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.

The Medieval Academy of America’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) invites nominations to fill an upcoming vacancy on its Executive Committee. With a special focus upon teaching at all levels, CARA strives to assist institutions and individual medievalists in meeting the challenges that face medieval studies in the classroom, the library, and other institutional settings locally and nationally. It also supports those who work to develop special projects and programs of instruction, local and regional networks of medievalists, and centers of research and institutions in medieval studies, working in collaboration with the Academy’s K-12 Committee as well as organizations such as TEAMS (the Teaching Association for Medieval Studies).

Members of the Executive Committee serve four-year terms; in addition to working with the CARA Chair on programming, outreach, and curricular initiatives, each member serves on two of CARA’s four subcommittees responsible for the CARA Teaching Award, the CARA Robert Kendrick Service Prize, the CARA Regional Conference Grant, and the MAA-CARA Graduate Student Summer Scholarships. Members of the CARA Executive Committee also are eligible to serve as CARA’s Director of Conference Programs, responsible for organizing CARA sessions at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies as well as the CARA plenary at the annual Medieval Academy meeting and the annual CARA meeting.

Service on the CARA Executive Committee is open to all members in good standing of the Medieval Academy of America, who may nominate themselves or be nominated by another individual. Nominations should include the following:

1. Name of nominee;
2. Nominee’s institutional or professional affiliation (including that of independent scholar);
3. A brief (c. 250-word) statement indicating the nominee’s qualifications for Executive Committee service, including their contributions to the areas of teaching, center or program administration, and/or professional collaboration and development in the field of Medieval Studies.

In accordance with CARA’s Policies and Procedures, nominations will be accepted until 1 November 2023 and reviewed thereafter by the CARA Executive Committee, which will forward its recommended candidate for approval by the Medieval Academy’s Council. The term of service for new members will begin at the conclusion of CARA’s annual meeting at the University of Notre Dame in March 2024. Please send nominations, as well as any questions or requests for further information, to the CARA Chair, Sean Gilsdorf (gilsdorf@fas.harvard.edu).

Friday, November 17 at 12pm EST

Stacey Murrell, Ph.D. Candidate

Brown University

“Birthing Dynasties: Concubinage, Status, and Race in the Western Islamicate World, c.700-1000 CE.”

This chapter examines the racialization of enslaved women and its impact on mother-child relations in the medieval Islamicate Mediterranean in two distinct ways. First, I argue that the racialization of enslaved women turned on the axes of their status, gender, and somatic difference and stratified the numerous women responsible for social procreation but excluded from social membership into a hierarchy that was central to the consolidation of ‘Arab’ identity. I use the case study of al-Andalus between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries to highlight how this racialization was adapted and reinscribed according to local circumstances and dynastic needs for political legitimacy. Second, I call attention to the gendered relationships between enslaved mothers and free sons and between enslaved mothers and (free) daughters, particularly in terms of identity formation and expression. While sons regularly omitted or fabricated their maternal lineage to secure political positions, daughters were more closely bound to their mothers and better positioned to carry forth their legacy in ways tangible and intangible. Although my focus is largely on enslaved women who ended up in the harems of rulers, racialization applied just as much to the mothers of emirs as to the larger population of enslaved women whose lives were spent in domestic households. In order to grapple with the anonymity and violence of enslavement and its archive, at times I mark the absence of the numerous majority of enslaved women, while at others I imagine their figures onto the page.

Responder: Dr. Rachel Schine, University of Maryland, College Park

Register and view the schedule of speakers at https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/raceandgenderglobalmiddleages/

(You only need to register once to get added to the email list and to have access to the Zoom link.)

After two successful seasons, The Multicultural Middle Ages (MMA) will return for its third season in 2024. Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America, MMA is an anthology-style podcast attuned with the global turn in Medieval Studies. This podcast series is a platform from which to continue ongoing conversations and generate new and exciting avenues of inquiry related to the Middle Ages that emphasize its diversity. We welcome thoughtful reflections on culturally responsible approaches to the study of the Middle Ages and content aimed at strengthening connections between experts and the wider public. This is a space from which to speak to fellow medievalists and, more importantly, the wider public in order to better inform our audience about the multicultural reality of the premodern era and the fact that the study of the medieval period extends beyond Western Europe.

We invite proposals from individuals and collaborators of all ranks and disciplines for single podcast episodes on innovative, thoughtful, and culturally responsible approaches to the Middle Ages aimed at fellow medievalists and the wider public. We welcome submissions by graduate students.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Innovative methodological/disciplinary approaches to the Middle Ages
• The future of Medieval Studies
• Research on the multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic Middle Ages
• Discussions of recent scholarship
• Archival discoveries
• Academic activism and responses to misappropriations of the Middle Ages
• Pedagogical approaches
• Medievalism(s)
• Approaches to curating exhibitions of the Middle Ages

Possible formats may include narrative expositions, interviews, textual analysis, visual analysis, oral performances, and panel discussions. Further information is available upon request.

No previous experience with podcasting is required. The Graduate Student Committee of the MAA has hosted several podcasting workshops, which are now available on the MAA YouTube channel. An MMA team member will gladly support you through the episode development process or take care of the entire technical setup and post-production. If you would like our technical assistance to realize your episode, such as facilitating an interview, helping record the episode, or taking care of the audio editing, kindly make a note of it in your proposal.

Your application should include a brief description (500 words) of your proposed episode, noting the following:

• The chosen topic and its relevance;
• the plan for adapting the topic to a podcast medium (we encourage 40-50 min. episodes, but also welcome proposals for shorter or longer episodes);
• the episode format (interview, narrative, etc.) along with an overview of its structure and a description of the support you’ll need from the MMA production team.

This information is not binding but will help the committee assess better the potential of the proposed project. Please include the name and a CV for each author. Submit your proposals via email to mmapodcast1@gmail.com and to Jonathan Correa (jonatcr@clemson.edu) by November 17, 2023.

The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast Series Production Team
Will Beattie | wbeattie@nd.edu
Jonathan Correa-Reyes | jonatcr@clemson.edu
Reed O’Mara | rao44@case.edu
Logan Quigley | quigleylogan@gmail.com