The Medieval Academy Blog

A Time of Renewal

Dear MAA Members,

Happy New Year!

As we usher in 2022, I hope this letter finds you and your families and loved ones in good health, safe from the pandemic which continues to challenge us all.

With the Omicron wave predicted to crest in mid January, I am still hopeful that many of us will be able to come in person for the Annual Meeting in Charlottesville in March, along with numerous participants online. Whether the meeting remains a hybrid event or shifts entirely online as circumstances warrant will be communicated by the Local Arrangements committee in a timely fashion. Whatever the case may be there will be an exciting program that highlights, among other topics, the importance of medieval studies perspectives on race as we convene at a place that stimulated and is now forever embedded in national conversations about race as a result of the 2017 white nationalist demonstrations and counterprotests. Two plenarists will specifically address race–Roland Betancourt and Seeta Chaganti—and my own presidential address will explore the intersections of race and proto-humanist thinking in the art of Trecento Venice. There will also be a panel discussion sponsored by the MAA Council, “Medieval Studies for the Modern Age: New Approaches to Medicine, Disease, and Health.” Brief contributions by Hannah Barker (Assistant Professor, History, Arizona State), Meg Leja (Assistant Professor, History, SUNY Binghampton), Alex More, (Associate Professor, Public Health and Environmental Health, Long Island University), and Sharon DeWitte (Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina) will be offered in honor of Monica Green (Professor Emerita, History, Arizona State), who will also serve as discussant. The panel will help launch the Monica H. Green Prize for Distinguished Medieval Research, which will be awarded annually, beginning in 2023, for a distinguished project that shows the value of medieval studies in our present day. The Prize, which has generously been established by anonymous donors, brings with it an award of $1,000.

A new year offers opportunities for renewal, and the Council has begun the hard work of rethinking all aspects of our operations and governance, as well as implementing new initiatives that plan for the long-term fiscal health of the organization and the changing demographics of our membership and the landscape of medieval studies in academe and beyond. At our December Council meeting we discussed some initial feedback from all our committees and Maureen Miller has agreed to lead a new working group to gather more data from membership and develop proposals for change. Significant goals will be to enhance transparency and inclusion. For many members, the processes by which new initiatives are launched by Council, and even the ways in which individuals are selected for committees and other tasks remain obscure. We seek to foster greater participation from membership in all aspects of our organization. We have also begun an important conversation about how we can better integrate financial planning into the council’s establishment of key priorities. With membership numbers in a pattern of long-term decline, parallel to other professional societies, we need to be more strategic in planning for future programming initiatives while anticipating declines in membership revenue and investment income while also considering the potential impact of the rise and fall of the market. We cannot afford to be reactive. We want to work toward a more intentional process with appropriate committees receiving ideas from membership and developing proposals for consideration by Council as part of an annual assessment of priorities that can then be forwarded to the Finance Committee and in certain cases the Development committee for fundraising. We need to think in terms of two- or three-year cycles for our financial planning.

At our recent meeting the Council approved a new Advocacy Policy, led by Hussein Fancy and Elina Gertsman. We continue to be called upon to comment on current events and issues that may be illuminated by the special knowledge and/or expertise of the MAA, as well as the professional interest and concern to the MAA’s membership. To facilitate more nimble and effective responses to timely issues, we will establish an Advocacy Committee which will author advocacy statements on behalf of the organization, and in particular cases may seek advice from Council. The statements issued by the committee will specifically address matters about which members of the MAA have special knowledge and expertise. The Advocacy Committee will also be charged with reviewing and signing statements issued by other scholarly societies. We will finalize the structure of the committee and the process of selection at our next Council meeting and publicize the policy on our website.

Another significant discussion at our recent council meeting focused on how we should respond to the changing demographics of medieval studies—the decline in numbers of traditional tenure-track positions and the increasing number of medievalist scholars who take on other careers but continue to contribute to scholarship in the field. Laura Morreale, in collaboration with Merle Eisenberg and Laura Ingallinella, presented us with a brief but striking analysis of academic positions advertised over the past five years, revealing a steady reduction in tenure-track positions and broadening expectations for what medievalists are expected to cover. While we want to continue to make the case for the importance of medieval studies in academe, we also need to plan for a future when most of our members will not be tenure-track professors. Council discussed the possibility of establishing a new committee or expanding the purview of the current Committee on Professional Diversity to develop proposals aimed at supporting research and publication by contingent scholars, adjuncts and medievalists in various professions who don’t have access to scholarly libraries and travel funds.

