MAA News – Special Events at the Annual Meeting

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Chris

If you are joining us at the upcoming Annual Meeting at Notre Dame, please note these gatherings of interest to graduate students, digital humanists, and anyone in need of mentoring!

Thursday, 8:30 – 10 PM: Grad Student Social, sponsored by the Graduate Student Committee, O’Rourke’s Public House, 1044 E Angela Blvd, South Bend

Friday, 9:45 – 10:30 AM: Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Committee Coffee Hour. Drop by for discussion and networking and to share feedback about what the Medieval Academy can do to support DH work for pedagogy, research, and public engagement. Refreshments provided. Private Dining Room, Morris Inn

Saturday, 9:15 – 10:10 AM: The Mentoring Coffee and Breakfast, a casual hour of coffee, pastries, and chat co-sponsored by the MAA’s Inclusion and Diversity Committee and the Grad Student Committee, will take place on Saturday March 16th from 9:15-10:10am in B01 McKenna. Stop in for a hot beverage and some great conversation before the presidential address. All are welcome!

And if you can’t be at the Annual Meeting, join the DH Committee on Friday, 15 March, 9:30 – 10:30 AM EST for a virtual coffee hour at https://tinyurl.com/53b5esk8

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MAA News – Race & Gender in the Global Middle Ages Working Group

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Chris

The next online meeting of the Race and Gender Working Group will take place on March 8 from noon – 1:30pm EST.

Jonathan Correa-Reyes (Clemson University) will speak on “Towards a Christian Genre of Man: Revisiting The Siege of Jerusalem.” Dr. Dorothy Kim (Brandeis University) will be the respondent.

Click here for more information and to register.

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MAA News – CARA Summer Tuition Scholarships

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Chris

The MAA/CARA Summer Scholarships support graduate students and especially promising undergraduate students participating in summer courses in medieval languages or manuscript studies. Applicants must be members of the Medieval Academy in good standing with at least one year of graduate school remaining and must demonstrate both the importance of the summer course to their program of study and their home institution’s inability to offer analogous coursework.

Click here for more information.

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MAA News – The MAA Book Subvention Program

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Chris

The Medieval Academy Book Subvention Program provides grants of up to $2,500 to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of first books by Medieval Academy members. Click here for more information.

The Medieval Academy Inclusivity and Diversity Book Subvention Program provides subventions of up to $5000 to university or other non-profit scholarly presses to support the publication of books that contribute to diversity and inclusion in the field of Medieval Studies (broadly conceived) by Medieval Academy members. Click here for more information.

Applications for subventions will be accepted only from the publisher and only for books that have already been approved for publication. Eligible Academy members who wish to have their books considered for a subvention should ask their publishers to apply directly to the Academy, following the guidelines outlined on the relevant webpage. The deadline for proposals is 1 May 2024.

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MAA News – 2024 CARA Prizes

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Chris

We are very pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 CARA Prizes:

The 2024 CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching has been awarded to Angela Mariani (Texas Tech Univ.).

The 2024 Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies has been awarded to two scholars: Marjorie Harrington (Western Michigan Univ.) and Geraldine Heng (Univ. of Texas at Austin).

These prizes will be presented during the CARA Plenary Session at the upcoming Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy on Friday, 15 March, at 10:30 AM. Please join us as we honor these medievalists for their teaching and service.

For more information about the MAA Committee for Centers and Regional Associations (CARA), please visit our website.

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MAA News – MAA Digital Humanities Update

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Chris

1) Digital Latin Library Open-Access Editions: Three new editions of medieval Latin Texts have been recently published in the open-access “Library of Digital Latin Texts” repository, in collaboration with the Medieval Academy of America. Click here for more information about these publications and to learn how your edition can be part of this ongoing project.

2) Database of Medieval Digital Resources (MDR): We continue to update the MDR database with newly-vetted open-access resources for teaching and research. Click here to access the 266 resources in the database and check back regularly for updates.

3) Medieval Academy Books: Thirty-eight of the 118 volumes in the Medieval Academy Books series can be accessed as PDFs or .html files here. There are copies for sale at this link as well; sign into your MAA account for the members’ discount.

4) MAA Webinars: All Medieval Academy webinars are recorded and freely-accessible here.

5) Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast: The Multicultural Middle Ages is produced by the MAA’s Graduate Student Committee and is available wherever you get your podcasts. The programming includes quarterly podcasts devoted to the current issue of Speculum.

6) Speculum Online: Don’t forget that as a perquisite of membership you have complimentary access to the entire 99-year run of Speculum. Click here for more information.

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Palaeography Course

Posted on February 28, 2024 by Chris

The Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) at Durham University is happy to announce the launch our online Learning Centre, which currently offers two new online palaeography courses: 

  • Latin European Medieval Palaeography, run by Dr Manuel Muñoz García.
  • Early Modern English Palaeography (1500-1700), run by Dr Arnold Hunt.

You can find full details on our website: www.imemsdurhamlearn.com. Our courses will provide quality skills training to facilitate working with manuscripts, whether at graduate level or for those working in a professional environment as a librarian, archivist, etc. 

The first courses will run from April 29th to May 10th 2024. These are online, full-time courses that will consist of asynchronous content and also daily live sessions. Students will receive feedback on a portfolio of transcriptions after the course, as well as continued access to the asynchronous material for two months.  

There are limited spaces (24 students per course), so applications are now open. We would appreciate it if you could circulate this announcement via your networks. 

