Jobs For Medievalists

Posted on November 6, 2024 by Chris

Byzantine Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship

Following substantial investment in the area of Byzantine Studies at the University of Notre Dame, including the acquisition of the Milton V. Anastos Library of Byzantine Civilization and generous support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame is delighted to invite applicants for a nine-month Postdoctoral Fellowship in Byzantine Studies.

This fellowship is designed for junior scholars with a completed doctorate whose research deals with some aspect of the Byzantine world. The fellow is expected to pursue promising research towards scholarly publication and/or the development of new subject areas. This Fellowship is open to qualified applicants in all fields and sub-disciplines of Byzantine Studies, such as history (including its auxiliary disciplines), archaeology, art history, literature, theology, and liturgical studies, as well as the study of Byzantium’s interactions with neighboring cultures. The fellowship holder will pursue research in residence at the University of Notre Dame’s famed Medieval Institute during the academic year (the position begins mid-August).

The intent of this Fellowship is to enable its holder to do innovative research drawing on the rich resources held in the Milton V. Anastos Collection, the Medieval Institute, and the Hesburgh Library more broadly. This may include the completion of book manuscripts and articles, work on text editions, or the development of new trajectories of research in one of the aforementioned fields. The Fellowship carries no teaching responsibilities, but the fellow will have the opportunity to participate in the multidisciplinary activities of Notre Dame faculty related to Byzantium, Eastern Christianity, and the history of the Levant. The Fellow will be provided with a private workspace in the Medieval Institute, enjoy full library and computer privileges, and have access to all the Institute’s research tools.

In addition, towards the conclusion of the fellowship period the fellow’s work will be at the center of a workshop organized within the framework of the Byzantine Studies Seminar. Senior scholars, chosen in cooperation with the Medieval Institute, will be invited for this event treating the fellow’s subject matter. The senior scholars will discuss draft versions of the fellow’s book manuscript or articles or discuss the further development of ongoing research projects.

Eligibility: Byzantine Studies fellows must hold a Ph.D. from an internationally recognized institution. The Ph.D. must be in hand by the beginning of the fellowship term.

Stipend: the corresponding NIH postdoctoral rate (following the policy established by the University of Notre Dame), plus benefits. At the time of posting, that stipend rate is $45,765 for the 9-month term of this fellowship.

Application deadline: February 1, 2025.

Application procedure: Upload a letter of application, a project proposal of no more than 2500 words, a current c.v., and three letters of recommendation. If you encounter issues with Interfolio, please contact their customer support.

Application link: http://apply.interfolio.com/158352

 

Address questions to Prof. Alexis Torrance, Chair of the Byzantine Studies Committee, at atorran1@nd.edu.

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Jobs For Medievalists

Posted on November 6, 2024 by Chris

W. Mellon Junior Faculty Fellowship in Medieval Studies

The Medieval Institute offers a fellowship for a junior faculty scholar in Medieval Studies, made possible through the generous response of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to a challenge grant awarded to Notre Dame by the National Endowment for the Humanities. This Fellowship is designed for junior faculty who currently hold a position in a United States university as an assistant professor. It is open to qualified applicants in all fields of Medieval Studies. The fellowship holder will pursue research in residence at Notre Dame’s famed Medieval Institute during the academic year (this is a nine-month position that begins mid-August).

The intent of this Fellowship is to enable its holders to complete research and writing on a book manuscript in advance of tenure. The Fellowship carries no teaching responsibilities, but holders are expected to participate in the multidisciplinary intellectual life of the Institute and to reside in South Bend. The Fellow will be provided with a private carrel in the Medieval Institute, enjoy full library and computer privileges, and have access to all the Institute’s research tools.

In addition, towards the conclusion of their residency the Fellow’s work will be at the center of a half-day conference. Three senior scholars, chosen in cooperation with the Medieval Institute, will be invited to campus for a half-day public seminar treating the subject matter of the Fellow’s research. The senior scholars will also read and discuss a draft version of the Fellow’s work in an extended private session, a one-to-one conversation following a close reading of the draft, with a view to improving the manuscript before its submission to a press.

