The Medieval Academy Blog

Call for Papers – The British Archaeological Association Post-Graduate Conference

Posted on July 9, 2021 by Chris

The British Archaeological Association Post-Graduate Conference, Saturday 27th November 2021

The BAA invites proposals by postgraduates and early career researchers in the field of medieval history of art, architecture, and archaeology.

Papers can be on any aspect of the medieval period, from antiquity to the later Middle Ages, across all geographical regions.

The BAA postgraduate conference offers an opportunity for postgraduate students and early career researchers at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present and discuss their research, and exchange ideas.

Proposals of around 250 words for a 20-minute paper, along with a CV, should be sent by 31st July 2021 to postgradconf@thebaa.org

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Call for Papers – The Multimedia Craft of Wonder: Forming and Performing Marvels in Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, 1200-1600

Posted on July 9, 2021 by Chris

The Multimedia Craft of Wonder:
Forming and Performing Marvels in Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, 1200-1600

1^st December 2021, Churchill College, University of Cambridge (in person)

This conference, funded by the interdisciplinary Cambridge centre CRASSH and the Faculty of English, will explore the relationship between wonder, translation, and multimodality in medieval and early modern worlds.

In recent years, renewed critical attention has been paid to wonders and spectacles as wide-ranging as mechanical clocks, printing presses, royal displays, alchemical writings, and professional theatres. This conference will build upon that scholarship by focusing attention onto the dynamics of representing wonder (and wonders) in, across, and between media: in written genres such as chronicles, poetry, letters, handbills, and songs, how were physical marvels recorded, described, or reconstructed through language and literary form? Conversely, how did language shape physical processes of performance, craft, and construction in playscripts, alchemical writings, and books of secrets? What risks and opportunities did translation between media, modes, and genres present?

The conference will take a broad approach to the definition of a ‘marvel’, recognising that the line between human, natural, and supernatural wonders was often indistinct or contested. Papers might address topics such as:

The encoding of wonder through specific linguistic devices (e.g. narrative, allegory)
Textual reconstructions and dramatic uses of mechanical marvels (e.g. clocks, automata)
Representations of natural and demonic magic in text and/or performance
Depictions of alchemy and other scientific marvels in written and visual media
Medieval and early modern drama, magic within the theatre, and its written inscription
Performance contexts and logistics for the staging of wonders
Written or visual commemorations of royal and civic pageantry
Depictions of, and instructions for, creating wonders in craft manuals and household recipe books
Relations between wonder, music, and sound

The keynote address will be delivered by Dr Anke Bernau, Senior Lecturer in Medieval English Literature at the University of Manchester.

We hope to attract submissions from a wide range of disciplines including (but not limited to) literary studies, history of science and technology, music, philosophy, and drama.

Papers should be 20 minutes each. Abstracts of 250 words accompanied by a short biographical statement should be sent (along with any queries) to craftofwonder2021@gmail.com by 1^st August 2021. Check out our website too at https://craftofwonder.crassh.cam.ac.uk/

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Jobs for Medievalists

Posted on July 7, 2021 by Chris

Assistant Professor of Teaching, Global History Before 1500

Assistant Professor of Teaching (Educational Leadership Stream) in Global History Before 1500

The Department of History, University of British Columbia (Vancouver) invites applications for a full-time tenure-track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor of Teaching in global history before 1500, with an expected start date of 1 July 2022. Fields and geographical specializations are open, but preference will be given to approaches that connect regions rather than perpetuate historical and historiographical insularity. Experience and expertise in auxiliary disciplines such as digital humanities or archaeology would be assets, but are not required. In addition to offering upper-division courses within their area of specialization, the successful candidate will teach the lower division undergraduate course in global history before 1500.

The normal teaching load of an Assistant Professor of Teaching is six 3-credit courses over the academic year. As this is a tenure-track position in the Educational Leadership stream, the successful candidate will be reviewed for reappointment, tenure, and promotion in subsequent years, in accordance with the Collective Agreement. For a description of the Assistant Professor of Teaching rank and criteria for reappointment and promotion, visit: http://www.hr.ubc.ca/faculty-relations/collective-agreements/appointment-faculty/.