Another forward-looking initiative in progress is the planning for our Centennial year. Initial meetings of the Centennial Implementation Committee in December yielded many excellent ideas. In addition to special programming for the 100^th Annual Meeting to be held in Boston, we anticipate a full year of programming, lectures, concerts, and exhibitions nationwide in collaboration with museums, libraries and the CARA programs and centers, and a revamp of our website to showcase a wide range of resources for teaching and learning about the Middle Ages. We agreed in principle that programming should be forward-looking and used to expand audiences for medieval studies with intentional outreach to the public including programming that engages typically underrepresented communities, and should aim to be truly global, including regions and interactions beyond Europe, medieval indigenous cultures, and distinct religious traditions in addition to Latin Christianity. In the spring, smaller working groups will develop concrete plans for implementation including any necessary funding to be considered by Council. I want to encourage medievalists to organize programming in their own communities during the 2025 centennial year, that MAA can advertise on our website in a special Centennial Events calendar. It is not to early to start planning.

In conclusion, I wanted to thank all our members who have renewed their membership and express my deep gratitude to those of you who so generously contributed to our year-end appeal. This was a banner year, including total gifts of $75,000. Added to our endowment these funds will help ensure we can carry out significant programing initiatives in upcoming years.

Sincerely,

Thomas E. A. Dale, President

We are very pleased to announce the results of the 2022 governance election, which closed at 11:59 PM on Jan. 3:

President: Maureen Miller (History, Univ. of California, Berkeley)
1st Vice-President: Robin Fleming (History, Boston College)
2nd Vice-President: Sara Lipton (History, Stony Brook Univ.)

Council:
Julia Walworth (Manuscript Studies, Merton College Library, Oxford Univ.)
Adam Cohen (Art History, Univ. of Toronto)
Tracy Chapman Hamilton (Art History, Sweet Briar College)
Constant Mews (Religious Studies, Monash Univ.)

Nominating Committee:
John Tolan (History, Univ. of Nantes)
Margaret Graves (Art History, Indiana Univ.)

781 ballots were cast, representing voter turnout of around 20%. Our thanks to all who voted and to all who stood for election, and our congratulations to all who were elected.

The 2022 Election of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America closed on Monday, 3 January. The results have been certified by the President of the Fellows and the Fellows Nominating Committee, and the new Fellows have been informed of their election.

We are very pleased to introduce the Fellows Class of 2022:

Fellows:
Suzanne Conklin Akbari
Deborah Deliyannis
Consuelo Dutschke
Sean Field
Elina Gertsman
Richard Firth Green
Fiona Griffiths
Carol Lansing
Robert Ousterhout
Jerome Singerman
Laura Ackerman Smoller

Corresponding Fellow:
Nicholas Charles Vincent

The chief purpose of the Fellowship is to honor major long-term scholarly achievement within the field of Medieval Studies. Fellows are nominated by MAA members and elected by the Fellows. To learn more about the Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America, please see the Fellows section of our website.

Please join us (online or in person) as we honor these colleagues at the annual Induction Ceremony for new Fellows during the Fellows Plenary Session on Saturday, 12 March, at the upcoming Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America. Last year’s virtual induction videos can be found here.

The 97th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place from March 10-13. The meeting is jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America and the Program in Medieval Studies at the University of Virginia, with the generous support and collaboration of colleagues from Virginia Tech, the College of William & Mary, and Washington and Lee University. The conference program features a diverse range of sessions highlighting innovative scholarship across the many disciplines contributing to medieval studies.

A near-final draft of the schedule of papers and sessions in PDF form is available here. The official conference site, hosted by Whova and allowing for both virtual and in-person participation, can be found here. Note that details will be filled in depending on whether the conference has an in-person component. The Medieval Academy and the Program Committee will make a decision on this matter by February 1, 2022 at the latest.

