American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain News

CFP: Who Ruled the World? Queen Urraca and Her Contemporaries in the Early Twelfth Century

Miguel Gomez — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 17:29:30 GMT

Please see the below CFP, which may be of interest to AARHMS members:

CFP_urraca_congreso_2026_VA_TM.pdf

Margarita Salas Medal Awarded to AARHMS Member

Kyle C Lincoln — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 12:40:48 GMT

Therese Martin was awarded the a Margarita Salas Medal by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, which are given for exemplary direction of dissertations and mentoring of emerging scholars.

When contacted by AARHMS, Prof. Martin said, "I was delighted to have been nominated by my mentees and very pleased that my contributions to the future of Medieval Iberian Studies are recognized as significant by the CSIC."

Join AARHMS in celebrating Therese's success, and the continued growth of Medieval Iberian studies. Those interested can view the ceremony here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe-tc-_Ex-0

New Journal Annoucement: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 11:53:05 GMT

A message, below, from one of the editors, Graham Barrett, of the new/updated journal, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources, based at the University of Lincoln.

"Dear fellow medieval Iberianists,

I am pleased to announce an open and ongoing call for contributions to a new journal, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources, coordinated by the Medieval Studies Research Group based at the University of Lincoln (https://www.lincoln.ac.uk/hh/research/medievalstudiesresearchgroup/) and published by the redoubtable ARC Humanities Press (https://www.arc-humanities.org/studies-in-medieval-and-renaissance-sources/).

This journal is dedicated to 'nuts and bolts' scholarship: to the analysis and interpretation of the sources - written (in any language), visual, or material - for the period from 400 to 1600. We welcome such submissions in any form, from editions, translations, and commentaries to reports, notes, and reflections.

I am drawing SMRS to the attention of this list because the editorial board includes five Iberianists whose fields range from the fifth century through to the seventeenth (Jamie Wood, myself, Robert Portass, Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo, and Laura Fernández González, in chronological order), and we are particularly keen to encourage contributions from our colleagues.

Please see the attached flyer for guidance on making submissions. The first issue of Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources, to be published in open access, is now in production, and has significant medieval Iberian content (https://www.arc-humanities.org/9781802701814/lincoln-readings-of-texts-materials-and-contexts/).

If you have any questions about contributing to future issues of the journal, do please get in touch!

With best wishes,

Graham Barrett"

2024 Barton Memorial Junior Scholar Research Grant Winner

Thomas Barton — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 17:14:55 GMT

The American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain is proud to award the 2024 Barton Memorial Junior Scholar Research Grant to Jessica Minieri of Binghamton University (State University of New York) to support archival research in Barcelona and Perpignan and travel to present at a conference in Palermo this summer. The committee was deeply impressed with Minieri’s record of achievement and the clarity and ambition of her doctoral project entitled “Stolen Bodies and Hollow Crown: Abduction and Imprisonment in the Lands of the Crown of Aragon, 1200-1415." These qualities helped Minieri stand out among an unusually large pool of excellent applications.

The committee would also like to recognize, with an Honorable Mention, Claire Dwyer of Columbia University for her strong proposal relating to her doctoral project entitled “Noblewomen’s Networks Across Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Iberia."

2024 Prize committee members: Tom Barton, Miguel Gómez, and Marie Kelleher

Fifth Quadrennial Symposium on Crusade Studies

Miguel Gomez — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 19:08:31 GMT

October 3-5, 2024, at the Saint Louis University Madrid campus.

Submission due March 31.

I am very interested in organizing one or two (or more) AAHRMS panels for this conference. Please get in touch (mgomez1 AT udayton DOT edu) if you are interested.

http://www.crusadestudies.org/symposium-on-crusade-studies.html

CFP: 11th Annual Saint Louis University Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 15:17:40 GMT

CALL FOR PAPERS

Eleventh Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies

June 10-12, 2024

Saint Louis University

St. Louis, Missouri

The Eleventh Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (June 10-12, 2024) is a convenient summer venue in North America for scholars to present papers, organize sessions, participate in roundtables, and engage in interdisciplinary discussion. The goal of the Symposium is to promote serious scholarly investigation into all topics and in all disciplines of medieval and Renaissance studies.