Eligibility: Mellon scholars must hold a tenure-track appointment at a U.S. institution, obviously with a completed Ph.D., and should not be more than six years beyond receiving their Ph.D. at the time of the application.

Stipend: $50,000 (paid directly to the Fellow’s home institution)

Application deadline: February 1, 2025.

Application procedure: Upload a letter of application, a project proposal of no more than 2500 words, a current c.v., and three letters of recommendation. If you encounter issues with Interfolio, please contact their customer support.

Application link: http://apply.interfolio.com/158350

Address questions to the Director of the Medieval Institute, Prof. Tom Burman, at tburman@nd.edu.

 

 

 

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Utrecht University is planning to close the Bachelor Programme Celtic Languages and Culture

Posted on October 30, 2024 by Chris

Last Monday, the news broke that Utrecht University is planning to close the Bachelor Programme Celtic Languages and Culture. Sign this petition to help preserve this unique bachelor programme. https://chng.it/7pYchDw7KC

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November 1: The Black Presence in European Art, 1100-1500

Posted on October 30, 2024 by Chris

The Black Presence in European Art, 1100-1500
A Race in Dialogue Conversation
Denva Gallant (Rice University) and Paul Kaplan (Purchase College, SUNY)

Friday, November 1, 2024
12:00-1:00 PM Central Time
Online via Zoom

CRS is pleased to announce the latest conversation in our Race and Dialogue series.
In this conversation, Profs. Gallant and Kaplan discuss the current state of this expanding field, in which new voices and interdisciplinary perspectives have enriched scholarly discourse. Among the topics to be raised are arguments about the relevance of the concepts of race and racism in this era, the impact of slavery on visual imagery, the historical presence of Black Africans in Europe (specifically Italy); and the use of the important Image of the Black in Western Art database.

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Vagantes 2025 Call for Papers

Posted on October 30, 2024 by Chris

The 24th Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies co-hosted by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will take place at Duke University in Durham, NC from April 3-5, 2025. Vagantes is an interdisciplinary community of junior and early career scholars that offers an ideal opportunity for sharing new research from across the disciplines. Please submit abstracts of 300 words, a title, and a 1-page CV including your name and pronouns as a PDF to vagantesboard@gmail.com by December 9th, 2024. 

Additionally, in honor of the MAA’s Centennial, we are soliciting an Open Call for submissions for a roundtable discussion: “Reflections After the Centennial: Creating Futures in Medieval Studies.” We seek abstract submissions for 5-7 minute presentations, with added time for questions and discussion following. Roundtable presenters are encouraged to engage with questions such as: where can we locate possibilities for growth in the field of medieval studies? How can I professionalize for careers outside of the academy? How can my scholarship engage with medieval studies in creative and/or non-traditional ways? Abstract submissions may range from research advice for independent scholars, medieval gaming, visions of a capacious medieval studies, and pedagogy outside the academy. Please email vagantesboard@gmail.com with queries. To submit, please specify “Open Call” in the email subject and in your abstract title.

We would be thankful if you could distribute this Call for Papers to graduate students in your department, and to share it with any other colleagues who might be interested.

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Online Lecture: Re-Imagining Jerusalem: The Ritual Recreation of Pilgrimage between Syria and Georgia

Posted on October 30, 2024 by Chris

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the next lecture in the 2024–2025 East of Byzantium lecture series.

Friday, November 15, 2024 | 12:00 PM (EST, UTC -5) | Zoom
Re-Imagining Jerusalem: The Ritual Recreation of Pilgrimage between Syria and Georgia
Emma Loosley Leeming, University of Exeter

Pilgrimages to the Holy Land are a well-documented phenomenon of Late Antique Christian belief and we are accustomed to reading about the experience of walking in the footsteps of Christ through the testimony of early witnesses such as Egeria. After the Islamic conquests and the loss of Jerusalem to the Arabs, there were periods when it became more difficult to undertake such travels and by the Middle Ages the concept of pilgrimage was re-framed so that it could also mean an interior journey undertaken by a meditative process such as the navigation of the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral.

