The Medieval Academy Blog

Dear Academy Members,

There is a lot of good work going on in our community, and graduate students are doing a lot of it. The Academy’s Graduate Student Committee, moreover, is leading the way in building community.

A good example is how the GSC has developed its newsletter, the GSC News. The current committee’s chair, Reed O’Mara, describes it as providing early career medievalists “with a space to connect with their peers and colleagues.” I was particularly struck by this goal of connectivity. How is it accomplished? She and recent editor Logan Quigley drew my attention to pieces written by members relating their experiences. Shavauna Munster, for example, wrote movingly in the Winter 2019 issue about her experience of Saint Louis University’s Celebrating Belle da Costa Greene conference. As someone who has labored to put on medieval studies events and sometimes wondered “why the hell bother?,” I felt incredibly uplifted in reading her account: what you put into organizing does make a difference to individuals.

Amplifying the voices of others is central to the newsletter’s goal of community building. These voices have related ideas to consider as well as practical tips on the creative process. Sarah Luginbill, for example, shared how she made her dissertation research on portable altars available to the public through a website. Pedagogical successes have also been shared: Jake Coen offered his experience using the case of Saint Maurice to engage students in critical analysis of White Nationalist medievalism and Alexa Sand provided a guide to using STEM models for group work in the humanities classroom. Mimi Zhou’s tips for getting the most out of attending Leeds taught this long-time conference attendee a few things too!

GSC News editors have been particularly agile in addressing the needs of their community via new series and spin-off projects. Their series on Career Alternatives to Academia and the Tenure Track has featured public historian Danielle Griego describing how she got her fulltime job in a state historical society, and Q&As with the owner/executive producer of a podcast company (Hannah Hethmon) and a program manager at the Newberry Library (Rebecca Fall). A new series on Professionalization in a Virtualizing World has yielded a piece by Rebecca Kilgore on lessons learned from planning online conferences and a particularly revelatory contribution by Gregory J. Tolliver on working with his university’s “Graduate Career Coach.” GSC members are also taking this valuable storytelling project into the podcast medium.

I encourage all members of the Academy to check out the online archive of the GSC News (link below). To facilitate your browsing and acknowledge the generous authors, I’ve provided an index below to the articles published. And if you are an independent or early career scholar willing to share your stories, ideas, projects, and experiences, please reach out to the current editors Reed O’Mara (rao44@case.edu ) and Will Beattie (wbeattie@nd.edu).

In closing, I thank the recent GSC chairs—Theodore Chelis, Jillian Bjerke, Christine Bachman, and Jonathan Correa Reyes—who have nurtured the newsletter’s evolution, and all the members of this vibrant MAA committee. Your efforts are really making a difference.

Maureen C. Miller (mcmiller@berkeley.edu), President of the Medieval Academy of America

INDEX TO BACK-ISSUES OF THE GSC NEWS (available here)

11.1 Winter 2019
Caroline Gruenbaum, “GSC Mentoring Program: A Success Story”

Shavauna Munster, “Conference Spotlight: Celebrating Belle da Costa Greene at Saint Louis University”

11.2 Summer 2019
Mimi Zhou, “Conference Spotlight: Tips for the International Medieval Congress at Leeds”

11.3 Fall 2019
Rachael Vause, “But That’s Another Story: Experiences in Teaching and Learning ‘Difference'”

12.1 Spring 2020
Hannah Weaver, “GSC Mentoring Program: A Reflection”

Alexa Sand, “Teaching Mentorship through Group Work: Applying STEM Practices in the Humanities Classroom”

12.2 Summer 2020
Jake Coen, “Medievalist Pedagogy Against White Nationalism: The Case of Saint Maurice”

Chris Humphrey, “As a medievalist, you are good at solving problems”

Aidan Holtan, “Finding a Routine: The Trials and Errors of Developing a Work/Life Balance”

12.3 (Fall 2020)
Dot Porter, “Creative Medievalism as a Digital Humanist”

Emilee Ruhland, “Juggling Glass Balls: Three Tips for Working at Home”

13.1 (Spring 2021)
Joseph Williams, “Applying to Opportunities: The ‘Fit Strategy’ vs. the ‘Crapshoot'”

Danièle Cybulski, “For Indies, This Above All: To Thine Own Self be True”

Konrad Hughes, “Unintentional Blessings”

13.2 (Summer 2021)
Sarah Luginbill, “Spread the Love: Sharing Your Dissertation Research with the General Public via Websites” (Series on Innovations in Dissertation Research)

Q&A with Hannah Hethmon [Owner and Executive Producer of Better Lemon Creative Audio] (Series on Career Alternatives to Academia and the Tenure Track)

13.3 (Fall 2021)
Angelica Verduci, “Writing a Dissertation on the Triumph of Death in a Time of ‘Plague'” (Series on Innovations in Dissertation Research)

Danielle Griego, “Medievalists and Careers Outside of Academia” (Series on Career Alternatives to Academia and the Tenure Track)

Gregory J. Tolliver, “‘You’re Gonna Make It After All’: Finding Confidence and Community through Nonacademic Professionalization” (Series on Professionalization in a Virtualizing World)

14.1 (Spring 2022)
Gennifer Dorgon, “Is the future of Latin medieval”

Q&A with Rebecca Fall [Program Manager, Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library] (Series on Career Alternatives to Academia and the Tenure Track)

Claire Kilgore, “Planning an Online Conference During a Global Pandemic: Lessons Learned During My Time on the Vagantes Board of Directors”

Dear Colleagues:

The Council of the Medieval Academy of America has voted to establish an Advocacy Committee. This committee will consider and select matters on which the MAA will issue public statements and will craft those statements. The six-member Committee is also charged with reviewing and signing on to the statements issued by other scholarly societies. We seek to assemble a committee that is representative of the membership, including members from different fields within medieval studies, from various career stages and employment profiles, as well as diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and orientations.

