The Medieval Academy Blog

Perhaps you recall my report on grants to medievalists published in 2008 in the Medieval Academy News. It reviewed major foundation grants open to all scholars in North America. The good news about 15 ACLS grants to medievalists in the most recent 2010 round of competition, which was circulated to you by Director Emeritus Paul Szarmach, prompted me to review the other grants awarded since my report appeared in 2008. Medievalists have done well on many fronts, and this should inspire others to write applications. As before, I do not name individuals but I indicate some topics and geographical concentrations when it clarifies and I also name a few institutions receiving scholarly-edition grants.

Based on those who checked off “Middle Ages” on their grant applications, NEH grants were won by a number of institutions and individuals in 2010. Three individuals received research grants, one in the university and two in the college faculty and independent scholars category. Three summer stipends were awarded to medievalists. One individual medievalist received a teaching development fellowship and one received a digital humanities start-up grant. There were also two scholarly-edition grants to universities: the Fernao Lopes Translation Project and the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive Project that went to the University of Georgia and University of Virginia respectively.

One grant from NSF, the National Science Foundation, was won by a medievalist for a study of the influence of Byzantine science on twelfth-century England.

Fifteen grants in various programs were awarded by the ACLS. Medievalists received one Ryskamp Fellowship, one Digital Innovation Fellowship, two Dissertation Completion Fellowships, four New Faculty Fellowships and seven ACLS Fellowships. These are impressive results and it is gratifying to see medievalists well represented among the dissertation completion and new faculty grants, that is, the new programs undertaken by ACLS over the past few years.

The American Philosophical Society made three grants to medievalists. These were small awards but no less appreciated by recipients.

At the Institute for Advanced Study five members were medievalists from North American universities (two Canadian, three US universities). One of them is investigating Buddhism and Premodern Korean History, the others proposed European or Middle Eastern topics. One visitor in 2010 was a European medievalist. Six scholars from Europe and the Middle East may be counted as medievalists from the descriptions of their projects, providing a rich mix of interests for all concerned. IAS celebrated its 80th Anniversary in 2010.

The National Humanities Center hosted five medievalists in 2010. One of these submitted a proposal on Tamil and Sanskrit literature that spans the ancient and early medieval eras as we in the West understand early medieval. Others are investigating European or Middle Eastern history of the Middle Ages.

Three Guggenheims were awarded to medievalists. One is listed as a Renaissance proposal but since it concerns fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy and was won by a medievalist, it belongs on this list.

At the Getty Foundation one guest scholar, a Byzantinist, received funding for research in residence. Among the small library research grants distributed by Getty two went to medievalists, one is currently an administrator and one works in fifteenth-century Italian art history. It is difficult to identify the field of concentration of graduate students receiving grants because the titles of proposals are not given along with the names at the Getty website.

The Mellon Foundation’s program, New Directions in Scholarship, made grants to two medievalists from designated institutions (the list of eligible institutions changes year by year, so it is worth checking). The most recent information on Awards to Emeriti Faculty was for 2009 and again awardees were selected from a list of designated institutions. Those listed as receiving grants were a bumper crop of five medievalists. Medievalists shine in this competition.

I found less duplication in persons receiving grants in 2010, but the current information on websites lists those who accepted grants rather than listing those offered grants because I collected information at a different time of the year. There does appear to be greater diversity in research topics and in personnel receiving awards. I can only encourage others to write proposals, run them by qualified readers for suggestions, collect sound references, and send them in!

Susan Mosher Stuard, Haverford College

Dear Fellow MAA Members:

At our annual meeting this past spring, the Council of the Medieval Academy considered a wide range of issues and challenges for the continued growth of the MAA. Treasurer Gene Lyman laid out the financial condition of the Academy and projected where we would be in the near future. Unlike most learned societies, the MAA has a substantial endowment, supplemented by the generous gifts of members and enlarged by the wise oversight of our Finance Committee. Yet, as Gene laid out, for the past several years the MAA has experienced the same downturn in its portfolio as every not-for-profit. At the same time, we have begun to accumulate a substantial structural deficit in our annual budgets. These trends could not be left to run their courses without some decisive action.

At that meeting and in subsequent consultations with us as new Executive Directors, the Executive Committee endorsed a series of fiscal reforms and spending cuts at the MAA offices. In addition, Executive and Finance Committee members have begun to cut back on their travel and meeting expenses, making up for these from their own pockets. For the first time in years, the new 2012 budget just endorsed by both the Finance Committee and the Executive Committee includes a small surplus instead of a budgeted deficit: a major fiscal turnaround.

These efforts are intended both to tighten expenditures and to move resources from administrative overhead to core MAA programs. These include Speculum and an array of services and benefits to members that will now begin to expand: MAA book programs, publication prizes, fellowships, and digital offerings, such as the IMB, ACLS Humanities E-Book, and MAA Books Online. The Academy continues to offer travel grants, assistance to graduate students, and support for seminars in paleography and codicology. It also supports numerous committees, including CARA’s efforts to expand the visibility of medieval studies at institutions across North America.

We have already begun to revise our website, revived this Medieval Academy News as a born-digital monthly, launched an interactive online calendar of events, and reinvigorated our MAA Blog, bringing news of and for MAA members in an elegant, up-to-date format. Our annual meeting remains a high point of the academic year, bringing together the best scholars and scholarship in serious discourse and relaxed interaction.

Beginning in the new year, the MAA will implement a new Association Management System that will allow individuals to register their own memberships, to post and control their professional information, to join with their colleagues in discussion groups, virtual committees and peer-review activities, and to plan to offer members Speculum’s digital edition.

To support these activities – and to bring the MAA into line with the best practice of other learned societies – we also plan to enhance revenues. In the year ahead you will see the revival of a few MAA book series as we move to online sales channels like Amazon.com and to the conversion of our titles into digital formats – including the Kindle, iPad and other tablets and handhelds – and into online scholarly aggregations. We are also seeking foundation support for special programs and projects.

The learned society remains the most important public focus of our scholarly energies. As many media and special conferences have reported, the crisis of the academic community has brought program and department cuts, diminished resources for research and publication, and threatens to convert the library from a scholarly to an information resource. Unlike the department, press, or library, the learned society retains its independence and its ability to self-govern, to set its own agenda, to enhance its special place in the world of scholarship. At the MAA we elect our own officers and form our own committees, maintain our esteemed publications series, and offer support for a new generation of scholars and colleagues.

As you may already have guessed, this leads us to one of the most important decisions of the Council this past April: to approve an increase in MAA dues. In the days ahead you will be receiving your renewal notices for memberships, and these increases will be reflected in our request for support. Overall your dues will be increasing an average of about 36%. Dues are scaled to reflect your professional status. This increase will supplement – but not substitute for – current cost-cutting at the MAA offices and revenue enhancements. But dues remain an essential foundation both for the MAA’s financial stability and for the programs that derive from that income. Dues increases will also bring the MAA’s into line with those of other societies of our size and interdisciplinary nature. Our increases have been designed to least affect our younger members – scholars in, or seeking, their first positions – and to place most of the responsibility for support on the older generation who have both benefited from, and already generously contributed to, the efforts of the MAA.

So, please, when you receive your dues notice, think first of MAA cost-cutting efforts already underway, of increasing support for vital programs, of your extra membership fees – and of your donations to the endowment and travel funds – as the core part of the larger effort to enhance the MAA’s financial base and to help maintain and expand its member benefits and its leadership role in the decades ahead. We are, and will be, doing our part to match your efforts and support. Thank you.

Eileen Gardiner & Ron Musto