However, across the Middle East and Caucasus, liturgical texts and rare poorly-understood survivals of early liturgical furniture suggest a range of processes for re-imagining Jerusalem both within churches or by imprinting the loca sancta upon a wider regional landscape. This lecture will introduce some of the ways that believers recreated the rituals of Jerusalem pilgrimage without leaving their hometowns and villages. It will introduce examples from Syria and Georgia in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and encourage future research in this widely under-studied area of ritual practice.

Emma Loosley Leeming studied at the University of York, the Courtauld Institute of Art and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, where she specialised in the art, architecture and liturgy of Late Antique Syria. She then spent several years living and working at the Monastery of St. Moses the Abyssinian (Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi) in Nebek, Syria, during which time she founded and directed the Dayr Mar Elian Archaeological Project in nearby Qaryatayn. From 2004–2013 she was lecturer in Middle Eastern Art and Architecture at the University of Manchester, before moving to the University of Exeter (2013–) where since 2019 she has been Professor of Middle Eastern and Caucasian Christianities. From 2012–2017 she held a European Research Council grant that enabled her to explore the relationship between Syria and Georgia in Late Antiquity and is currently working on a book with a Georgian colleague examining the origins and development of Georgian ‘three-church’ basilicas.

Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/

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

An East of Byzantium lecture. EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center that explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine empire in the late antique and medieval periods.

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Jobs for Medievalists

Posted on October 30, 2024 by Chris

Job Opportunity (Full-time), USA only

Director and Senior Specialist, Text Manuscripts, Les Enluminures

Les Enluminures, a leader in the international art market, sells original illuminated manuscripts, books of hours, miniatures, works of art and historic jewelry from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It is also the leading seller of text manuscripts from this period in the world, offering a very large and comprehensive inventory of manuscripts on its own website www.textmanuscripts.com. Text Manuscripts is renowned for the scholarship and quality of its descriptions. 

We are looking for an experienced manuscripts cataloguer to continue this tradition and to be in charge of content on our site. This is an unparalleled opportunity to work directly with original manuscripts on a daily basis. We are looking for a scholar who is eager to creatively present our manuscripts to our clients and develop new clients, which include institutions (colleges, universities, major libraries) across the United States and Europe.

Job Description: Senior Cataloguer, in charge of overseeing other cataloguers (including freelance and outsourced), as well as all other projects related in the broadest sense to the purchase and sale of text manuscripts at Les Enluminures.  

Responsibilities: In addition to cataloguing, editing final descriptions, and planning and implementing bi-annual updates to the text manuscripts sites, these activities include: review of international auction catalogues, writing and uploading e-catalogues, oversight of ABE-books and other online resources used by the company, occasional sales offers, oversight of Manuscripts in the Curriculum, organizing quarterly Zoom sessions with curators and librarians on selected topics, overseeing and contributing to the www.textmanuscripts.com Blog, participating in relevant gallery social media, overseeing domestic book fairs including their preparation and staffing, occasional participation in other art fairs or gallery exhibitions, and fielding emails and inquiries related to all text manuscripts, those currently in inventory and those sold.  

Requirements: PhD required, language skills essential (Latin, and at least two other vernacular languages), excellent paleography skills, good writing skills in English, broad background in the history and culture of the Middle Ages, previous experience required. 

This is both an exciting and demanding full-time position.  In addition to collaborating with an international team of twelve, the Director and Senior Specialist works most closely on a daily basis with the CEO and President.  Must be able to work in the United States; may work remotely. 

Salary commensurate with experience; paid vacation plus generous benefits.

