Rare Book School: Applications Now Open for Summer 2023 Courses

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Chris

Applications are now open for Rare Book School’s summer 2023 courses! Our roster of more than 40 in-person and online courses can be found at rarebookschool.org/schedule/. Click on the course titles to view detailed descriptions and faculty biographies, along with the schedule, format, location, and fee for each offering. For courses that have run before, be sure to consult the evaluations written by past students in order to gain further insights into what to expect. 

For the best chance of being admitted, please submit your application(s) by the first-round deadline: Monday, 20 February 2023. Applications received after that date will be reviewed on a rolling basis until all available seats have filled, but many of the classes will fill in the first round of admissions decisions. 

This year, the courses will be offered at the University of Virginia in the Rotunda complex and adjacent buildings; the American Antiquarian Society; the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University; the Firestone Library at Princeton University; the Grolier Club (NYC); the New York Public Library; the Free Library of Philadelphia; the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania; the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington; the Oak Spring Garden Foundation Library (Upperville, VA); and the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

New and updated courses for 2023 include:

Applications will be accepted through the myRBS system; instructions for using the site can be found on the landing page once you’ve created an account. For information about the application process, visit rarebookschool.org/admissions-awards/application/. If you have any questions, please contact rbsprograms@virginia.edu. 

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Rare Book School: Applications Now Open for Summer 2023 Courses

Posted on January 12, 2023 by Chris

We are pleased to announce that applications are now open for Rare Book School’s summer 2023 courses! Our roster of more than 40 in-person and online courses can be found at rarebookschool.org/schedule/. Click on the course titles to view detailed descriptions and faculty biographies, along with the schedule, format, location, and fee for each offering. For courses that have run before, be sure to consult the evaluations written by past students in order to gain further insights into what to expect. 

For the best chance of being admitted, please submit your application(s) by the first-round deadline: Monday, 20 February 2023. Applications received after that date will be reviewed on a rolling basis until all available seats have filled, but many of the classes will fill in the first round of admissions decisions. 

This year, our courses will be offered at the University of Virginia in the Rotunda complex and adjacent buildings; the American Antiquarian Society; the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University; the Firestone Library at Princeton University; the Grolier Club (NYC); the New York Public Library; the Free Library of Philadelphia; the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania; the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington; the Oak Spring Garden Foundation Library (Upperville, VA); and the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

New and updated courses for 2023 include:

Applications will be accepted through the myRBS system; instructions for using the site can be found on the landing page once you’ve created an account. For information about the application process, visit rarebookschool.org/admissions-awards/application/. If you have any questions, please contact rbsprograms@virginia.edu.

We hope to see you in a Rare Book School course this summer!
RBS Programs

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Call for Papers – 43rd Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum

Posted on January 12, 2023 by Chris

43rd Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum:
Touch and Affect in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Keene State College
Keene, NH, USA
Friday and Saturday April 14-15, 2023 

Call for Papers and Sessions 

We are delighted to announce that the 43rd Medieval and Renaissance Forum will take place in person on Friday, April 14 and Saturday April 15, 2023 at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. The theme of this year’s conference, our fifth dedicated to the five senses, is Touch and Affect in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, focusing on the sense of touch, the sensory, and affect. As always, we also welcome papers on any and every topic related to the Middle Ages or the Renaissance as well as papers on medievalism.   

While we plan to hold the 43rd Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum in person with a limited number of virtual presentations, the entire event may have to be moved online should the safety of our participants require it. 

We welcome abstracts (one page or less) from faculty, students, and independent scholars. Please include in your proposal: 1. a title for your paper, 2. your status (faculty, graduate, undergraduate, or independent scholar), 3. your affiliation (if relevant), and 4. full contact information, including email address. If you are an undergraduate student we ask that you obtain a faculty member’s approval and sponsorship. 

Graduate students are eligible for consideration for the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award upon submission of their essays by April 1, 2023. The winner of the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award will win $100 to be used for registration and/or travel expenses to the 44th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum (travel expenses including but not limited to transportation to and from the conference and accommodations while in Keene). The winner of the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award will be announced at lunch on Friday, April 14, 2023.  

Please submit abstracts and full contact information on the google form available at:  

https://forms.gle/SBLxvi9nVXzc2tt66 

This year’s keynote speaker is Lauren Mancia, Associate Professor of History at Brooklyn College, who will speak on “(Reach Out and) Touch Medieval Monastic Devotion.”  

