The Medieval Academy Blog

I was very pleased to have attended the Annual Meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies in Philadelphia on April 27-29 together with the MAA’s new ACLS Delegate Afrodesia McCannon (New York Univ.). Many MAA members may not realize that in addition to offering grants and fellowships, the ACLS provides critical support, counsel, and training for staff, governance, and volunteer leadership of its seventy-nine constituent learned societies. The Medieval Academy of America was among the earliest members of ACLS, joining in 1927. As our delegate, Prof. McCannon is a voting member of the ACLS Council and is tasked with delivering an annual report on ACLS meetings and programming to the MAA Council and members. This report is delivered during our own Annual Meeting and is published in the July issue of Speculum each year.

This year’s ACLS Annual Meeting included panels, lectures, and discussions focusing on the complexities of open-access publishing, ongoing threats to the humanities, legislative attacks on academic free speech, and issues facing students, teachers, and staff at HBCUs nationwide. All of these topics are of import to the MAA as we think about the direction of our own publishing programs, the future of Medieval Studies, and efforts to make our field and our organization a welcoming and safe space for BIPOC medievalists and their work. On Friday evening, the 2023 Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture was delivered by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who spoke about the journey from his childhood in rural West Virginia to his role as producer and host of the PBS series “Finding Your Roots.”

On Saturday morning, I was elected to the Executive Committee of the Conference of Executive Officers (CEO), where I had been serving a one-year replacement term. I look forward to serving a full three-year term working with Executive Directors from other ACLS societies to set priorities and agendas for the CEO’s biannual meetings. The CEO has been an incredibly valuable resource for me throughout my tenure as ED, and I am grateful to have the opportunity to be part of its leadership.

– Lisa

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

Now that the International Congress on Medieval Studies is back to meeting in person (May 11-13), the Medieval Academy of America will be returning to Kalamazoo as well:

1) The Friday morning plenary, sponsored by the Academy, will be delivered by Thelma Thomas (Institute of Fine Arts, New York University): “Clothing the Angelic Life: The Desert Fathers on the Necessity of Clothing for Monks, Angels, and Adam” (Friday, May 12, 8:30 AM, Bernhard Ballroom). Two related sessions organized by Prof. Thomas will take place on Thursday at 3:30 PM (Session 133, Schneider 2335, hybrid format) and Friday at 1:30 PM (Session 253, virtual format).

2) On Thursday at 1:30 and 3:30 PM, the Graduate Student Committee is sponsoring a two-part workshop on “Careers Beyond the Academy” (Sessions 81 and 131). Both sessions will take place in Schneider Hall 1330 and in hybrid format.

3) The Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) is sponsoring two roundtables: Making Medieval I: The Experiential Pedagogy of Literature and the Arts (Friday, 10 AM, Session 189, Schneider Hall 2345 (hybrid)) and Making Medieval II: The Experiential Pedagogy of Bodies and Things (Friday, 1:30 PM, Session 208, Fetzer Center 1040/1050).

4) The annual CARA Luncheon is back! The luncheon will take place on Friday May 12 at noon (Bernhard, President’s Dining Room). This annual event is a forum for sharing ideas and best practices for supporting and growing medieval studies on campus and beyond We hope you will attend as a representative of your institution, center, program, or department. There is no fee to attend, but pre-registration is required and space is limited to fifty attendees. Click here for more information and to register.

5) 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!

May 5, 2023 at 12pm-1:30pm EST

Nicole Lopez-Jantzen, CUNY: Borough of Manhattan Community College and Graduate Center, “Shifting Concepts of Race: Italy through the Earlier Middle Ages”

Responder: Dr. Sarah Davis-Secord, University of New Mexico

May 19, 2023 at 12pm-1:30pm EST

Sierra Lomuto, Rowan University, “Mongols in Medieval Europe: Exoticism and the Legend of Prester John”

Responder: Dr. Nahir Otaño Gracia, University of New Mexico

Click here for more information and to register.