Submit letter of application and a CV to sandrahindman@lesenluminures.com

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Launch of the New Middle English Texts Series Website

Posted on October 30, 2024 by Chris

The Middle English Text Series (METS) Editorial Board is pleased to announce the launch of a new website and digital edition for METS, a project long in the making. Join us to celebrate METS’ next phase with an online launch party on November 1, 3 pm EST. We’ll introduce the site and some of its features, discuss future plans, and laud our collaborators. We look forward to celebrating with you!

Please register here: https://tinyurl.com/4w4df6ec.

We are grateful to our sponsors and partners: University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries, Rossell Hope Robbins Library, and Department of English; TEAMS; Medieval Institute Publications; and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Vagantes 2025 Call for Papers

Posted on October 22, 2024 by Chris

The 24th Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies co-hosted by Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will take place at Duke University in Durham, NC from April 3-5, 2025. Vagantes is an interdisciplinary community of junior and early career scholars that offers an ideal opportunity for sharing new research from across the disciplines. Please submit abstracts of 300 words, a title, and a 1-page CV including your name and pronouns as a PDF to vagantesboard@gmail.com by December 9th, 2024. 

Additionally, in honor of the MAA’s Centennial, we are soliciting an Open Call for submissions for a roundtable discussion: “Reflections After the Centennial: Creating Futures in Medieval Studies.” We seek abstract submissions for 5-7 minute presentations, with added time for questions and discussion following. Roundtable presenters are encouraged to engage with questions such as: where can we locate possibilities for growth in the field of medieval studies? How can I professionalize for careers outside of the academy? How can my scholarship engage with medieval studies in creative and/or non-traditional ways? Abstract submissions may range from research advice for independent scholars, medieval gaming, visions of a capacious medieval studies, and pedagogy outside the academy. Please email vagantesboard@gmail.comwith queries. To submit, please specify “Open Call” in the email subject and in your abstract title.

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Online Lecture: “This Holy One is Mother, Father, and Sister to Me”: Gender and Beyond in Byzantine Hagiography

Posted on October 22, 2024 by Chris

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

Friday, November 7, 2024 | 12:00 PM (EST, UTC -5) | Zoom
“This Holy One is Mother, Father, and Sister to Me”: Gender and Beyond in Byzantine Hagiography
Lucy Parker, University of Nottingham

Gender has proved a powerful analytical framework for interpreting late antique and Byzantine hagiography. Historians have argued that male and female saints’ lives contained important differences, even perhaps forming different “subgenres” of hagiography. It has been suggested that, in contrast to male saints who fought external evil in cities or in the remote desert, female saints lived more cloistered lives and had to fight their own internal weaknesses. Some hagiographers emphasised that it was particularly impressive for women to achieve holiness given their innately weak and sinful nature. Female saints are often shown transcending their femininity, becoming “manly” as a necessary part of their journey to sanctity.

Yet this lecture will ask whether we have gone too far in drawing a clear distinction between the lives of female and male saints. It will explore some hagiographies of female saints (including the Life of Martha, mother of Symeon the Younger, the Life of Matrona of Perge, and the Life of Irene of Chrysobalanton) that do not fit neatly into the paradigms identified as characteristic of female lives. It will ask whether these unusual lives can be seen merely as exceptions to the general trend, or whether they force us to rethink our broader models, and to question how far a stark male-female gender binary determined understandings of holiness. Not all hagiographers were equally concerned with the differences between men and women, and not all female saints are presented as held back by, or needing to transcend, their femaleness. Rather than imposing a binary gender framework on hagiographic writing, we can instead explore variability in the use of gendered language and the gendering of holiness, and consider when and why gender and specific understandings thereof became particularly important in processes of sanctification.

Lucy Parker is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nottingham. She joined the University of Nottingham in 2023, after seven years working at the University of Oxford, where she also completed her doctorate in 2016. Her first book, Symeon Stylites the Younger and Late Antique Antioch: From Hagiography to History, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. As well as Byzantine hagiography, she also works on Syriac and Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern period.

Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/gender-and-beyond-in-byzantine-hagiography

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

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