Dr. Mancia focuses her research on the devotional and material culture of medieval European monasteries in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. More recently, Professor Mancia has turned to the field of performance studies both to better understand medieval European monastic devotion and to innovate ways to perform that understanding for contemporary audiences. Professor Mancia’s first book, Emotional Monasticism: Affective Piety in the Eleventh-Century Monastery of John of Fécamp (2019/paper 2021), sheds light on medieval monastic practices of affective piety. Her second book, Meditation and Prayer in the Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Monastery: Struggling Toward God is forthcoming in Spring 2023 from ARC Humanities/Amsterdam University Press. 

Abstract deadline: January 15, 2023 

Presenters and early registration: March 15, 2023 

As always, we look forward to greeting returning and first-time participants to Keene in April! 

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Medieval Academy of America Statement on the Case of Hamline University and Dr. Erika López Prater

Posted on January 11, 2023 by Chris

The Medieval Academy of America condemns the decision of Hamline University not to renew Dr. Erika López Prater’s teaching contract following the widely-reported incident in which López Prater showed in a classroom context a 14th-century image of the prophet Muhammad. This image is widely celebrated as a landmark of Islamic art, and it has been taught in many classrooms because of its visual representation of the prophet Muhammad. Dr. López Prater followed best practices in preparing students with multiple warnings before she showed the image. Students were also invited to leave the class, if they preferred, rather than to view the image and participate in a discussion about it. After the complaint was made, Dr. López Prater was not allowed to address the issue, but was, rather, unfairly maligned, and her contract was not renewed.

Claims that the image is “Islamophobic” ignore its important historical context, and the value of teaching full and true versions of the past. As University of Michigan Professor Christiane Gruber, a noted expert on Islamic art, has cogently written, the presumption that such a work is “Islamophobic” is ahistorical, and it effaces the richly diverse dimensions of Islamic art and thought across time.

We cite the 1940 joint Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure issued by the American Association of University of Professors (AAUP) and the Association of American Colleges (AAC, now the Association of American Colleges and Universities, or AAC&U), of which Hamline University is a member institution: “Academic freedom is essential … and applies to both teaching and research. . . . Academic freedom in its teaching aspect is fundamental for the protection of the rights of the teacher in teaching and of the student to freedom in learning.” So long as the subject material in question is germane to course content, “[t]eachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject” and, in doing so, “they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline.”

The Medieval Academy of America condemns Hamline’s decision as regards Dr. López Prater, and, more generally, because such decisions impact all precariously employed faculty without the protections of full-time, tenure-line employment. Hamline University’s own website specifies that it “embraces the examination of all ideas, some of which will potentially be unpopular and unsettling, as an integral and robust component of intellectual inquiry.” The Medieval Academy of America agrees with this statement and urges the university to live up to these principles in practice.

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Mary Jaharis Center Lecture: The Lonely Mountain: The Emergence of a ‘Hagiorite’ Identity on Medieval Mount Athos

Posted on January 10, 2023 by Chris

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the next lecture in its 2022–2023 lecture series.

Tuesday, January 24, 2023 | 12:00 PM EST | Zoom
The Lonely Mountain: The Emergence of a ‘Hagiorite’ Identity on Medieval Mount Athos
Zachary Chitwood, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

This lecture contextualizes the emergence of a unique “Athonite” or “Hagiorite” identity on Mount Athos over the course of the Middle Ages. In Late Antiquity most Byzantine authors identified sacred mountains through the lens of biblical history, especially the mountains associated with the life of Jesus (Mount of Olives, Mount Tabor) or the Prophet Moses (Mount Nebo, Mount Sinai). By the time of the emergence of communal monasticism on Mount Athos in the middle of the tenth century, Athos could be counted as one of several “Holy Mountains” that housed monastic confederations within the Byzantine Empire, most of which were in western Asia Minor. Yet by the end of the medieval period, the term “Holy Mountain” had strong associations with Athos.

The rich documentation of medieval Mount Athos allows the mapping of the development of a “Hagiorite” identity in a variety of different contexts. In this lecture, three strands of Athonite identity will be explored: 1) in a legal sense, with Mount Athos as a circumscribed monastic space with specific rights and privileges; 2) as a literary construct, as a place of longing and desire; 3) as a landmark within the sacred geography of the Orthodox world.

