The Medieval Academy Blog

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.

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