MAA News – 2024 Annual Meeting Call for Papers

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Chris

99th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America
University of Notre Dame
14-16 March 2024

The 99th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on the campus of the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, Indiana). The meeting is hosted by The Medieval Institute, St. Mary’s College, Holy Cross College, and Indiana University, South Bend.

The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies. Any member of the Medieval Academy may submit a paper proposal; others may submit proposals as well but must become members in order to present papers at the meeting. Special consideration can be given to individuals whose specialty would not normally involve membership in the Medieval Academy.

Conference themes include Mapping the Middle Ages; Bodies in Motion; and Communities of Knowledge. In addition, we welcome innovative proposals that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries or that use various disciplinary approaches to examine an individual topic. We encourage papers on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe and the networks and exchanges between East and West.

See this page for more information and the full Call for Papers:

https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/2024AnnualMeeting

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MAA News – Publication Subventions Awarded

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Chris

MAA Publication Subventions have been awarded to Anito Savo, Portraying Authorship: Juan Manuel and the Rhetoric of Authority (University of Toronto Press) and Jenna Phillips, Seductions of War and the Dream of Solace in Thirteenth-Century France (Stanford University Press). We are very pleased to support the publication of these monographs.

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MAA News – Travel Grants Awarded

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Chris

MAA Travel Grants have been awarded to Wendy Pfeffer (“Conseils dans le genre d’ensenhamen: la Diététique provençale/ Adding the Dietétique provençale to the Ensenhamen Corpus,” XIVe Congrès de l’Association Internationale d’Études Occitanes, Munich) and Caroline Solazzo (“Gilding Textiles: New Archaeological Evidence and Scientific Developments on the Production of Metal Threads,” European Association of Archaeologists, Belfast). Congratulations!

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MAA News – Call for Proposals – Speculations: The Centennial Issue of Speculum

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Chris

Speculations
The Centennial Issue of Speculum
January 2026

The centenary of a scholarly journal offers the opportunity to recognize, reflect on, and reimagine scholarly methods and objects, including canonicity and the discursive possibilities of scholarship; the boundaries, borders and spaces that define our disciplines; the genres and taxonomies that shape our work.

To mark the 100th anniversary of Speculum, we aim to commemorate the journal by raising questions about the methods and parameters of our study in a prospective rather than retrospective manner. What might the future of medieval studies look like? What might the place of this journal in that future be? The volume focuses on the future of the journal and the field it helps to define by inviting a wide breadth of scholarship that can collectively speculate about how we can take medieval studies into the future. But of course those living in the medieval world broadly considered speculated on their future as well. How was the future conceived in the past and what might those past reflections about the future, and about the condition of futurity generally, have to teach us as we consider recent shifts in our field and a shifting institutional context.

The format of the centennial volume will model the kind of contributions we seek: instead of 4-5 long form articles, we plan to publish 50 short essays (of approximately 3000 words each) in an attempt to represent a broader range of voices, perspectives, methodologies, and areas of study. We welcome traditional essays as well as innovative forms of research and reflection (pedagogical speculations, creative or dialogic writing, speculative history, etc.).

We invite contributions that speculate on the past and future of scholarly work in medieval studies. We particularly welcome essays that address gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and that use comparative and interdisciplinary methods and that address at least one of the following questions:

  • What kinds of methods and theoretical models shape our work and will orient us in the future?
  • How might we call on more inclusive and expansive understandings of the Middle Ages in light of the global turn and critical reappraisals of periodization.
  • What histories do we examine, what histories do we obscure, and what criteria will most productively guide our examination of histories in the future?
  • How have scholarly understandings of medieval historicity and temporality shaped the parameters of our inquiry, and how might we critically engage these accounts?

Proposals of 300 words should be sent to speculations@themedievalacademy.org by December 1, 2023.

