The Medieval Academy Blog

The Medieval Academy of America is calling for nominations for positions on the Graduate Student Committee (GSC). Nominations are open to all graduate-student members of the MAA, worldwide, who have at least two years remaining in their program of study. GSC members are appointed for a two-year term on a rotating basis. The committee comprises five members: two positions are open in this cycle.

Interested graduate students should complete the nomination form (available here). Please send the completed form, including your statement of intent (300 words max.), and a brief CV to the Executive Directors at info@themedievalacademy.org by 15 February 2012. The new committee members will be selected by the Committee on Committees and approved by the Council at the Annual Meeting in St. Louis in March.

The complete Program for the Annual Meeting is now available online at:  http://www.slu.edu/x57100.xml There will be over 50 sessions and the plenary speakers include Caroline Bruzelius (Duke University), William Chester Jordan (Princeton University), and Medieval Academy President Alice-Mary Talbot (Dumbarton Oaks).

Hotel Registration is now open at  http://www.slu.edu/x54141.xml. Please register before 21 February 2012.

Conference registration is now available at  http://www.slu.edu/x54140.xml. Early registration is open until 27 February 2012.

During their recent trip to Rome and Naples, the Executive Directors had the happy chance to meet the current group of medieval and Renaissance scholars now at the American Academy in Rome as fellows and residents. Together with spouses and other fellows and residents at the AAR, they shared a table for conversation and one of the Academy’s wonderful evening meals. The get-together, organized by Prof. Jennifer Davis (History, Catholic University) followed a “shop talk” on Boccaccio by AAR Resident Rome Scholar Guido Ruggiero (History, University of Miami) and a reception.

The group also included Margaret Marshall Andrews (Ph.D. candidate, Archaeology, University of Pennsylvania), Dr. Aaron Allen (Musicology, UNC Greensboro), Bradford Bouley (Ph.D. candidate, History, Stanford), Dr. Benjamin David Brand (Music History, University of North Texas), Prof. Laura Giannetti (Italian Studies, University of Miami), Albertus G.A. Horsting (Ph.D. candidate, Theology, Notre Dame), Rachel Horsting, Prof. Craig Martin (History, Oakland University), Dr. Kailan Rubinoff (Musicology, UNC Greensboro), Carly Jane Steinborn (Ph.D, candidate, Art History, Rutgers), Prof. William Tronzo (Art History, UC, San Diego), Dr. Mariyana Tsibranska-Kostova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), and Dr. Lila Yawn (AAR adviser in Medieval Studies).

Other medievalists in Residence this year include Teodolina Barolini (Columbia), Peter Brown (Princeton), Dorothy Glass (SUNY, Buffalo), Christopher Kleinhenz (Wisconsin, Madison) and Christian Moevs (Notre Dame). This holiday season the Rome community will be joined by immediate past-president of the MAA, Elizabeth A.R. (Peggy) Brown.

Work has now begun in earnest on the revision and update of the entire Medieval Academy website. Over the past few weeks you will already have seen many updates: a cleaner interface and home page for the current MAA website, revision of much of our content, an updated and dynamic calendar of events, this revived and born-digital MAA News, and an MAA Blog that is now kept current with announcements of interest to all medievalists. Membership Coordinator Chris Cole has also added Twitter capabilities to the list so that you can follow us in any number of ways.

In the weeks ahead we will be completely revamping the site by using what is known as an “association management system” (AMS). This is a suite of coordinated web capabilities, supported by a dynamic “back-end” database that offers a host of features currently used by many other learned societies, including the RSA, AHA, MLA and CAA. We adopted the system “Your Membership.com” after long study, reports and recommendations by several MAA committees that included Grover Zinn, Lisa Bitel, Tim Stinson, Dan O’Donnell,  GSC member Ethan Zadoff and others. This AMS will now allow members to directly enter their membership information, pay dues, post their relevant career information (including CVs and publications), virtually join or coordinate MAA committees, register for annual meetings, and access the many benefits of membership that the MAA now offers. The AMS will allow the council and the executive, publications, membership, graduate and other MAA committees the opportunity to organize online, to share information privately or publicly and enable MAA members to make known their views via surveys, online discussion groups and other postings and to rapidly, directly – and privately – access and update their membership status. It will also permit the MAA to realistically begin planning to offer a digital version of Speculum and other publications to MAA individual members and to create customized mailing lists, interest groups and many other forms of communication that will save time, effort and money and simplify many online interactions.

The new AMS is already in the early implementation stages and involves a team made up here of Eileen Gardiner, Ron Musto, Chris Cole and Sheryl Mullane-Corvi. While we maintain the current site, its content will be migrated to the new AMS. The current PayPal and membership modules will follow soon after. We hope to have the complete system up and ready for testing in the first two months of the new year and a functioning new web site and membership system operational in time for the 2012 annual meeting. Please stay tuned.