The plenary speakers for this year will be Cynthia J. Hahn, of Hunter College and the City University of New York, and John Witte, Jr., of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

The Symposium is held annually on the beautiful midtown St. Louis campus of Saint Louis University. On campus housing options include affordable, air-conditioned apartments as well as a more luxurious hotel. Inexpensive meal plans are also available, and there is a wealth of restaurants, bars, and cultural venues within easy walking distance of campus.

While attending the Symposium, participants are free to use the Vatican Film Library, the Rare Books Division, and the general collection at Saint Louis University's Pius XII Memorial Library. These collections offer access to tens of thousands of medieval and early modern manuscripts on microfilm as well as strong holdings in medieval and Renaissance history, literature, languages, manuscript studies, theology, philosophy, and canon law. The Jesuit Archives & Research Center is adjacent to the university and also accessible to Symposium attendees.

We invite proposals for papers, complete sessions, and roundtables. Any topics regarding the scholarly investigation of the medieval and early modern world are welcome. Papers are normally twenty minutes each and sessions are scheduled for ninety minutes. Scholarly organizations are especially encouraged to sponsor proposals for complete sessions, and organizing at least two sessions in coordination with each other is highly recommended. All sessions are in-person. Mini-conferences hosted by societies or organized around a theme occur in the context of the SMRS.

Paper submitters are welcome to submit their paper for general consideration at the Symposium or for one of the mini-conferences. This year’s mini-conferences are:

● 49th Annual St. Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies

● Boethius 2024: The 1500-Year Memorial Conference

● The 2024 Conference on John Milton

The submission portal will open on November 1. The portal has buttons for submission to the main SMRS and for each of the mini-conferences. The deadline for all submissions is December 31, 2023.

Decisions will be made by the end of January and the final program will be published in March.

For more information or to submit your proposal online go to: https://www.smrs-slu.org/.

Members of AARHMS can also consult the pdf version of this Call for Papers here.

Events of Interest (Fall 2023) -- Race and Gender in the Global Middle Ages: A Working Group

Thomas Barton — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 06:33:08 GMT

RACE & GENDER IN THE GLOBAL MIDDLE AGES: A WORKING GROUP

https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/raceandgenderglobalmiddleages/

Fall 2023 Schedule

Friday, August 18 at 12pm EST

Dr. Mohamad Ballan, Assistant Professor of History

Stonybrook University

A Discussion of his recent Speculum article “Borderland Anxieties: Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khatị̄b (d. 1374) and the Politics of Genealogy in Late Medieval Granada.”

Abstract: This article seeks to contribute to larger scholarly conversations about the construction and deployment of difference in medieval borderland societies. It examines the ways in which genealogical notions of “Arabness” [ʿurūbiyyah], which expressed Islamic identity in terms of Arab lineage, structured the process of identity formation in Nasrid Granada (1232–1492). Through a close reading of the works of the Nasrid scholar-statesman Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khatị̄b (d. 1374) and his intellectual-political network, the article explores how Nasrid elites incorporated “Arabness” into the articulation of a local identity rooted in ethnic cohesion, religious exclusivity, and genealogical continuity. It argues that this constituted a particular strategy of identification that sought to differentiate Nasrid Granada from its neighbors and demarcate the boundaries between al-Andalus, Christian Iberia, and the Maghrib, even as these regions came to be tied even more closely together through political, intellectual, social, and mercantile networks between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The article concludes with a consideration of the “racialization of religion” and the manner in which Ibn al-Khatị̄b integrated ideas about environmental determinism and physiognomy, alongside genealogy, to represent the religious and cultural traits of the inhabitants of Granada as fixed, immutable, and heritable characteristics, the product of both lineage and environment. Through an examination of the racialized production of difference within the dynamic borderland context of late medieval Iberia, this article seeks to invite broader comparative approaches that integrate the medieval Islamic world into discussions about race, racialization, and ethnicity in the Middle Ages.