We seek candidates who demonstrate a commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion of underrepresented groups in academia; to engaging the needs of diverse student populations; and to diversifying what and how we know about the past.

Candidates should have (relative to career stage and field) demonstrated or potential ability to: a) design and teach a range of courses in both lecture and seminar formats; b) advance innovation in teaching and learning with impact beyond one’s classroom; c) develop and successfully manage educational initiatives that enhance the undergraduate experience; d) foster collaborative work and reciprocal partnerships within the department, university, higher education, and/or broader communities.

Applicants should apply only through the History Department’s Internal Resources website at https://hist.air.arts.ubc.ca/6092-2-gh-jr3026/

Applicants should upload, in the following order, collated into a single PDF file:

a cover letter or letter of application
a curriculum vitae
a brief statement identifying the applicant’s experience working with a diverse student body, and contributions, or potential contributions, to advancing a culture of equity and inclusion within the university and beyond
a sample syllabus
evidence of teaching effectiveness (such as course evaluations or peer reviews)
a sample publication

Applicants should also provide names and contact information for three scholars willing to provide letters of reference; we will request letters directly for candidates who advance in the search process.

Review of applications will begin on 1 September 2021 and will continue until the position has been filled. Applicants with questions about the position are welcome to contact the search chair, Dr. Courtney Booker at cbooker@mail.ubc.ca This position is subject to final budgetary approval. Salary is competitive and commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Equity and diversity are essential to academic excellence. An open and diverse community fosters the inclusion of voices that have been underrepresented or discouraged. We encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the B.C. Human Rights Code, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, racialization, disability, political belief, religion, marital or family status, age, and/or status as a First Nation, Métis, Inuit, or Indigenous person. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents of Canada will be given priority.

UBC welcomes and encourages applications from persons with disabilities. Accommodations are available on request for all candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process. For requests related to access needs, please contact the head of the History Department: History.Head@ubc.ca The University is committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and equitable work environment for all members of its workforce, and in particular, for its employees with disabilities. An inclusive work environment for employees with disabilities presumes an environment where differences are accepted, recognized, and integrated into current structures, planning, and decision-making modes. For contact information regarding UBC’s accommodation and access policies and resources (for faculty and staff as well as students), please visit the Centre for Accessibility.

Given the uncertainty caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, applicants must be prepared to conduct interviews remotely if circumstances require. A successful applicant may be asked to consider an offer containing a deadline without having been able to make an in-person visit to campus if travel and other restrictions are still in place.

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Call for Papers – Freedom & Work in Western Europe (c.1250-1750)

Posted on July 1, 2021 by Chris

Freedom & Work in Western Europe (c.1250-1750)
6-8 July 2022 | Three-day conference | Exeter, UK
CALL FOR PAPERS

Work can be a source of freedom, wealth and self-respect, but also exploitation, poverty and subjugation. Existing grand narratives suggest that labour in fifteenth-century Western Europe became ‘free’ after the end of serfdom. Yet some workers had more freedom than others. Women were excluded from many occupations, while in some cultures married women had no right to own property or the fruits of their labour. Labour laws controlled workers such as servants and apprentices, who were placed in the same legal relationship to the household head as children. As recent studies of serfdom and slavery have shown, we need to move beyond a sharp division between bondage and freedom to explore the many factors that restricted or promoted freedom within and through work.

This conference explores these complex relations between freedom and work in Western Europe from 1250 to 1750. It especially encourages approaches which extend outside the employer-employee relationship to explore how family, community and state determined the degree of exploitation or empowerment in working life; broaden our scope beyond the adult male worker to centre previously marginalised workers, like women and servants; apply theoretical ideas from other disciplines to re-examine the nature of freedom in relation to historical forms of work; compare relative degrees of freedom or unfreedom across different forms of labour, cultures, legal systems or time periods; and/or contextualise labour in Western Europe with respect to forms of colonial slavery.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers that might address, but are not limited to, the following themes in relation to freedom and work:

Gender and women’s economic freedom
Age and life-cycles
Poverty and economic coercion
Laws regulating labour or commerce
Varieties of wage labour
Contracts and consent
Slavery, serfdom and their intersection
Training, skills, development of capacities

Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words and a biography of 100 words (in English) to FORMSofLABOUR@exeter.ac.uk by 16 August 2021.

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2022 Marco Manuscript Workshop: “Interventions” – Deadline Sept. 24, 2021

Posted on July 1, 2021 by Chris

Marco Manuscript Workshop 2022
“Interventions”
February 4-5, 2022
Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

The seventeenth annual Marco Manuscript Workshop will take place Friday, February 4, and Saturday, February 5, 2022, in person at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The workshop is organized by Professors Maura K. Lafferty (Classics) and Roy M. Liuzza (English), and is hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

This year’s workshop explores the idea of “interventions.” Some manuscripts are pristine, their ink dark and their colors bright, their pages gleaming and unworn. They sit in our modern libraries as fresh as the day they emerged from their scriptorium; their deceptive newness dazzles the eye. Most manuscripts, however, bear signs of use or the marks of their eventful histories, the traces of their lives among readers and in libraries. Many readers worked with a pen, or a knife, in their hand, and they have left their marks on books in various ways—corrections, glosses, annotations, additions, emendations, censored passages, reordered pages and quires, attempts at restoration or refreshing a faded page, supplying missing text on new leaves, even breaking a manuscript apart into several separate books. Some of these readerly acts correct perceived deficiencies in the text, some seek to improve or update, while others try to repair the damage wrought by time and accident on the book. All these practices indicate that the reader thought the book contained some sort of difficulty that needed intervention; they mark the moment when a reader has stepped in to solve a problem. These signs of use and wear capture the intersection of two histories, the book and the reader; they track the process of reading and responding to the book, and help us reconstruct the life and afterlife of manuscripts and texts. As always, we welcome presentations on any aspect of this topic, broadly imagined.

The workshop is open to scholars and graduate students in any field who are engaged in textual editing, manuscript studies, or epigraphy. Individual 75-minute sessions will be devoted to each project; participants will be asked to introduce their text and its context, discuss their approach to working with their material, and exchange ideas and information with other participants. As in previous years, the workshop is intended to be more like a class than a conference; participants are encouraged to share new discoveries and unfinished work, to discuss both their successes and frustrations, to offer practical advice and theoretical insights, and to work together towards developing better professional skills for textual and codicological work. We particularly invite the presentation of works in progress, unusual problems, practical difficulties, and new or experimental models for studying or representing manuscript texts. Presenters will receive a $500 honorarium for their participation.

The deadline for applications is September 24, 2021. Please note that this is an earlier deadline than in years past. Applicants are asked to submit a current CV and a two-page abstract of their project to Roy M. Liuzza, preferably via email to rliuzza@utk.edu, or by mail to the Department of English, University of Tennessee, 301 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0430.

The workshop is also open at no cost to scholars and students who do not wish to present their own work but are interested in sharing a lively weekend of discussion and ideas about manuscript studies. Further details will be available later in the year; please contact the Marco Institute at marco@utk.edu for more information.

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MAA News – From the President: Race, Racism, and Medieval Studies

Posted on July 1, 2021 by Chris

As I write this letter, many colleagues are taking vacation time; some may even be travelling abroad for field research postponed by the pandemic. I wish you all safe travels and hope you will have both productive time for research and downtime for reflection and replenishment.