Zachary Chitwood is a Lecturer in Byzantine Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant MAMEMS “Mount Athos in Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Society: Contextualizing the History of a Monastic Republic, ca. 850-1550”.

Advance registration required at https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/the-lonely-mountain

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

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MAA News – From the Editor’s Desk

Posted on January 5, 2023 by Chris

We at Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies are ringing in the new year with a new practice: an occasional editor’s column in the Medieval Academy of America newsletter designed to share with members announcements of the new scholarship we are proud to publish in the journal, new policies approved by the Editorial Board, and new initiatives we have recently undertaken.

The January 2023 issue, Speculum 98/1, brings together five substantive Mediterranean-inflected articles from scholars representing diverse disciplines and institutions, and in various stages along diverse career paths, academic and otherwise. The issue leads with Thomas E. A. Dale’s topical “Cultural Encounter, Race, and a Humanist Ideology of Empire in the Art of Trecento Venice,” the presidential address he delivered at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in 2022. It is followed by a co-authored piece by Susan McDonough and Michelle Armstrong-Partida,“Amigas and their Amichs: Prostitute-Concubines, Strategic Coupling, and Laboring-Class Masculinity in Late Medieval Valencia and the Mediterranean”; Dawn Marie Hayes, “The Case of Geoffrey of Hauteville, Lord of Ragusa: A Story of Leprosy and Legitimacy from Norman Sicily”; Alan Elbaum, “‘The Fire in my Heart and the Pain in my Eyes’: Interdependence and Outburst in the Illness Letters of the Cairo Geniza”; and Hélène Sirantoine, “Cartularization and Genre Boundaries: Reflection on the Nondiplomatic Material of the Toledan Cartularies (End of the Twelfth to Fourteenth Century).” Close readers of the journal will notice that for the past several years, articles are now prefaced by abstracts to make them more discoverable by the search engines we all use to conduct our research and, that as a rule, each issue now contains five articles instead of four, a commitment made on our part to publish as many of our accepted articles as quickly as our contracted page limit per annum allows.

With the new year, I’d also like to bring to your attention our newly revised style sheet for our contributors (here). It includes an important statement, approved by the Editorial Board, on “Terms, Terminology, and Naming.” The statement contains guidance on how to deal with fraught terminology contained in medieval texts and contemporary usage of those terms. We ask that all contributors familiarize themselves with this guidance before submitting work to the journal.

As already noted, our January issue has a Mediterranean theme. More themed issues will follow; indeed, over the course of three years, starting in 2024, every January issue will be shaped and themed in its own way by various guest editors. The January 2024 issue, dedicated to the theme of “Race, Race-thinking, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages,” is designed to interrogate the exciting scholarship on race in “the networked interrelations and interdependences of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.” It is now well underway and is being edited by the team of F. X. Fauvelle, Nahir Otaño Gracia, and Editorial Board member, Cord J. Whitaker. Next up, the January 2025 issue, honoring the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Medieval Academy of America, will be edited by Karla Mallette and Roland Betancourt. It seeks to examine how medieval studies has been shaped by its institutions, namely its “departments and disciplines, professional and social organizations.”  And finally, in January 2026, paying tribute to Speculum’s centenary anniversary, the journal will publish an issue entitled “Speculations,” a prospective issue that in 50 short essays will speculate on the future of scholarly work in medieval studies. It will be edited by a collective from the Editorial Board. You can expect to see the CFP for that issue circulated at the annual meeting of the MAA in Washington, DC, next month.

And finally, speaking of the annual meeting, I take great pleasure in welcoming you to DC, my institutional home and the journal’s headquarters.  The conference program, co-organized with great care by my colleague Jennifer Davis and MAA Council member Laura Morreale, reminds us of the value of returning to in-person meetings to share our work. Please do drop by the Speculum table hosted by our publisher, the University of Chicago Press, to meet our staff and to talk with us about publishing in the journal. Or, alternatively, come to the session on “Publishing in Journals” on Thursday, 23 February from 3:30–5:15, where I am participating as a panelist and will be very happy to take your questions. I look forward to seeing you in DC!

Until then, on behalf of the staff of Speculum, let me wish you a very happy 2023!