Several excellent volunteers have already responded to an earlier call, and we now offer all members of the Academy the opportunity to nominate members to do this important work: who do you think would collaborate effectively to best represent the perspective of medieval studies on current issues? Members need not ascertain the nominee’s willingness to serve before submitting a nomination, and self-nominations are still welcome.

Three Council members and the Academy presidents will craft a balanced slate of nominees and alternates from the members’ nominations and self-nominations, which will be submitted to Council for approval at its July meeting (after which the Executive Director will contact those on the slate to determine their willingness to serve).

You are welcome to make multiple nominations! Submit one nomination per form and look for the “submit another?” prompt at the end. Please submit your nominations by June 15th.

Here’s the Google form to nominate:
https://forms.gle/iRPVBEBHRdV4uarXA

– Maureen Miller, President, Medieval Academy of America

If you’re going to be at the Leeds International Medieval Congress this year, please join us on Tuesday, 5 July, 19.00-20.00 for the Annual Medieval Academy of America Lecture: Carol Symes (Dept. of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign): “Médiévistes sans frontières – Shifting Medieval Boundaries at Multiple Scales”

Afterwards, join Prof. Symes and MAA governance and staff members for the Medieval Academy’s open-bar wine reception.

The Medieval Academy’s Graduate Student Committee roundtable, “Gatekeeping the Middle Ages: Accessing, Congrolling, and Disseminating the Medieval Past in the Modern World,” will take place on Monday, 4 July, from 19.00-20:00.

We hope to see you there!

Thirteen student members of the Medieval Academy have been awarded CARA Summer Scholarships to support their summer coursework, traveling to centers and programs across North America and overseas. We are thrilled to be able to support this supplemental coursework:

Susan Shoshan Abraham (University of Virginia): “Reading Aljamiado” at The Mediterranean Seminar

Tess Artis (University of South Florida): “Beginning Latin” at University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies

Wei-Ting Chen (Department of History, University of Kentucky): “Medieval Latin” at the Marco Institute, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Alexander Amir D’Alisera (Boston College): “Digital Paleography Summer School” at the University of Göttingen

Tiffany Elder (University of Arkansas – Fayetteville): “Paleography and Codicology: A Seminar on Medieval Manuscript Studies” at University of New Mexico

Alexandra Elizabeth Evans (The Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins): “Research Techniques and Applied Musicology” at Medieval Music Besalú

Dov Honick (University of Notre Dame): “Summer Hebrew Manuscript Studies Workshop” at the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Oxford University

Darcy Ireland (Providence College): “Paleography and Codicology: A Seminar on Medieval Manuscript Studies” at the University of New Mexico

Camila Roxana Marcone (Yale University): “Classical Arabic” at The Qasid Arabic Institute, Amman, Jordan

Mitchell Bryan Simpson (University of Arkansas): “Paleography and Codicology: A Seminar on Medieval Manuscript Studies” at the University of New Mexico

Isabel Grace Thomas Howard (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill): “Latin For Reading” at Fordham University

Lauren Urbont (Stanford University): “Summer Workshop in Hebrew Manuscript Studies” at the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Oxford University

Julian Wood (Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge): “Classical Arabic” at The Qasid Arabic Institute, Amman, Jordan

Former MAA President Thomas E. Dale (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison) has been awarded the Chazen Distinguished Chair of Art History for 2022–2027.

Several MAA members were awarded publication prizes at the 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Dyan Elliott (Northwestern Univ.) was awarded this year’s Otto Gründler Prize for her monograph, The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020); and Katie Menendez (Univ. of Toronto) was awarded the Paul E. Szarmach First Article Prize for “Gregory the Great as Intermediary Figure between East and West: The Eleventh-Century Manuscript Context of the Old English Dialogues,” Viator 51 (2020): 241-271.

Katherine French (Univ. of Michigan) has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to support her research on a fifteenth-century London boarding house for single women.

Alani Hicks-Bartlett (Brown Univ.) has been granted a Short-Term Residency at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies to support her research on women and violence in Medieval and Early Modern drama.

William Jordan (Princeton Univ.) has been awarded an honorary degree from Oxford University.

Amy Livingstone (Univ. of Lincoln) has been appointed Head of the Lincoln School of History and Heritage, and Professor of History, at the University of Lincoln, UK.

Sarah Luginbil (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder) has been awarded a 2022-2023 Public Humanities Fellowship from Trinity University’s Humanities Collective in San Antonio.

If you have Good News to share, please send it to Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis.