The Medieval Academy Blog

The 99th Annual Meeting of the
Medieval Academy of America
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
March 14–16, 2024

The 99th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place in South Bend, Indiana, on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. The meeting is hosted by Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute, St. Mary’s College, Holy Cross College, and Indiana University, South Bend. The conference will be entirely in person, though the plenary lectures and some other events will also be live-streamed.

The themes for this year’s meeting are “Mapping the Middle Ages,” “Bodies in Motion,” and “Communities of Knowledge.” Plenary addresses will be delivered by Robin Fleming (Boston College), Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford), and Jack Tannous (Princeton).

Sixty concurrent sessions will represent a range of threads, including “Digitally Mapping the Middle Ages,” “Sacred Interiors,” “Islamic Epistemology,” “Mapping Real and Imaginary Travel,” “Mobile Bodies,” and “Border Crossings,” and cover topics addressing material culture, literary studies, cosmology, architecture, liturgy, and pandemics, to name a few. Roundtables and workshops will highlight union organizing in higher education, writing for a public audience, and publishing on the Middle Ages.

Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute has one of the preeminent library collections for medieval studies in North America. You are welcome to visit the Medieval Institute during your stay on campus. You can find it on the 7th floor of the University’s Theodore M. Hesburgh Library.

Beyond the conference and its sessions, other attractions are available to you before and during the meeting. On Wednesday, March 13, workshops on sacred chant, digital medieval studies, and fragmentology will be offered. Notre Dame Library’s Special Collections will showcase an exhibit entitled “Mapping the Middle Ages: Marking Time, Space, and Knowledge,” while the campus Digital Visualization Theater will host a 360-degree visual and aural presentation on the cosmology of Hildegard of Bingen. Visit the newly-opened Raclin Murphy Museum of Art and while there enjoy a special exhibit of early woodcuts and engravings, including Albrecht Dürer’s famous Apocalypse series. The Morris Inn will host an Irish Céilí dance on Saturday evening.

Registration will open in January. Click here for more information

If you have recently seen a major research project to completion, please let us know! The 2024 Medieval Academy meeting at the University of Notre Dame (March 14-17, 2024) will feature two sessions celebrating “New Scholarship.” The sessions will take place during the regularly scheduled MAA program and will provide an opportunity for us to learn about each other’s recent publications or other projects and to celebrate these research milestones together. If you would like to participate in this new session, in which individual members will briefly present (ca. 5-10 mins) a major publication or publicly available project, please reach out to Fiona Griffiths (fgriffit@stanford.edu) by December 15, 2023 with an expression of interest and brief description of the work. All members with recently completed major projects are warmly invited to participate. Notifications will be sent out by January 15, 2024.

MATCHING CHALLENGE:

Help ensure the future of the Medieval Academy of America! 
As we look towards our Centennial in 2025, we must also begin planning for our second century. By contributing to this Matching Challenge in 2024, you can double the impact of your donation, helping to ensure that the MAA can continue its important support of scholars, scholarship, and expanded programming to fulfill our vision of a stronger, more inclusive Medieval Studies. A major anonymous donation will serve as the source of the Challenge matches, helping to solidify the future of the MAA as it approaches its centennial year. This pool of funds will match every dollar donated to the priority purposes identified below up to a total of $150,000.

Medieval Studies, along with higher education in general, faces grave challenges now and in the foreseeable future. As the foremost organization in the world promoting scholarship and knowledge of the Middle Ages, the Medieval Academy of America is determined to address challenges that border on becoming existential threats with new programs, a broader, more inclusive membership base, and educational outreach that will complement and strengthen its ongoing mission. As it approaches the celebration of its Centennial in 2025, the MAA seeks to secure gifts and grants that will help underwrite its renewed agenda. As a part of this action and thanks to an anonymous major gift, it is launching a Matching Challenge fund-raising drive. Donors to this effort will have the satisfaction of knowing that their gifts to specific priority programs will have twice the impact. Even as we continue to publish the highest-quality scholarship in the pages of Speculum and support research and teaching throughout the field, we are looking to expand programming and support in 2024 and beyond. Your generous contribution will help support ongoing and innovative priorities:

Centennial Fund : Donations to the Centennial Fund will support grants to individuals and institutions nationwide that promote and publicize medieval art, music, and theater during our Centennial year.