Katherine L. Jansen

Editor

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TEAMS Middle English Texts Series Digital Redesign User Survey

Posted on January 5, 2023 by Chris

Dear Friends of the TEAMS Middle English Texts Series, 

On behalf of the TEAMS Middle English Texts Series, I am writing to request your help in supporting METS’s digital redesign efforts by completing the following user survey linked here as well as at the bottom of this email, along with a mobile-friendly QR code. 

Over its thirty-two years of publishing, METS has published and provided free online access to hundreds of digital editions of medieval texts, many of which would otherwise be rare, prohibitively expensive, or nonexistent as traditional print editions. These open-access editions have made it possible for instructors, students, and researchers alike to teach, learn, and advance scholarship on medieval British literature wherever they are in the world. An open-access digital collection, however, is only as accessible and useful as its website and user interface allow it to be – and over the past few years, it has become clear that both the METS website and its approach to digital editions need an update. Feedback from users like you will be pivotal in reimagining both with the needs of our diverse user base in mind. 

This user survey will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. At the end, you will have the option to indicate if you would be open to (1) sharing further thoughts on the digital redesign in a follow-up conversation and/or (2) helping with usability testing for the redesigned website in the future. 

Finally, please note that this survey will stop collecting responses on January 9, 2023, at 11:59 pm Eastern Time (UTC-5:00), so please make sure to complete the survey before this deadline.

On behalf of METS, thank you for considering this request – I look forward to your response.

Best wishes,
Mead Bowen
Ph.D. Candidate in English
Staff Editor, TEAMS Middle English Texts Series
Mellon Fellow in the Digital Humanities, 2021-2023
University of Rochester
ebowen4@ur.rochester.edu

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MAA News – From the President

Posted on January 5, 2023 by Chris

Happy New Year, dear Academy Members,

It’s already time to make your plans for this year’s Annual Meeting, which not only takes place in our nation’s capital, Washington DC, but also offers members special access to some of the city’s greatest collections and institutions. Conference co-chairs Laura K. Morreale and Jennifer R. Davis, in collaboration with the members of the Annual Meeting Program and Local Arrangements Committees, have organized SEVEN special events. Space is limited, so read on to learn about these exciting opportunities so that you can register early!

MAA members are cordially invited to the world premiere of playwright Allyson Currin‘s Rejoicing in Broken Pieces at the Callan Theater of The Catholic University of America the evening of Thursday 23 February. Specially commissioned by CUA in honor of the Academy’s Annual Meeting, this dramatic presentation explores female medieval monastic culture through the lives and words of St. Brigid of Kildare, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, St. Hildegard of Bingen, Marie de France, Christina of Markyate, St. Brigid of Sweden, St. Catherine of Siena, Margery Kempe, and the anonymous Woman with Lapis Lazuli Teeth. The award-winning playwright, Allyson Currin, with over a dozen productions to her credit, is also an accomplished performer and teacher in the Washington arts scene. The day after the premier, she and director Eleanor Holdridge will also participate in a conference roundtable —along with CUA professors Lilla Kopár, Jennifer Paxton, and Michael Witczak—on “Staging and Teaching Medieval Women.” All the participants contributed to a fall undergraduate seminar at CUA that engaged 12 students in learning about dramaturgy, research, and the Middle Ages. Click here to purchase tickets for Thursday’s performance.

It is also still possible to secure a spot to participate in the day-long pre-conference Digital Medieval Studies Institute (DMSI) on Wednesday February 22. This jointly-sponsored in-person series of workshops in digital scholarly methods for medieval studies will take place on the NYU DC campus (1307 L St NW). Space is still available in two: “Comics and Medieval Manuscripts: The Alchemy of Word and Image” and “Using IIIF Images and Tools.”

Thursday morning, before the conference officially opens at 1:30 pm, members can choose any of three guided excursions to Washington DC collections. One is to the Dumbarton Oaks Museum with its renowned holdings in Byzantine and Pre-Columbian art. Curators will not only guide participants through the galleries, but also facilitate artifact handling in the Byzantine coins and seals room as well as the museum storage facility. Another excursion is to the National Gallery of Art to view and discuss medieval manuscript leaves from the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection. This extraordinary collection is particularly strong in late medieval woodcut prints, devotional incunabula, and manuscript illuminations. Still another opportunity is a curator-guided visit to the Textile Museum at George Washington University. With particular strength in rugs and textiles from the Islamic world, Asia, and Africa, the museum also holds one of the world’s most significant textile study collections of nearly 4,000 fragments from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa dating from antiquity to the present.

