Dear Colleagues,
I hope you are well, safe, and doing what you need to do to protect yourselves and your community. The MAA office is closed until further notice, but we are all working from home and are healthy and safe.
Online Annual Meeting
We are in the process of planning an open online Annual Meeting for those participants who indicated interest in presenting their work in a live, online format. Some presenters have elected to defer their papers for special consideration by the 2021 Program Committee. Others have decided to retract their presentations so that they can present their work elsewhere. Several of our plenarists have opted to post recordings of their lectures. As a result, the online conference will consist of eleven sessions, the Presidential Plenary, and the annual Business Meeting. The online conference will take place one week from today, on 27-28 March. Please stay tuned for more details in the coming days.
Refunds
We appreciate your patience as we work with our colleagues in Medieval Studies at UC Berkeley to untangle the complicated finances of our Annual Meeting. Although we do not yet have the complete financial picture, we have decided to go ahead and offer full refunds immediately to anyone who needs one, in particular to graduate students, contingent and independent scholars, retirees, and anyone who has found themselves in financial precarity due to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 outbreak.
If you do not need a refund, please consider donating all or part of your registration fee to help us offset the losses that will be incurred by the Medieval Academy as a result of the cancellation of the Annual Meeting. Your tax-deductible donation will help us to proceed in a responsible fashion that both supports those in need and stewards resources that would normally be earmarked to support the Medieval Academy’s members, including those likely to be hit hardest by the impact of COVID-19 in the coming weeks and months.
If you would like a refund or would like to donate your registration fee, please use this form to indicate your preference:
https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/MAA2020Refunds
If you would like a refund eventually but don’t need it immediately, please wait until you hear from us again before submitting the form. Right now, this form is for those who need their refund as soon as possible or who know they would like to turn their registration fee into a donation.
In the current climate, your membership is more important than ever. If you haven’t renewed for 2020, you may do so on our website:
https://www.medievalacademy.org/members/membership.asp
Finally, if you did not register for the Annual Meeting but would like to make a donation to the Medieval Academy, please click here:
https://www.medievalacademy.org/donations/fund.asp?id=6844
I would like to express my utmost gratitude to Program Committee Chairs Maureen Miller and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, the 2020 Program Committee, event planner Helena Weiss-Duman, and the MAA Staff and Governance for their hard work and support during these last few weeks.
Please stay safe, and I look forward to seeing you at MAA 2021.
– Lisa
Lisa Fagin Davis
Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America
LFD@TheMedievalAcademy.org