Mentoring Fund : In 2022, the Mentoring Program brought more than a dozen scholars from underserved demographics together for remote and in-person mentoring focusing on grant-writing, dissertation abstracts, and conference proposals. In 2023, the program was entirely remote, but with additional funding we hope to conduct a fully in-person summer mentoring program in 2024 and beyond.

MedievALLists Fund : Donations to this Fund will help to make the MAA more inclusive and to strengthen the field by supporting medievalists working beyond the tenure track. Here, too, the need is increasing as more scholars are obliged to work on short-term contracts with no benefits. Expanding support for scholars working beyond the tenure track is a critical priority.

Endowment : Donations to our Endowment support many of our other grants, fellowships, and programs and are crucial for the long-term fiscal stability of the Medieval Academy of America.

We have already secured commitments of more than $36,000 (that’s $72,000 after the match) from members of the Council, several former Presidents, and generous supporters. But we need your contribution in order to meet our goal. With your help, we can continue and expand our work: supporting medievalists and Medieval Studies in North America and beyond.

Visit the Matching Challenge website to donate securely by credit card to the Matching Fund(s) of your choice. If you prefer to donate by check, you may do so using the form and return envelope you will receive by US Mail in the coming weeks. Please note that only donations to these particular funds are eligible for the Match.

Thank you!

Robin Fleming, President of the Medieval Academy of America

p.s. donate by Dec. 31 to double your impact!

Baldwin Fellowship

The Baldwin Fellowship provides a one-year grant of $20,000 (with the possibility of a second year of funding) to support a graduate student in a North American university who is researching and writing a significant dissertation for the Ph.D. on any subject in French medieval history that can be realized only by sustained research in the archives and libraries of France. (Deadline 15 November 2023)

Inclusivity and Diversity Research Grant

The Inclusivity and Diversity Research Grant of up to $3,000 will be granted annually to a scholar, at any stage in their career, who seeks to pursue innovative research that will broaden the scope of medieval studies. Projects that focus on non-European regions or topics under the Inclusivity and Diversity Committee’s purview such as race, class, disability, gender, religion, or sexuality are particularly welcomed. The grant prioritizes applicants who are students, ECRs, or non-tenured. For the current round of applications, we encourage proposals that address the challenges of conducting research during the Covid-19 era. (Deadline 31 December 2023)

Travel Grants

The Medieval Academy provides travel grants to help Academy members who hold doctorates but are not in full-time faculty positions, or are contingent faculty without access to institutional funding, attend conferences to present their work. (Deadline 1 November 2023 for meetings to be held between 16 February and 31 August 2024)

Are you planning an exhibit, symposium, performance, workshop, or other event in 2025, our Centennial year? Apply for a Centennial Grant!

In celebration of its upcoming 2025 Centennial, the Medieval Academy of America is pleased to announce funding for Centennial Grants of up to $5,000 each supporting the planning and implementation of local events and projects celebrating and promoting medieval studies in education and the arts. For performances and lectures, the event must be scheduled for 2025. Educational resources must be open access and meet the MAA’s Standards for Web Publication. Applications in the first round (for which five awards will be granted) must be submitted by 15 December 2023.

Click here for more information and to apply!

Kindrick-CARA Service Award

The Medieval Academy of America’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) welcomes nominations for the Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies. This award recognizes individuals who have developed, promoted, and administered Medieval Studies programming, curricula, and research—work that often goes unrecognized by the profession at large. Nominees for this award of $1000, presented at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy, normally should be members in good standing of the Medieval Academy of America. The annual deadline for nominations is 15 November. For more information, please visit the Kindrick-CARA Service Award web page here.

CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching

The Medieval Academy’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) invites nominations for its annual teaching prize, which recognizes outstanding pedagogical achievement by Medieval Academy members. This can include:

• teaching inspiring courses at the undergraduate or graduate level;
• creating innovative teaching materials (including textbooks);
• developing courses and curricula;
• scholarship of teaching and learning (including presentations at conferences as well as publications)
• support for K-12 pedagogy and curricula;
• community-oriented or publicly-directed educational initiatives.

Normally, one prize is given for undergraduate and one prize for graduate teaching, each in the amount of $500. These will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy. The annual deadline for nominations is 15 November. For more information, please visit the CARA Teaching Award web page here.