During the annual meeting there are also two special sessions at Washington collections. Friday morning from 8:30-10:00 am, the Library of Congress will host a session on Fragmentology (chaired by our own Lisa Fagin Davis and organized by the LC’s Rare Book Librarian Marianna Stell and the Center for the Advance Study in the Visual Arts Research Associate Matthew J. Westerby). On Friday afternoon from 14:15-16:00, the National Gallery of Art will host a session on Curating Global Medieval Art: Questioning Paradigms and Perspectives. Panelists include curators from the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, the Walters Gallery collections in ancient art of the Americas, and the Baltimore Museum of Art’s African and Oceanic Art collections. Click here to register for this limited-attendance session.

And don’t miss the Annual Meeting’s closing reception at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Its director, the eminent scholar of Islamic history and culture Chase F. Robinson, is generously hosting the closing reception in its extraordinary galleries. I, and the Annual Meeting’s co-chairs, are deeply grateful to him for welcoming Academy members to this treasure trove of Asian art.

Finally, it is worth noting that admission to over a dozen Smithsonian Museums is FREE. Timed Entry Passes are required only for the African American History and Culture Museum, the Air and Space Museum, and the National Zoo. If you can come a day early or stay Sunday, you can take advantage of the Grand Hyatt conference rate and enjoy your tax dollars at work!

Wishing all of you an auspicious start to 2023,

Maureen C. Miller, President of the Medieval Academy of America

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MAA News – MAA 2023: Registration is Open!

Posted on January 5, 2023 by Chris

Join us in Washington DC for the 98th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America. Discounted registration ends on 1 February, so register now!

The Members of the MAA 2023 Organizing Committee, including independent scholars and medievalists from over a dozen area institutions, are pleased to open registration for the 98th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America on February 23-26, 2023 in Washington, DC. The meeting will take place at the Grand Hyatt in downtown Washington with special sessions at the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, The Catholic University of America, and the National Museum of Asian Art. The program draws upon the many resources in the capital region for the study of the Middle Ages in an international context, and features plenaries by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Verena Krebs, Anne Dunlop, and MAA president Maureen C. Miller. Highlights of the meeting include a curatorial round-table on Global Medieval Art at the National Gallery of Art, the World Premiere of Rejoicing in Broken Pieces, a play about female monastic culture with playwright Allyson Currin in attendance, and a closing reception at the National Museum of Asian Art with curators on site to introduce conference attendees to the collection.

Pre-conference events include two workshops at the Textile Museum’s Avenir Center in Ashburn, Virginia, and a day-long Digital Medieval Studies Institute hosted by NYU’s DC campus (with spots still open in some sessions; more information and application portal here). Additionally, curators at Dumbarton Oaks, the National Gallery of Art, and the Textile Museum will welcome medievalists during three separate pre-conference excursions organized in anticipation of the gathering in Washington, DC.

Attendees must be fully vaccinated (or have a verified medical exemption) and must agree to abide by the Medieval Academy of America’s Professional Behavior Policy. Due to prohibitive financial and logistical constraints, this meeting will be entirely and exclusively in-person. We hope to offer a hybrid format in 2024.

For registration, hotel block information, and the full program, please visit the conference website (and check back often for updates).

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MAA News – 2023 Governance Election Results

Posted on January 5, 2023 by Chris

To the members of the Medieval Academy of America:

I am very pleased to announce the results of the 2023 governance election:

President: Robin Fleming (Boston College, History)
1st Vice-President: Sara Lipton (Stony Brook Univ., History)
2nd Vice-President: Peggy McCracken (Univ. of Michigan, French and Comparative Literature)

Council:
Roland Betancourt (Univ. of California, Irvine, Art History)
Bonnie Effros (Univ. of British Columbia, History)
Luisa Nardini (Univ. of Texas at Austin, Musicology)
Michelle C. Wang (Georgetown Univ., Art History)

Nominating Committee:
Chair (appointed by MAA President): Jessica Brantley (Yale Univ., English)
Elected members:
Akash Kumar (Univ. of California, Berkeley, Italian Studies)
Michelle M. Sauer (Univ. of North Dakota, English)

My thanks to all who voted and to all who stood for election, and my congratulations to all who were elected.

Lisa Fagin Davis

Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America

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