Please check this page for additional information and for the latest updates:
https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/2022AnnualMeeting

98th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America
The Grand Hyatt, Washington, DC
23-26 February, 2023

The 98th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place at the Grand Hyatt Washington in downtown Washington, DC. The meeting is jointly hosted by the Medieval Academy of America and a consortium of medievalists from DC, Northern Virginia, and Maryland.

The conference program will feature sessions highlighting innovative scholarship across the many disciplines contributing to medieval studies. The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies and medievalism, including on the themes and strands proposed below. 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 will be given to individuals whose field would not normally involve membership in the Medieval Academy. We are particularly interested in receiving submissions from those working outside of traditional academic positions, including independent scholars, emeritus or adjunct faculty, university administrators, those working in cultural heritage institutions (libraries, archives, museums, scholarly societies, or cultural research centers), editors and publishers, and other fellow medievalists. The Program Committee seeks to construct a program that fully reflects and expands the diversity of the Medieval Academy’s membership with respect to research areas and representation.

Plenary addresses will be delivered by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Professor of Medieval Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Anne Dunlop, Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne; and Maureen Miller, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley, and incoming president of the Academy.

Click here for the full call for papers.

Editors:
François-Xavier Fauvelle, Collège de France
Nahir Otaño Gracia, University of New Mexico
Cord J. Whitaker, Wellesley College

For far too long, scholarly consensus held that race and racism were mainly Enlightenment innovations, datable to no earlier than the seventeenth century. As long ago as the early twentieth century, some scholars pushed race’s origins to the sixteenth or even fifteenth centuries, but these scholars were few and far between. The Middle Ages and, with them, medieval studies were set off as a time and discipline innocent of race and racism. This remained generally true until the advent of critical medieval race studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Now, in 2021, special issues in major journals and no less than six full-length scholarly monographs have treated the imbrications of race with medieval art, literature, religion, and even the periodizing concept of the Middle Ages itself. Many more studies in medieval literature, history, art, religion, and culture have been conceptually informed by race, as have many studies in the modern perceptions and deployments of the Middle Ages. Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies calls for proposals for a themed issue, to be published as one of Speculum’s four quarterly issues, to recognize the intellectual value of the study of race to a comprehensive understanding of the Middle Ages.

We invite proposals for full-length essays (8,000-11,000 words) that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages. For example, essays might consider the roles of race-making and racialization in the Islamic world; how race and identity, together with religion, was negotiated and navigated in border regions such as al-Andalus, Sicily or the Levant (between Latin Christendom and Islam), the Sahara and the Sahel region (between the Islamic world and Subsaharan Africa); how the dynamics of race-thinking informed relations between Latin and Greek Christendom and Islam or the Mongol Empire, or between the Muslim/Islamicate world and Christian, Jewish, Hinduist, and traditional-religious societies within it or beyond its reaches; how race intersected with the dynamics of trade and connectivity, religious affiliation and conversion, slavery and emancipation, peace and war. Essays may also take on the roles of race, race-thinking, and identity in the geography and periodization of the Middle Ages: Are historical moments that are quintessential to the history of race also relevant to medieval-and-modern periodizations? Essays may also consider how and why race, race-thinking, and identity have shaped modern concepts, uses, and scholarship of the Middle Ages.

The editors are open to essays that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages by asking these and other deeply probing questions. Additionally, we are especially interested in essays that consider the globality of the medieval world: those that examine the networked interrelations and interdependences of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. In addition to scholarship in history and literature, we invite proposals using the tools and methods of anthropology, archaeology, art history, book history, historical linguistics, religious studies, sociology, and other fields germane to the studies of race, identity, and the Middle Ages.

The themed issue on race, race-thinking, and identity and the articles selected for it will be in keeping with Speculum’s purview as stated in the Guidelines for Submission: “preference is ordinarily given to articles of interest to readers in more than one discipline and beyond the specialty in question. Articles taking a more global approach to medieval studies are also welcomed, particularly when the topic engages with one or more of the core areas of study outlined above. Submissions with appeal to a broad cross-section of medievalists are highly encouraged.”

Proposals should be no more than 500 words in length and should be submitted by email to cord.whitaker@wellesley.edu with SPECULUM PROPOSAL in the subject line by 31 January 2022. The authors of selected proposals will be notified by 28 February 2022. Completed essays will be expected by 1 December 2022.

Tori Schmitt

My dissertation examines the early Gothic architecture and sculpture of the now destroyed abbey of Sainte-Geneviève-du-Mont in Paris. Dismantled between 1793 and 1807, the abbey today counts among the numerous medieval churches destroyed in the French Revolution, long regarded within the field of Art History as unknowable architectural monuments lost to time. Working against this pervasive classification, my written dissertation, aided by a digital model and database, examines the architecture of Sainte-Geneviève through a corpus of more than fifty surviving objects, including capitals, sculptural fragments, and architectural illustrations of the abbey. In doing so, my dissertation aims not only to reconstruct and contextualize this significant medieval edifice, but to question how an engrained scholarly preference for extant architecture has shaped scholarly understanding of Gothic architecture and sculpture.

Titled “Reconstructing the Medieval Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, c. 1107-1210,” my project considers the rebuilding of the abbey—understood to be one of the first experiments in the Gothic style—as part of a visual argument to convey the political and religious clout of the abbey and its cult to nearby competitors. By the start of the twelfth century, the abbey was among the oldest foundations in Paris and an important site of pilgrimage; established in 502 as the royal necropolis for the Merovingian King Clovis, the site also housed the tomb of Geneviève (c. 419-502), the patron saint of Paris. After an 1129 miracle of the saint, in which Geneviève’s relics saved the city from a disastrous plague of ergot poisoning, Geneviève reached a new level of popularity in Paris, with multiple sites, most notably the Cathedral Notre-Dame and Sainte-Geneviève, vying for control of her cult in subsequent decades. Examining the reconstruction of Sainte-Geneviève in the 1130s- 1150s through a social historical lens, I argue that the abbey’s early Gothic chevet was not simply an apolitical adoption of an emerging stylistic mode, but rather, part of a larger campaign to bolster the abbey’s claim to Geneviève through art and liturgy.

In each of my four chapters, I examine the twelfth-century architecture of Sainte-Geneviève through the lens of different sets of fragments and archival materials. My first chapter, “Geneviève of Paris,” examines how visual depictions and liturgical performances associated the Nanterre-born saint with Paris and its urban landmarks. In placing the medieval iconography of the saint in dialogue with her liturgical celebration, I aim to show how the abbey and diocese of Paris laid authoritative claim to Genevieve’s cult over other significant locations mentioned in her vita, such as Auxerre and Nanterre. In the second chapter, I discuss the rebuilding of Sainte-Geneviève within the the political and ecclesiastical landscape of 1130s Paris. Evidence for this chapter spans a variety of media; in addition to cross-examining early modern architectural prints of the abbey with modern archeological surveys, my research will include comparison of fragments with extant portions of the abbey’s tower and refectory, now contained within the Lycée Henri IV. In my third and fourth chapters, I turn to the varied corpus of architectural sculpture which survives the abbey and its conservation after the French Revolution at Alexandre Lenoir’s Musée des Monuments français. Through analysis of archival documentation at the Bibliothèque Historique de Ville Paris (BHVP, Ms 3676, Ms 222-264) Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (BSG Ms 90-91, Ms 3888-9) and Archives nationales (AN L/879-887), I seek to trace the survival of the thirty-some sculptural fragments held today in the collections of the Louvre and Musée de Cluny.

In addition to my written dissertation, my project includes a digital model of the twelfth-century abbey. In recent years, advances in three-dimensional modeling have opened radical new possibilities for the study of ancient architecture which have enabled scholars to visualize non-extant architecture with greater accuracy. No longer categorized as “lost to time,” digital modeling allows scholars to propose a comprehensive and data-driven visual argument for how a building may have looked at different moments in time, with the further possibility to explore counterfactuals or propose multiple concurrent hypotheses. The objective of my digital model is to clearly visualize the different sources discussed in my written dissertation; linked metadata and annotations will highlight my own interpretation of measurements and other data contained in primary sources. In doing so, my primary aim is to highlight, rather than obscure, any points of uncertainty in aim of encouraging collaborative future inquiry and to emphasize the rigorous analysis of primary sources which underlies my scholarly reconstruction of Sainte-Geneviève.

