The Medieval Academy Blog

The 2025 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America
Harvard University, Cambridge MA
20-22 March 2025

The Centennial Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hosted by Harvard University, Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Fitchburg State University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stonehill College, Tufts University, and Wellesley College. While the conference will take place in person, the plenary lectures and some other events also will be live streamed. Plenary addresses will be delivered by Kristina Richardson (Professor of History and Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Virginia), Sara Lipton (Incoming President of the Medieval Academy of America and Professor of History, Stony Brook University), and Wendy Belcher (Professor of Comparative Literature and African American Studies, Princeton University). The Annual Meeting will be followed by the Sunday annual meeting of the Medieval Academy’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA).

The conference sessions, receptions, and pre-conference programs will take place at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Harvard campus is accessible by taxi and public transit from Boston’s Logan Airport as well as from the South and Back Bay Amtrak stations. In addition to Harvard’s own museums and libraries, visitors can take advantage of greater Boston’s rich dining, entertainment, and cultural resources, including the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Boston Public Library, all easily reached by the MBTA subway from Harvard Square.

Click here for additional information and the full Call for Papers

The 2024 Inclusivity & Diversity Travel Grant has been awarded to Alexandra Montero Peters (Texas State University), “Imagining India, Imagining Race: Arabic Geographies and Castilian Histories as Sources for Medieval Muslim-Christian Intellectual Exchange.” This paper will be presented in Session 26 on Friday, 15 March, at 2:30 PM.

Student Awards:
Best Student Paper: Anna Gili (University of Padova), “The Material Transmission of the Kitāb al-Malakī and its Two Latin Translations: A Comparative Study.” This paper will be presented in Session 46 on Saturday, 16 March, at 8:30 AM.

Commendations
Emilie Lucia Bowerman (Dartmouth College), “The Cult of the Cross in the Hispanic Rite, 4th to 8th Centuries”; Claire Dillon (Columbia University), “A Global Mediterranean? Tracing the Fragmented Histories of Silk in Medieval Sicily”; Joshua P. Lee (University of California, Berkeley), “Frá mǫnnum undarligum ok buningi þeira:; Exploring Medieval Icelandic Conceptions of Cardinal Directionality, Alterity, and ‘Mythical Space’ in Four Old Norse Texts”; Meghan C. Lescault (University of Toronto), “Subject to Interpretation: The Ambiguous Position of the Chapter of Nivelles in Canon Law”; Jane Maschue (Catholic University of America), “The Mysterious Epitaph of a Spurious Wife: The Addition of Elpis to the Story of Boethius”

We hope you will make an effort to attend the Annual Meeting sessions where these emerging scholars will present their award-winning work. Please join us as well at the Opening Plenary on Thursday, 14 March, at 1:30 PM as we honor them publicly for this achievement.

If you are joining us at the upcoming Annual Meeting at Notre Dame, please note these gatherings of interest to graduate students, digital humanists, and anyone in need of mentoring!

Thursday, 8:30 – 10 PM: Grad Student Social, sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee, O’Rourke’s Public House, 1044 E Angela Blvd, South Bend

Friday, 9:45 – 10:30 AM: Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Committee Coffee Hour. Drop by for discussion and networking and to share feedback about what the Medieval Academy can do to support DH work for pedagogy, research, and public engagement. Refreshments provided. Private Dining Room, Morris Inn

Saturday, 9:15 – 10:10 AM: The Mentoring Coffee and Breakfast, a casual hour of coffee, pastries, and chat co-sponsored by the MAA’s Inclusion and Diversity Committee and the Grad Student Committee, will take place on Saturday March 16th from 9:15-10:10am in B01 McKenna. Stop in for a hot beverage and some great conversation before the presidential address. All are welcome!

And if you can’t be at the Annual Meeting, join the DH Committee on Friday, 15 March, 9:30 – 10:30 AM EST for a virtual coffee hour at https://tinyurl.com/53b5esk8

The next online meeting of the Race and Gender Working Group will take place on March 8 from noon – 1:30pm EST.

Jonathan Correa-Reyes (Clemson University) will speak on “Towards a Christian Genre of Man: Revisiting The Siege of Jerusalem.” Dr. Dorothy Kim (Brandeis University) will be the respondent.

Click here for more information and to register.

The MAA/CARA Summer 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.

The Medieval Academy Book Subvention Program provides grants of up to $2,500 to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of first books by Medieval Academy members. Click here for more information.

The Medieval Academy Inclusivity and Diversity Book Subvention Program provides subventions of up to $5000 to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of books that contribute to diversity and inclusion in the field of Medieval Studies (broadly conceived) by Medieval Academy members. Click here for more information.

Applications for subventions will be accepted only from the publisher and only for books that have already been approved for publication. Eligible Academy members who wish to have their books considered for a subvention should ask their publishers to apply directly to the Academy, following the guidelines outlined on the relevant webpage. The deadline for proposals is 1 May 2024.

We are very pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 CARA Prizes:

The 2024 CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching has been awarded to Angela Mariani (Texas Tech Univ.).

The 2024 Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies has been awarded to two scholars: Marjorie Harrington (Western Michigan Univ.) and Geraldine Heng (Univ. of Texas at Austin).

These prizes will be presented during the CARA Plenary Session at the upcoming Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy on Friday, 15 March, at 10:30 AM. Please join us as we honor these medievalists for their teaching and service.

For more information about the MAA Committee for Centers and Regional Associations (CARA), please visit our website.

1) Digital Latin Library Open-Access Editions: Three new editions of medieval Latin Texts have been recently published in the open-access “Library of Digital Latin Texts” repository, in collaboration with the Medieval Academy of America. Click here for more information about these publications and to learn how your edition can be part of this ongoing project.

2) Database of Medieval Digital Resources (MDR): We continue to update the MDR database with newly-vetted open-access resources for teaching and research. Click here to access the 266 resources in the database and check back regularly for updates.

3) Medieval Academy Books: Thirty-eight of the 118 volumes in the Medieval Academy Books series can be accessed as PDFs or .html files here. There are copies for sale at this link as well; sign into your MAA account for the members’ discount.

4) MAA Webinars: All Medieval Academy webinars are recorded and freely-accessible here.

5) Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast: The Multicultural Middle Ages is produced by the MAA’s Graduate Student Committee and is available wherever you get your podcasts. The programming includes quarterly podcasts devoted to the current issue of Speculum.

6) Speculum Online: Don’t forget that as a perquisite of membership you have complimentary access to the entire 99-year run of Speculum. Click here for more information.