Speculations editorial collective
Mohamad Ballan
Peggy McCracken
Cecily Hilsdale
Katherine Jansen
Sierra Lomuto
Cord J. Whitaker

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MAA News – Good News From Medievalists

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Chris

Olga Bush (Vassar College) was awarded the 2023 ICMA–Samuel H. Kress Foundation Research and Publication Grant to support on-site research in Spain and Sicily for her project entitled “Forced Labor: Exotic Fauna in the Animation of Medieval Court Environments.” She was also was appointed a Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks for the 2023-2024 academic year to support research on her project titled “Extraction and Construction: The Ecology and Landscape Architecture of Madīnat al-Zahrā’ (Córdoba) in the Pan-Mediterranean Medieval Context” that forms a part of her monograph in progress at the intersection of environmental studies and medieval Muslim visual culture.

Lauren Van Nest (University of Virginia) has been awarded a Kress Two-Year Institutional Fellowship in the History of Art at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, Germany for 2023-2025. This fellowship supports research on my dissertation “Sacral Performance & Extended Royal Bodies in the Ottonian Empire: The Case of Henry II & Kunigunde (1002-1024).”

Congratulations! If you have good news to share, please send it to Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis.

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Job-Market Data for Medieval Studies

Posted on May 30, 2023 by Chris

Dear Academy Members,

Welcome to summer. For those who teach in the Northern Hemisphere, congratulations for making it through another academic year. And for medievalists both inside and outside the academy, I hope that the longer days, warmer weekends, and vacation days provide us all with the opportunity to read outside our fields, spend a couple of hours contemplating medieval objects in a local museum, or to travel to medieval sites and archives.

Before everyone disappears into their summers, I want to draw your attention to a piece of essential reading––the MAA’s report on academic positions in medieval studies.

The report comes out of a proposal made in 2020 by the Ad Hoc Committee on Professional Diversity to gather data on the medieval job market. The new report is based on job data collected and analyzed by Merle Eisenberg, of Oklahoma State University, with help from Laura Ingallinella, Skyler Anderson, Jonathan Henry, and Cate Kurtz. Thanks to their hard work, we now have seven years of data on tenure-track jobs (2015–16 to 2022–3) in History, English, Islamic Studies, Italian Studies, Art History, and Religious Studies/Theology. The data confirms what many of us suspected: academic employment for medievalists with Ph.D.s has narrowed considerably over the past decade, the job market for medievalists has not returned to its pre-Covid levels, and tenure-track positions across disciplines are disappearing. Merle’s report is essential reading for anyone who teaches graduate students or who is a graduate student. It underscores how important it is that Ph.D. programs train their students for a broad array of careers and that we all need to continue working to ensure that medievalists outside the academy can remain active in the field after they have written their dissertations. The future of the study of the Middle Ages depends on it!

Robin Fleming, President

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Call for Papers – 2023 Southeastern Medieval Association Annual Conference

Posted on May 26, 2023 by Chris

The Medieval Studies Program at Winthrop University invites proposals for presentations and panels at the 2023 Southeastern Medieval Association Annual Conference. The event will be held on Winthrop’s campus, which is located roughly 25 miles from Charlotte, NC (home to a major airport), on Oct. 12-14.

The theme is “Construction and Reconstruction.” Plenary speakers include Dr. Jacqueline Jung (Professor of History of Art, Yale University) and Dr. Jehangir Malegam (Associate Professor of History, Duke University). More details and the proposal submission form can be found on our website: https://semarockhill2023.com.

**Deadline for submission is June 15.** Please reach out to us at sema2023@winthrop.edu if you have questions.

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Call for Papers – ‘Race’, Divisive Law and Group Identity in Medieval Europe

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Chris

‘Race’, Divisive Law and Group Identity in Medieval Europe
Swansea University, UK
(in association with Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń, Poland)
07 and 08 September 2023

The process of colonisation at the European ‘peripheries’ (e.g. Wales, Ireland, Prussia, Livonia, reconquest Spain, the Levant, etc.), increasing legal consciousness and categorisation, and growing self-awareness among literary, occupational and political communities transformed the social and political landscape of later medieval Europe’s core and peripheral areas alike. This conference shall bring together exciting new perspectives on processes of group formation, group legal and social articulation, and interaction between groups and authorities, broadly conceived.

This will be an interdisciplinary conference welcoming historians, art historians, archaeologists, literary scholars and sociologists. It will discuss the complex relationships that existed between two or more of: formulations of ‘race’ (biological, ethnic, linguistic or proto-national), divisive laws and identity groups. We welcome perspectives incorporating, for example: colonisation, urbanisation, spiritual space, integration/assimilation, rebellion, minority experience, self-expression, material culture, contemporary group characterisations.

Proposals: We invite proposals for 20 minute student papers and 30 minute academic papers (abstracts of 250 words). Proposals should be emailed to Dr Rhiannon Sandy r.sandy@swansea.ac.uk (English language) or Dr Anna Maleszka annam@umk.pl (Polish or German) by 5pm on 01 July 2023.

Pre-register to attend: email r.sandy@swansea.ac.uk or annam@umk.pl

Languages: English and German (with English translation).

Venue:  Swansea University, Wales, UK

Costs: Funding is currently being organised, but speakers should expect it to comprise only a modest fixed contribution to travel and accommodation within the UK. Non-presenting delegates should expect to pay a modest conference fee, with a reduction or waiver for PhD Students.

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Magisterial Feminae: How Women Who Studied the Ancient World Innovated Brooklyn College, the Latin/Greek Institute, and Beyond

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Chris

The Brooklyn College (CUNY) Archives & Special Collections has opened an exhibition celebrating female premodernists who taught at Brooklyn College before 1980, including medievalists (and MAA members) Elizabeth A.R. Brown, Nancy Black, and Jacqueline De Weever.

Brooklyn College Associate Professor of History Lauren Mancia and Assistant Dean for Academic Programs and Director of the Latin/Greek Institute Lucas G. Rubin, as well as twelve History and Classics students from Brooklyn College, have created an incredible exhibit that will serve as a fascinating walk back in time and will run through December 31, 2023. There is also an online version of the exhibition here: https://libguides.brooklyn.cuny.edu/magisterial-feminae.

The exhibition draws from the rich resources of the Brooklyn College Archives and Special Collections. The materials celebrate these women’s extraordinary contributions to the classroom and their discoveries and transformative insights into the study of premodernity. It also situates their achievements in the context of a mid-twentieth-century academic landscape that was always challenging, if not sometimes downright hostile, to women. The exhibit details their hardships and the battle many of these premodernists waged against sexism in the academy in the 1970s, of which the founding of the Brooklyn College Women’s Center and the Women’s Studies Program are a consequence.

There are several major threads to this exhibition that tells the story of the academic achievements of premodernist women faculty, and it demonstrates how their specific training equipped them with an array of skills that were transformative, in and out of the classrooms of Brooklyn College. Other major Brooklyn College institutions will also be highlighted, including the legacy of the Latin/Greek Institute (LGI), celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. Since it was founded in 1973, the LGI has graduated almost 3,000 students, including many medievalists.

“When we began doing the research for this exhibition, we thought we were simply going to tell the stories of these female professors, their academic achievements, and their legacy. We thought we were merely going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Latin/Greek Institute,” Mancia said. “But one of the most surprising and timely things we’ve found in our archival research is how these women time and time again reached for the humanities, and the premodern, at times of crisis in Brooklyn College’s history. After World War II, after the NYC budget crises of the 1970s, and after the enrollment crises resulting from the transformations in CUNY’s admissions and tuition policies in the late 1970s, these women saw the humanities as the means for Brooklyn College’s—and higher education’s—revitalization and survival through hard times.”