The final deadline for applications is March 30th, but we encourage early applications as places will be offered to successful candidates on a first-come, first-served basis.

With best wishes, 

The IMEMS Team
Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Durham University
durham.ac.uk/imems
twitter.com/IMEMSDurham
facebook.com/imems.durham

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Editor of Speculum: Call for Applications

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Chris

With the retirement of Editor Katherine Jansen forthcoming in 2025, the Medieval Academy of America seeks to appoint an Editor, or co-Editors, for Speculum. The position is configured as part-time, requiring between 20 and 30 hours per week, with some seasonal variation. The Editor is appointed for a five-year term, subject to acceptable yearly performance reviews, with the possibility of a second five-year term by mutual agreement. The Editor should be an established scholar with academic credentials in some field(s) of medieval studies, broadly defined, with demonstrated organizational and decision-making skills. Experience in journal, book, or series editing will be helpful but not necessary. The term of appointment begins in January of 2025. Terms and conditions are to be negotiated. Please note: the MAA does not offer remuneration for this position, aside from a summer stipend if the Editor is a faculty member, although the MAA may be able to continue offering support for otherwise staffing the journal (currently a Managing Editor and Associate Editor). It is understood that the Editor will negotiate terms of support with a host institution and these terms should be explicitly described as part of the application dossier. Interested parties should plan to attend an online information session in late May; details will be announced soon.

The search committee seeks to identify a diverse pool of candidates, and the MAA is eager to accommodate the various modes of professional life that characterize our profession. The Editor will likely need access to a major research library and to postdoctoral scholars or graduate students who can be hired for assistance, although some of this work can be done remotely.

Applications should be sent to the MAA by July 15, 2024. Virtual interviews will be held in the early Fall of 2024, with a start date in January of 2025. Cover letters may be addressed to Sara Lipton, Chair of the Search Committee. In addition to a curriculum vitae, the cover letter should include: the candidate’s vision for the journal and a discussion of how they envision configuring the staff. The applicant should describe in detail the institutional support they will bring to the position. Candidates should also include the names and email addresses of three scholars who can speak to the candidate’s editorial experience and scholarship; these references will only be contacted for short-listed candidates. The Chair of the search committee would be happy to respond to immediate questions about the duties involved, but candidates should also consult the fuller description of duties posted on the Academy website. The MAA also encourages nominations for the position, and there is a place to submit these on the website as well; all nominees will be sent a letter encouraging application. Interested parties should plan to attend an online information session in late May; details will be announced soon.

https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/EditorApplication

https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/EdNomForm

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Call for Papers – Land in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Posted on February 20, 2024 by Chris

Land in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
The 29th Biennial Conference of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program of Barnard College
Barnard College, New York City
December 7, 2024

King Lear begins with a so-called love test that is also a problem of land. Having decided to divide up his territory among his daughters, the old king demands from them in exchange a profession of love. “Which of you shall we say doth love us most?” Almost immediately, problems of land ownership become “interessed” with seemingly less concrete aspects of human interrelationship. When his eldest daughter, Goneril, professes a limitless love that is without bounds, for example, Lear gives her land that is limited and that exists within “these bounds”: forests and meads that stretch, he explains, “from this line to this.” If in this case the granting of land is transactional, it is also resistant to any system of fungibility or equivalence. Land is on the one hand inherently material and tangible, but is on the other hand also abstract, symbolic, and often spiritual.

The 29th biennial conference of the Barnard Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program will explore the intractably complex meaning of land in the long period from approximately 400 to 1700. This one-day, interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars of multiple disciplines (art history, history, literary studies, religion, history of science, legal history). Topics could include but are not limited to the following: boundaries, environment, enclosure law, surveying and measurement of land, trees and vegetation, pastoral poetry, claims of geographic origin, waste, shifting national boundaries, agrarian practices, herding, migration, indigeneity, and vernacularity.

The conference will be held Saturday, December 7, 2024 on the Barnard College campus in New York City.

Plenary Speakers:
Eleanor Johnson, Columbia University
Rebecca Zorach, Northwestern University

PLEASE NOTE: THIS CONFERENCE WILL BE IN PERSON.

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words and a 2-page CV to Rachel Eisendrath, reisendr@barnard.edu.

Submission Deadline: May 1, 2024

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Online Lecture: Political Rituals and Urban Communities in Cilician Armenia

Posted on February 16, 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 2023–2024 East of Byzantium lecture series.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024 | 12:00 PM (EST, UTC -5) | Zoom
Political Rituals and Urban Communities in Cilician Armenia
Gohar Grigoryan, University of Fribourg

Outdoor rituals were among those rare occasions when medieval rulers and ruling aristocracies could be seen in person and inspected publicly. As in many medieval societies, so also in the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia (1198–1375), these public ceremonies were almost always performed in front of urban communities. While the political and propagandistic concerns of these aesthetic enactments come as little surprise, the present lecture will address the question from the point of view of those city inhabitants who were to contemplate—and in some cases, to partake in—the carefully organized and well-pondered rituals of the men of power.

Gohar Grigoryan is a senior researcher at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, Department of Art History and Archaeology. She received her PhD from the same university in 2017 for her dissertation on royal images in Cilician Armenia. She is the author of many essays on medieval Armenian art and history and co-editor of three books, including, most recently, Staging the Ruler’s Body in Medieval Cultures, published by Brepols/Harvey Miller (2023).

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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