MAA News – MAA Summer Skills Workshops

In celebration of our 2025 Centennial and to serve a growing need among our constituents, the MAA is offering three online intensive Summer Skills Workshops this year: Old French, Latin Paleography, and Medieval Latin. These workshops are intended to help support training for graduate students as well as advanced undergraduates who are preparing to apply to graduate school, although others are welcome to apply.

Each class will meet online for 6 hours/week for five weeks, with approximately five hours of homework weekly. Classes are non-credit, but students will be presented with a certificate of completion.

The cost to students will be limited to a materials fee of $125 for each five week course. Please note that applicants may only apply to one of the three courses and will be notified of their acceptance by May 15. Applications are due on April 30.

We are very grateful to an anonymous donor for subsidizing instructor honoraria and student tuition and to MAA President Sara Lipton for establishing this initiative.

Applicants may only apply to one of the three courses and must be members of the Medieval Academy of America. Applications must be submitted by April 30.

Click here for more information and to apply.

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MAA News – MAA Book Subventions

The Medieval Academy Book Subvention Program provides two subventions of up to $2,500 each to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of first books by Medieval Academy members. Click here for more information.

The Medieval Academy Inclusivity and Diversity Book Subvention Program provides one subvention of up to $5000 to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of a book by a Medieval Academy member that will broaden the scope of medieval studies. Projects that focus on non-European regions or topics under the Inclusivity and Diversity Committee’s purview such as race, class, disability, gender, religion, or sexuality are particularly welcomed. Click here for more information.

Applications for subventions will be accepted only from the publisher and only for books that have already been approved for publication. Eligible Academy members who wish to have their books considered for a subvention should ask their publishers to apply directly to the Academy, following the guidelines outlined on the relevant webpage. The deadline for proposals is 1 May 2025.

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MAA News – 2025 Belle da Costa Greene Award

The 2025 Belle da Costa Greene Award is being presented to Kartik Maini. Kartik is a PhD Candidate in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at The University of Chicago. Maini’s dissertation project—On Learning to Love the World— is a history of worldly renouncers in medieval & early modern South Asia, utilizing sources in Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, & Persian. Maini was most recently a recipient of the Wenner-Gren Foundation’s Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (2024-25).

Since 2019, the Belle Da Costa Greene Award of $2,000 has been granted by the Medieval Academy of America to a member of the Medieval Academy of America to support research and travel. Belle da Costa Greene (1883-1950) was a prominent art historian and the first manuscript librarian of the Pierpont Morgan collection. She was also the first known person of Color and second woman to be elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1939). According to the Morgan Library & Museum website, “Greene was barely twenty when Morgan hired her, yet her intelligence, passion, and self-confidence eclipsed her relative inexperience, [and] she managed to help build one of America’s greatest private libraries.” She was, just as importantly, a Black woman who passed as White in order to gain entrance and acceptance into the racially fraught professional landscape of early twentieth-century New York. Her legacy highlights the professional difficulties faced by medievalists of Color, the personal sacrifices they make in order to belong to the field, and their extraordinary contributions to Medieval Studies.

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MAA News – 2025 Schallek Awards

The 2025 Schallek Awards are being presented to these five students:

Mikkaela Bailey (The Catholic University of America), “Belongings and Belonging in Medieval East Anglia: Guild, Parish, and Society, 1350-1530”

Eliza H. Feero (Northwestern University), “Re-Forming the Body: Muslim Dismemberment and Identity Change in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature”

Izzy GT Howard (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “Made A Living Soul: Genesis and the Creation of the Soul in Medieval Devotional and Mystic Literature”

John Christopher Houston Loudfoot (University of Waterloo), “Medieval Mine Waste and Social Troubles”

Amanda Mocsi (University of California Riverside), “Medieval Literature, Medieval Wonder, Theories of Curation, and Museum Studies”

The Schallek Awards are jointly sponsored by the Medieval Academy and The Richard III Society American Branch, made possible by a gift to the Richard III Society from William B. and Maryloo Spooner Schallek.

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MAA News – MAA Centennial Digital Humanities Showcase

As part of the celebrations for the MAA’s Centennial Year, the Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Committee and the Graduate Student Committee have partnered to organize a year-long series of webinars showcasing exciting DH projects. These will ordinarily take place on the third Friday of each month, from 1-2pm ET. Each session will feature a moderated discussion of two recent/ongoing DH projects followed by an audience Q&A. Beyond highlighting a diverse array of new and exciting projects in Medieval Studies, this series will also serve as an opportunity to share ideas and best practices within the medieval DH community.

Upcoming sessions include:
Friday, April 18, 1-2 pm ET: EditionCrafter (Pamela Smith, Nicholas Laiacona, and Melissa Reynolds); and Mapping the Medieval Woman (Tracy Chapman Hamilton and Mariah Proctor-Tiffany)

Friday, May 16, 1-2 pm ET: Books of Duchesses (S.C. “Kappie” Kaplan); and Medieval Anglo-Jewish Women 1154-1307 (Adrienne Williams Boyarin).

To register for this webinar series, please fill out the form by clicking here.

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URGENT: Take Action to Defend the NEH

To the Members of the Medieval Academy of America:

As a service to our members, we will occasionally share with you calls to action from organizations with whom we are affiliated. The message below comes from the National Humanities Alliance, regarding threats to the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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An Urgent Message from the NHA:

On Monday, March 31, 2025 we learned that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is targeting the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) with the aim of substantially reducing its staff, cutting the agency’s grant programs, and rescinding grants that have already been awarded.