The exhibit helps highlight the work of Brooklyn College’s Late-Antique-Medieval-Early-Modern (LAMEM) working group of 23 different faculty members from eight different departments and programs around the School of Humanities and Social Sciences (Art, Classics, English, History, Judaic Studies, Modern Languages and Literatures, Philosophy, and Religion). LAMEM celebrates its 10th year in 2023 and is co-convened by medievalists Lauren Mancia (History) and Karl Steel (English) in 2022-23, and Nicola Masciandaro (English) in 2023-2024.

The exhibit opened on May 2nd, 2023, and medievalists Elizabeth A.R. Brown, Jacqueline De Weever, and Nancy Black were in attendance. Medievalists Sara McDougall (John Jay/Graduate Center CUNY), Nancy Regalado (NYU) and Marianne Kowaleski (Fordham) were also there. Photos of the opening are below.

Visitors without a CUNY ID can show government-issued IDs at any of the campus entrances and enter the Brooklyn College Library to visit the exhibit during normal hours. Anyone interested in arranging a special tour of the exhibit for a class or group before the closing in December can contact Lauren Mancia at laurenmancia@brooklyn.cuny.edu.

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Call for Papers – Epic in the Latin West (4th-15th Centuries)

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Chris

Epic in the Latin West (4th-15th Centuries)
Nuremberg, Wednesday, 25 September 2024 – Saturday, 28 September 2024

Epic, beyond other genres, has been both a guarantor of cultural continuity for millennia and a site of fundamental innovations in literary style and content in Western culture. It has also occasioned heated controversies, because of the complex associations it bears, e.g., with nationalism, colonialism or racism. How do such debates relate to Medieval Latin – or do they?

The conference “Epic in the Latin West (4th–15th Centuries)” proposes to explore the genre in its highly varied developments from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. Medieval Latin gave expression to an overwhelming number of epics, many of them still little studied. The centre of gravity will be the Latin of the Middle Ages, but connections with Classics, other vernaculars, and modernity from the Renaissance to the present day are also possible topics. What do these earlier centuries have to say to the twenty-first?

Many avenues might be investigated, such as:

– Epic Heroes and Heroines: adaptation of classical heroes (from Homer, Virgil, Lucan, and others); questions of gender; rise of new heroes (biblical and saintly); effects of Christianity on the nature of heroism.

– Texts and Genres: epic and other genres (e.g. historical writing, hagiography, philosophy, and theology); defining features of epic; orality and literacy, in composition and transmission; stylistics and metrics; verse in relation to prose.

– Reception: intertextuality, concentrating on Latin but also relating to the vernaculars; text transmission and philological aspects; quotation and paraphrase; text and image; text and music; epic and other media (romances, novels, film, and recent media forms, so long as the connection with Medieval Latin is strong).

The conference will take place under the aegis of the International Medieval Latin Committee (president: Prof. Dr. Jan Ziolkowski, Harvard). Mornings will feature plenary lectures (keynote speeches) by internationally recognized specialists, while the afternoon will have papers given in panel sessions (each 20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion). The conference languages are German, English, French, Italian, Latin, and Spanish.

This call for papers is open to scholars at all career stages who would like to present in the panel sessions. Interested individuals should send their proposals to kongress-epos2024@fau.de under the key word Vortrag Epos 2024 by 1 March 2024.

Please send, in addition to your C.V., the title of your contribution and an abstract in English (max. 300 words). The papers themselves may be delivered in any of the conference languages named above. In selecting papers, the organizers are looking to create a spectrum that is thematically and methodologically as broad as possible.

For more information about the conference and accompanying program, see our homepage:

https://www.mittellatein.phil.fau.de/epos-2024-2/

Prospective presenters and audience members may register there.

For 10 young scholars, travel bursaries in the amount of 400€ each will be available on a competitive basis through the generosity of the HWB Mittellatein Foundation. Please send your application before 30 June 2024, including a full C.V. and a short statement describing your interest in Medieval Latin to: Dr. iur. Felix Berschin, Kennwort „HWB Mittellatein“, Max-Reger-Str. 41, 69121 Heidelberg (Germany)

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