, Volume 2: French, 1100-1400, English 1250-1540

Congratulations! If you have good news to share, send it to Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis.

2026 Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting:
Consortiums and Confluences

Call for Papers

The 101st annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on March 19–21, 2026 on the campuses of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Amherst College, and will also include events at Mt. Holyoke College and Smith College. Hosted by the Five College Consortium, the theme of the meeting is “Consortiums and Confluences.” The program will bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds addressing the medieval world and critical topics in Medieval Studies. Our plenary lectures will be given by Elly Truitt (Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania), Peggy McCracken (Incoming President of the Medieval Academy of America and Professor of French, Women’s Studies, and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan), and Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco (Augustus R. Street Professor of Spanish & Portuguese and Comparative Literature at Yale University). We are excited to welcome you to Amherst, MA, and its environs, and look forward to meeting you, learning from you, and celebrating our shared commitment to Medieval Studies.

Click here for more information and the full Call for Papers.