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

The following grants were awarded in recent weeks:

Olivia Remie Constable Awards:

Louisa Foroughi, “Peasant Femininity and the Female Relations of Yeomen in Later Medieval England”

Margaret K. Smith, “Identity and Authority in Medieval Ireland”

Kristen Streahle, “Opportunities Underfoot: Repairing Sanità through Community Organizing and Cultural Heritage Stewardship”

Justin Willson, “The Sacralization of Art in Late Medieval Muscovy”

Dissertation Grants:

Hope Emily Allen Grant: Noa Ania Nikolsky (University of Pennsylvania), “Governing Bodies: The Regimen Sanitatis in Late Medieval Europe”

John Boswell Grant: Gabriela Chitwood (University of Oregon), “Toulouse Cathedral: Understanding Life in and around a Cathedral under Construction”

Helen Maud Cam Grant: Claire Kilgore (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Sensing the Bodily Interior: Visualizing Pregnancy and Reproductive Anatomy in Central Europe, 1300-1550”

Grace Frank Grant: Douglass Hamilton (Fordham University), “The Knight God Forgave: Longinus and the Negotiation of Knightly Piety c. 1000 – c. 1300”

Etienne Gilson Grant: Hallie Voulgaris (Yale University), “Practicing Music Theory with Mind, Body, and Soul in the treatises of Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Urmawī”

Frederic C. Lane Grant: Paige Lynch (University of New Mexico), “Associations between Climate Change, Feudalism, and their Biological Consequences for a Medieval Polish Population”

Robert and Janet Lumiansky Grant: Shannah Rose (New York University), “The Codex Ríos and the Reception of Mesoamerican Pictography in Early Modern Rome”

E. K. Rand Grant: Marcel Camprubi (Princeton University), “Lines of Thought: Notation and Music Books in Early Abbasid Baghdad (762-1055)

Charles Tuttle Wood Grant: Adam Matthew Aaron (University of Tennessee-Knoxville), “The Sons of Melisende: Baldwin III, Amalric, and Kingship in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1143-1174 CE”

Belle da Costa Greene Award:

Anwesha Das, “Connecting Threads: Gujarat and its Textile Trade in the Medieval Indian Ocean (11th-15th Century CE)”

Schallek Awards:

Mary M. Alcaro (Rutgers University), “Plague Trauma and the Pestilential Poetics of Late Fourteenth Century British Literature”

Erin Kurian (University of Waterloo), “The Cinque Ports: An Urban Confederation in Decline 1350-1450”

Morgan McMinn (West Virginia University), “Daily Life of the Religious in the Late Medieval Diocese of Lincoln”

Bard Swallow (University of Toronto), “The Role of Latin Poetry in Late Medieval England”

Emily Youree (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “Outlaw Discourse: The Affinity of King and Outlaw in Late Middle English Literature”

Congratulations to all of the recipients! We are so pleased to be able support these scholars and their research.

The following students have been offered MAA/CARA Summer Scholarships:

Katie Despeaux (The University of New Mexico), “Reading Old French” at The Mediterranean Seminar;

Eliza H. Feero (Northwestern University), “Introduction to Latin Paleography, 800-1500” at Rare Book School, Virginia;

Eva Kuras (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), “Manuscript Culture in Boccaccio’s Times” at The American Boccaccio Association and Ente Nazionale Giovanni Boccaccio;

Flannery Elisabeth McIntyre (University of California, Berkeley), “International Byzantine Greek Summer School (IBGSS)” at Trinity College Dublin;

Reed Alexis O’Mara (Case Western Reserve University), “Modern Hebrew” at Middlebury Language Schools;

Marie Sarnacki (Eastern Michigan University), “Reading Old French” at The Mediterranean Seminar;

Xin Yue Wang (University of Toronto), “Scientific Analysis of the Book” at Rare Book School, Virginia;

Marshall Woodward (University of Houston), “Introduction to Latin Paleography, 800-1500” at Rare Book School, Virginia.

Congratulations! The MAA is very pleased to be able to support these students’ participation in summer programming that supplements their graduate coursework.

Geraldine Heng (Univ. Texas at Austin) has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sean Field (University of Vemont) will be a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2023-24, where he will be working on a new project entitled Women Writing Saints’ Lives: Gendered Authority and Female Authorship in the Middle Ages.

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