The Medieval Academy Blog

As ever, the Medieval Academy will have a strong presence at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo. We hope you will join us for these sessions and special events:

1) The Friday morning plenary, sponsored by the Academy, will be delivered by Carissa Harris (Temple University), “Medieval Reproductive Justice” (8:30 AM, Sangren 1910). Two related sessions organized by Prof. Harris will take place on Thursday at 3:30 PM (Session 118, Sangren Hall 1910, “Managing Reproduction in the Middle Ages”) and Friday at 10 AM (Session 175, Sangren Hall 1910, “Medieval Reproductive Justice (A Roundtable)).”

2) The Graduate Student Committee workshop, “Open-Source Medieval Studies: Digital Tools and Tricks for Graduate Student Research,” led by Benjamin Albritton, will take place on Thursday at 1:30 PM (Session 63, Sangren Hall 2110). A second GSC Roundtable will take place on Friday at 3:30 PM (Session 288, Sangren Hall 2710 (hybrid), “Publishing as a Graduate Student”). Finally, please join the Graduate Student Committee for their annual ICMS Mixer on Thursday evening from 6-7 PM in the Social Room at Kanley Chapel.

3) The Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) Roundtable, “Building and Growing Medieval Studies: Creating Communities of Passion Beyond,” will take place on Saturday at 3:30 PM (Session 470, Waldo Library 3077). Due to the new footprint and schedule for the ICMS this year, we will not be hosting a CARA luncheon. We hope to revive that tradition next year.

4) Finally, we invite you to visit our staffed table in the exhibit hall on Thursday or Friday to introduce yourself, transact any Medieval Academy business you may have, or pick up some chocolate to keep you going during those long afternoon sessions. As in the past, we will be giving away fifty free one-year memberships to new members, so spread the word!

See you at the ‘Zoo!

Friday, April 5, 2024 at 12pm-1:30pm EST
Matthew Vernon, Associate Professor of English
University of California, Davis
“Slumbering Legacies”

I will be sharing what I hope to be a chapter of my latest work. It explores the understudied legacies of W. E. B. Du Bois as a writer of “silly romances.” While this term is capacious in the time Du Bois uses it, I am particularly interested how he mobilizes the term as it relates to medieval romance. Throughout his work he returns to medieval romance as a form and a rhetorical maneuver that is meant to evoke a sharp contrast between accepted notions of Black and white subjectivities as well as historical trajectories. I will be positing that Du Bois is strategic in this deployment of romance to break down such clear binaries; at the same time he offers a model for a type of Black fiction that escapes the representational trap of political writing that was expected of him. Read in this way, we can see Du Bois as an antecedent to a contemporary move in African American literature away from the formative Civil Rights-era politics into a more opaque version of constructing Blackness.

Respondent: Dr. Cord J. Whitaker, Wellesley College

**You only need to register once to be added to the working group list and to have access to the shared Google folder with the Zoom link. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/raceandgenderglobalmiddleages/

The MAA Graduate Student Committee presents
Grant Writing: A Conversation with Recipients
(A Virtual Workshop offered by the MAA’s GSC)
30 April 2024 @1:00pm (EST)

Join us for a conversation with young scholars who have successfully secured major funding for their research. We will delve into navigating the application process, sharing insights on how you might secure your own prestigious fellowships. We will explore questions like: How do you balance application writing with research and teaching commitments? Who can you turn to for help in this process? How do you manage funding once you have it? And how can external funding shape your work in unexpected ways?

Panelists include: Carolin Gluchowski (Oxford), Amy Juarez (UC-Riverside), Tori Schmitt (UCLA), & Emma Snowden (UTK)

Click here to register

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 Dissertation Grants :

Saagar Asnani (University of California, Berkeley), “Languages of Song: A Sociolinguistic History of Medieval Music and its Vernaculars” (Grace Frank Dissertation Grant)

Austin James Benson (University of Virginia), “The Trilingual Book: Multilingualism, Manuscript Culture, and the Shaping of Insular Verse from the Eadwine Psalter to the Harley Lyrics” (Robert and Janet Lumiansky Dissertation Grant)

Laura Marie Feigen (The Courtauld Institute of Art), “Material Witnesses: Examining the Migration of Hebrew Manuscripts in Relation to Jewish Displacement 1290-1500” (Etienne Gilson Dissertation Grant)

Jane Noble Maschue (Catholic University of America), “Saint, Scholar, Martyr: Boethius in the Margins, 800-1500” (E. K. Rand Dissertation Grant)

Patricia Marie McCall (University of Oregon), “Crusading Ideology: Dijon and Clermont-Ferrand” (Charles T. Wood Dissertation Grant)

Mathilde Montpetit (New York University), “Eunuchs and the Performance of Empire in Songhay and the Greater Mediterranean ” (John Boswell Dissertation Grant)

Thomas Philip Morin (Saint Louis University), “Blood on the Page: Genoa, the Latin East, and Competing Narrative Traditions in the Medieval Mediterranean, 1099-1409” (Frederic C. Lane Dissertation Grant)

Maggie Sager (New York University), “Love Between Women in Islamic Law: Commentary, Continuity, Change” (Hope Emily Allen Dissertation Grant)

Lauren Van Nest (University of Virginia), “Sacral Performance & Extended Royal Bodies in the Ottonian Empire: The Case of Henry II & Kunigunde (1002 1024)” (Helen Maud Cam Dissertation Grant)

We are pleased to announce that the 2024 MAA/GSC Grant for Innovation has been awarded to “Ballintober Bonds: Introductory Community Archaeology Workshop Series” (PI Wendy H. Vencel, North Carolina State University).

The MAA/GSC Grant is awarded annually 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.