On a daily basis, we continue to hear news of grave concern to our community of medievalists. A millennium after the launching of the Crusades by Christian rulers of Europe to recapture the Holy Land after more than four centuries of Muslim rule, inhabitants of present-day Israel–Jews, Muslims and Christians alike–continue to suffer from a tragic loss of life from military actions rooted in the rival claims on the sacred space of Jerusalem and centuries of religious prejudice. In North America too, anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise, and in the city where I grew up, London, Ontario, 200 km to the west of Toronto, a horrific act of anti-Muslim violence was perpetrated recently when a white youth used his pickup truck to slaughter four members of a revered local Muslim family out for an evening stroll. We are also learning of horrific discoveries of hundreds of unmarked graves that are shedding new light on the shameful practices of Catholic residential schools designed to “re-educate” indigenous children in the Christian faith and Western learning. This may seem to have no medieval connection, but I am reminded of how the non-Christian “monstrous races” that were associated with the wondrous East and with Africa on medieval mappaemundi were relocated to the Americas in the age of discovery and used to justify settler colonialism and the erasure of indigenous cultures. At the University of Wisconsin where I teach, we are only beginning to give proper recognition to the “medieval” effigy and burial mounds on and around campus, dating back to the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, and we are learning to acknowledge that the university itself was built on the ancestral lands of the Ho-Chunk Nation forcibly seized in the 19th century.

There are also events that hit much closer to home as professional medievalists. Many of our members signed an open letter of support for Mary Rambaran-Olm, currently Provost’s Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, and a scholar of race in early medieval English literature and culture as well as whiteness in medieval studies. Dr. Rambaran-Olm has repeatedly faced despicable personal attacks online for taking courageous anti-racist stances in her research and public scholarship. It is particularly dispiriting to learn that the letter circulated to express support for Dr. Rambaran-Olm was high-jacked to orchestrate personal attacks against her and several signatories by certain individuals who identify themselves as medievalists. On behalf of the Academy, I want to condemn in no uncertain terms these personal and demeaning attacks and express my strongest support for the groundbreaking research Dr. Rambaran-Olm and others who work on race within medieval cultures as well as the historiography of medieval studies and its supporting institutions. I also want to recall the Academy’s Statement on Diversity and Inclusion, which affirms that “we aim to foster an environment of diversity, inclusion, and academic freedom for all medievalists,” and in particular for students and junior faculty that we affirm their right “to receive supportive, professional mentoring that respects their intellectual freedom and personal integrity.”

It is perhaps not surprising that attacks on medievalists of color are becoming ever more frequent, particularly in an increasingly polarized political atmosphere in North America and Europe. An alarming development within the United States is the proposal or passing of legislation that seeks to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (hereafter, “CRT”). Without ever having read the primary scholarship of CRT and its applications, proponents of these new state laws are weaponizing the term to critique the teaching of the history of race and racism in America, which they believe teaches students to “hate America” and see white Americans as “inherently racist.” Such politicians and their supporters thus misunderstand or deliberately obfuscate the primary aims of critical race scholarship to expose prejudicial laws and practices in American society and its institutions that continue to reinforce racial discrimination in contemporary society. In medieval studies CRT has proven to be a very crucial and helpful tool for exploring aspects of systemic racism that have deep medieval roots —e.g., casting religious and ethnic Others as “monstrous races”; associating skin color and physiognomy with climate, geography and character, or dictating how and where ethnic and religious minorities can live, or who can be legally enslaved. There is healthy debate about how to characterize pre-modern race and racism and distinguish modern from medieval concepts in responsible and thoughtful ways that are attentive to cultural differences in distinct times and places, but there is now broad consensus that race and racism need to be considered as central questions in teaching and research of medieval cultures and the historiography of medieval studies. CRT offers frameworks that demonstrate the value of studying the medieval past in order to understand the complexity of race and diversity today.