As we have seen with similar recent actions, including the recent attack on IMLS, these actions have the potential to devastate the agency. We have been in contact with our partners on the Hill, and we are taking other actions to raise awareness about this attack. We encourage our Members to join us in taking these actions:

– Share our statement condemning DOGE actions against NEH

– Contact your representatives using our advocacy alert

– Share our advocacy alert with your members and colleagues

– Alert members of the press about the impact of NEH funding in your state and district

If you have open grants, we encourage you to draw down as much as possible from them as soon as possible. Additionally, if your grant is in any way impacted, it is imperative you let your Members of Congress know. Need help with staffer contact info? Email Alex Klein at aklein@nhalliance.org.

We will be offering office hours for the next two weeks to encourage press outreach, during which we can help you think through messaging, pitch strategies, etc. Sign up for office hours at the following links:

Wednesday, April 2 & 9 – 10:00 a.m. ET

Thursday, April 3 & 10 – 2:00 p.m. ET

Friday, April 4 & 11 – 11:00 a.m. ET

Monday, April 7 – 12:00 p.m. ET

Tuesday, April 8 – 12:00 p.m. ET

We are exploring further actions and will continue to keep you informed as additional action is needed.

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Bristol Medieval Studies Summer School

Bristol Medieval Studies Summer School
15 June – 5 July 2025, University of Bristol

The Bristol Centre for Medieval Studies and the University of Bristol are delighted to announce the launch of the Medieval Studies Summer School 2025, which will run from 16 June to 6 July 2025.

This three-week program is for students (undergraduates, graduates, and postgraduates) who want a foundation in the methodologies needed to examine primary medieval sources and to explore a region of crucial importance in shaping the medieval history of Western Europe.

Students will be working with academics from our internationally recognised Centre for Medieval Studies. This is one of the largest communities of academic medievalists in the UK, giving you a unique opportunity for networking and academic development.

The following main topics will be taught:

  • Medieval history of Bristol and the Southwest of England;
  • Medieval philosophy;
  • Medieval religion and paganism in Britain;
  • Medieval literature in vernacular (Welsh, French, Italian);
  • Literature, landscape and nature in the Middle Ages;
  • Medieval history of art and architecture;
  • Medieval music;
  • Palaeography (Caroline script, Gothic script, Anglicana and Secretarial) and digital tools for palaeography;
  • Codicology (how to work and describe a codex);
  • Textual criticism and fragmentology.

Students will be able to apply the research skills you’ve learned on weekly field trips to exclusive locations, including Gloucester Cathedral, Berkeley Castle, and Wells Abbey.

The provisional timetable can be accessed on our website.

On successful completion, students will receive 10 academic credits, suggested as equivalent to 5 ECTS or 3 US semester credits.

Tuition fees include meals, accommodation, and three guided excursions are: £3,595

We offer a single 10% discount for:

Application deadline: Sunday, 4 May 2025.

For more information, please contact the Director, Dr Leonardo Costantini (leonardo.costantini@bristol.ac.uk) or the Summer School Team (bristol-summer@bristol.ac.uk).

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MAA sends Letter of Concern to the President of Columbia University

The Medieval Academy of America has sent a Letter of Concern to the Interim President and the Provost of Columbia University, signed by the current and immediate-past Presidents of the MAA. Copies were sent by email to several different departments and offices on campus. You may access the letter here.

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Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 51st Annual Byzantine Studies Conference

As part of its ongoing commitment to Byzantine studies, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for Mary Jaharis Center sponsored sessions at the 51st Annual Byzantine Studies Conference to be held in Detroit, Michigan, October 30–November 2, 2025. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website. The deadline for submission is April 14, 2025.

If the proposed session is accepted, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 5 session participants (presenters and chair) up to $800 maximum for scholars traveling from inside North America and up to $1400 maximum for those coming from outside North America. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/51st-bsc

Contact Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

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Online Lecture: The Blood of His Flesh? Controversial Relics from Byzantium in Venice

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the next lecture in our 2024–2025 lecture series.

The Blood of His Flesh? Controversial Relics from Byzantium in Venice
Karin Krause, University of Chicago
April 10, 2025 | 12:00 PM (EDT, UTC -4) | Zoom

This lecture examines the history and shifting interpretations of two relics of the Holy Blood of Christ in the Church of St. Mark’s in Venice between the late Middle Ages and the Baroque era.

One is kept in a Byzantine rock crystal pyx bearing a Greek inscription that identifies its contents as Christ’s carnal blood. Although the artifact is listed in an inventory drawn up in 1325, Venetian sources before the seventeenth century are suspiciously silent about the veneration and whereabouts of this relic. Evidently, the reliquary remained concealed in the Santuario, the relic chamber of St. Mark’s, until its miraculous rediscovery in 1617.

Drawing on sources from Venice and elsewhere, I argue that soon after the arrival of the pyx, its contents must have become part of the theological controversy over the bodily blood of Christ, a Catholic debate questioning the authenticity of such relics. Because of its problematic contents, I conclude, the doges decided not to make the pyx available for public veneration for several centuries. The theological disputes surrounding the relic inside the pyx can be better understood in light of the fate of a second reliquary of the Holy Blood of Christ from Constantinople, which has been in the same church since the thirteenth century.

It was only during the Baroque era that the relic inside the Byzantine pyx was rehabilitated as authentic resulting from the efforts of Giovanni Tiepolo, an accomplished theologian and ecclesiastical leader. I examine the strategies Tiepolo employed to establish the relic’s cult, strategies that illuminate the scholar’s familiarity with Byzantine history and religious culture.

Karin Krause is an Associate Professor in the University of Chicago Divinity School. Trained as an art historian, she specializes in the Christian visual cultures of Byzantium and the premodern Mediterranean region.

Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/the-blood-of-his-flesh

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

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