Alexandra Atiya

My dissertation, “Economic and Spiritual Conflict in Medieval East Anglian Drama,” investigates the relationship between economic conflicts and dramatic forms in late-medieval morality and miracle plays. Focusing on the depiction of trade, labor rebellion, and corruption in plays including the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, Mankind, Wisdom, and The Castle of Perseverance, I argue that contemporary economic conflicts are more than just topical villains or vices slotted into a didactic model of drama; rather, they seem to shape the plays’ variegated and unusual dramatic forms. Building on recent work that re-evaluates the morality play genre, my dissertation employs close reading of play texts, analysis of manuscript evidence, and research into relevant historical contexts to examine the blurring of moral boundaries and the adaptability of allegory in late-medieval performance.

Colouring the Archives: Race Formations in the Late-Medieval Florence
Angela Zhang

My project combines premodern critical theory with archival documents to explore the processes of race formation in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I focus on the racializing processes involved in the partial transition from the West Asian slave trade to the West African in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. When Florence legalized the trade of enslaved non-Catholics in 1364, they began recording the physical and ethnographic attributes of the people, mostly women, they enslaved from the east. However, by 1461, the influx of enslaved West-Africans led to a simplification of these terms into a binary black and white. In archival documents, such as letters, bills of sale, tax registers, and foundling hospital records, the change in the descriptive vocabulary of enslaved women from Tatar, Circassian, Russian, and Greek to a universal Black between 1364 and 1480 was a crucial moment for the development of racialized vocabulary and its use in daily life. My research seeks to build on the emerging field of premodern race scholarship by examining race processes as an ongoing phenomenon that is intertwined with gender, sexual violence, domestic labour, and reproduction by examining the minute interactions and vocabularies of Florentines and the people they enslaved.

The Medieval Academy of America invites applications for the following grants. Please note that applicants must be members in good standing as of September 15 in order to be eligible for Medieval Academy awards.

Summer Research Program for early PhD or early PhD-track students.
Organized by the Mentoring Program Committee, the Summer Research Program is designed to mentor early graduate students in fields intersecting with medieval studies by providing sustained mentorship to better help graduate students succeed in their doctoral programs and establish promising careers. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 January)

Belle Da Costa Greene Award
The Belle Da Costa Greene Award of $2,000 will be granted annually to a medievalist of color for research and travel. The award may be used to visit archives, attend conferences, or to facilitate writing and research. The award will be granted on the basis of the quality of the proposed project, the applicant’s budgetary needs (as expressed by a submitted budget and in the project narrative), and the estimation of the ways in which the award will facilitate the applicant’s research and contribute to the field. Special consideration will be given to graduate students, emerging junior scholars, adjunct, and unaffiliated scholars. Click here for more information. Click here to make a donation in support of the Greene Award. (Deadline 15 February 2022)

Olivia Remie Constable Award
Four Olivia Remie Constable Awards of $1,500 each will be granted to emerging junior faculty, adjunct or unaffiliated scholars (broadly understood: post-doctoral, pre-tenure) for research and travel. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2022)

MAA Dissertation Grants:
The nine annual Medieval Academy Dissertation Grants support advanced graduate students who are writing Ph.D. dissertations on medieval topics. The $2,000 grants help defray research expenses. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2022)

Schallek Awards
The five annual Schallek awards support graduate students conducting doctoral research in any relevant discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain (ca. 1350-1500). The $2,000 awards help defray research expenses. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2022)

MAA/GSC Grant for Innovation in Community-Building and Professionalization
The MAA/GSC Grant(s) will be awarded to an individual or graduate student group from one or more universities. The purpose of this grant is to stimulate new and innovative efforts that support pre-professionalization, encourage communication and collaboration across diverse groups of graduate students, and build communities amongst graduate student medievalists. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2022)

Applicants for these and other MAA programs must be members in good standing of the Medieval Academy. Please contact the Executive Director for more information about these and other MAA programs.