These ruminations on recent events prompt me to conclude with a consideration of the role of advocacy in the Medieval Academy’s programs and public statements. While the primary role of the Academy is to promote scholarship in medieval studies and awareness among the general public of medieval cultures, we are increasingly called upon to take actions which stray into the realm of politics. The Council has recently had many provocative and challenging discussions about how and when the Academy should respond to current events and actions in the public sphere. Over the past year, we have been adhering to a policy that requires a unanimous vote from Council to sign on to or approve any public statement issued on behalf of the Medieval Academy of America. This is a high bar, which has broad support among Council members, but when there are disagreements over the kind of concrete actions we should advocate our organization and our members to take, we often risk not commenting on matters that demand our response as medievalists. The Council decided at the Annual Meeting in April to revisit our Advocacy Policy and explore alternate structures for addressing advocacy, including the possibility of establishing an Advocacy Committee that could advise Council on strategic priorities and help us go beyond statements of solidarity and approbation to translate words into concrete programs. I am grateful to council member Hussein Fancy for agreeing to take the lead on this crucial council priority in the fall. In the meantime, we have put on temporary hiatus our practice of having the Council compose or support advocacy statements of other organizations, and I will respond as President to pressing issues with the guidance of the two Vice-Presidents and our Executive Director. As always, I welcome your input on these questions and thank you for your support.

Thomas Dale, President, Medieval Academy of America
tedale@wisc.edu

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MAA News – Speculum, Volume 96, Issue 3 (July 2021)

Posted on July 1, 2021 by Chris

The latest issue of Speculum is now available on the University of Chicago Press Journals website.

To access your members-only journal subscription, use the username and password associated with your MAA membership to log in on the MAA website (contact us at info@themedievalacademy.org if you have forgotten your credentials). Then, choose “Speculum Online” from the “Speculum” menu. As a reminder, your MAA membership provides exclusive online access to all issues of Speculum in full text, PDF, and e-Book editions—at no additional charge.

Speculum 96, no. 3 (July 2021)

Articles

Macro/Microcosm at Vézelay: The Narthex Portal and Non-elite Participation in Elite Spirituality
Conrad Rudolph

“To Embrace a Sack of Excrement”: Odo of Cluny and the History of an Image
Christopher A. Jones

Passing the Time: The Role of the Dice in Late Medieval Pardon Letters
Andrew Brown

Moustaches, Mantles, and Saffron Shirts: What Motivated Sumptuary Law in Medieval English Ireland?
Sparky Booker

Book Reviews
This issue of Speculum features more than 80 book reviews, including:

Alice-Mary Talbot, Varieties of Monastic Experience in Byzantium, 800–1453
Reviewed by Derek Krueger

D. L. d’Avray, Papal Jurisprudence c. 400: Sources of the Canon Law Tradition
Reviewed by Kenneth Pennington

Sarah McNamer, Meditations on the Life of Christ: The Short Italian Text
Reviewed by Shannon McHugh

Marina Rustow, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue
Reviewed by Julia Bray

Thelma Fenster and Carolyn P. Collette, eds., The French of Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Wogan-Browne
Reviewed by Ardis Butterfield

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Jill Mann, ed.; David Lawton, ed., The Norton Chaucer: “The Canterbury Tales,” with Jennifer Arch and Kathryn Lynch
Reviewed by James Simpson

W. Mark Ormrod, Bart Lambert, and Jonathan Mackman, Immigrant England, 1300–1500
Reviewed by Milan Pajic

Eugenio Refini, The Vernacular Aristotle: Translation as Reception in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
Reviewed by Brenda Deen Schildgen

Celia Chazelle, The Codex Amiatinus and Its “Sister” Bibles: Scripture, Liturgy, and Art in the Milieu of the Venerable Bede
Reviewed by Carol Neuman de Vegvar

Alison I. Beach and Isabelle Cochelin, eds., The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West. Vol. 1, Origins to the Eleventh Century. Vol. 2, The High and Late Middle Ages
Reviewed by Walter Simons

Colmán Etchingham, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World
Reviewed by Sarah Künzler

G. Geltner, Roads to Health: Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in Later Medieval Italy
Reviewed by Nükhet Varlık

MAA members also receive a 30% discount on all books and e-Books published by the University of Chicago Press, and a 20% discount on individual subscriptions to The Chicago Manual of Style Online. To access your discount code, log in to your MAA account, and click here. Please include this code while checking out from the University of Chicago Press website.

Sincerely,
The Medieval Academy of America