Friday, September 22 at 12pm EST

Craig Perry, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Jewish Studies

Emory University

"Everyday Human Trafficking: Hemispheric Reach, Local Intensity"

Abstract: This chapter mines the geniza corpus to make two arguments about the medieval slave trade. First, the trade in slaves was decentralized: individual buyers organized the transregional trafficking of individuals as one part of a larger mixed cargo of commodities, and traded within their own personal mercantile and family networks. I contend that this decentralized trade was a primary method of human trafficking that historians have overlooked. A medieval Middle Passage never existed; rather, epochal warfare and famine caused temporary pulses in the supply of slaves. Second, the center of gravity of the slave trade in Egypt was local, not transregional. Geniza and other contemporaneous sources show that many enslaved people changed owners several times during their lives and that sale was only one method by which Jews transferred enslaved property. Wedding dowries, gifts, and bequests were primary methods that households used to transfer enslaved people as both laborers and inter-generational wealth. Two additional claims emerge from these arguments. Though the slave trade to Egypt was transregional and included enslaved people from as far afield as India and Byzantium, the most intensively exploited regions for slave imports were Nubia and greater northeast Africa. A close reading of geniza documents alongside rabbinic writings also demonstrates the contingencies and ambiguities of racialization in the Middle Ages. All non-Muslim people outside Islamic territories were legally enslaveable. But Jewish sources reveal how Egyptians began to code “Black”-skinned people as “slaves” in their epistolary exchanges even though “Black” was not yet used as one of the many long-standing ethnic categories that scribes were required to note in bills of sale, such as Nubian, Byzantine, Indian, and Abyssinian.

Friday, October 20 at 12pm EST

Felege-Selam Solomon Yirga, Assistant Professor of History

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

"A Roman in Islamic Egypt: Memory and Identity in the Chronicle of John of Nikiu"

The Chronicle of John of Nikiu, written in Coptic in the 7th century but surviving only in the form of a 17th-century Ge’ez translation of an Arabic intermediary, is often treated as an expression of an Egyptian identity rooted in miaphysite Christianity and some degree of antipathy towards and alienation from the Roman state. These readings are informed by a preconceived notion that there was a great degree of continuity between the Coptic church of the Early Islamic period and the Alexandrian church of the Roman empire, and a tacit belief that the Council of Chalcedon created an ideological rift between Alexandria and Constantinople. In this chapter, which will appear in my forthcoming book on the Chronicle, I argue that John of Nikiu’s text in fact reveals a historian who seemed to conceive of the historical Egypt as a core territory of the Roman empire by virtue of the province’s role in Christian history. Furthermore, he seems to view himself, and the Christians of Egypt, as in some way inextricably linked, even tacitly hinting that, should the government and church in Constantinople adopt an anti-Chalcedonian position, the Arab invasion of Egypt could be undone. The implication of this conclusion not only effects our understanding of the emergence of a distinct Coptic identity, but also challenges teleological notions of the inevitability of the long-term presence of Islamic hegemony over formerly Roman lands, which often pervade Islamic narrative sources, and which tend to inform modern scholarship on the subject.

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.”

Friday, December 8 at 12pm EST

Denva Gallant, Assistant Professor of Art History

Rice University

“The Black Body as Site of Conversion: Race and Ethnicity in Late Medieval Italy."

CFP: Kalamazoo 2024 -- Visigothic Legacies: New Ways of Bridging Pre- and Post-711

Thomas Barton — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 21:48:55 GMT

CALL FOR PAPERS

59th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, May 9-11, 2024

Visigothic Legacies: New Ways of Bridging Pre- and Post-711

(In person session; ID 5006)

Sponsoring Organization: American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain

(AARHMS)

Organizer: Damián Fernández (dfernandez@niu.edu)

This session will explore long-term continuities between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle

Ages within the Iberian Peninsula. In what ways did Visigothic practices, institutions, and other

legacies survive the Arab conquest and influence the mixed societies that took shape under

both Muslim and Chris-an rule? We are especially interested in the appropriation and

resignification of the past and the transmission of ancient texts and ideas and welcome

proposals on papers dealing with any population(s) within the peninsula and any aspect(s) of

this transition. We encourage work that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries, handles

non-traditional evidence, or employs novel methodologies.

Please submit your name, affiliation and contact information; a 300-word abstract; and a

short description (50 words) that may be made public through the Confex Proposal Portal

(https://icms.confex.com/icms/2024/cfp.cgi). The deadline for submission is September 15.

CFP: Kalamazoo ICMS 2024

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 18:08:22 GMT

CFP: Kalamazoo 2024

Holy Iberians: Holy People and Hagiography in Medieval Iberia

"As a major intellectual crossroads in the Medieval Latin West, the Iberian Peninsula has been recognized by scholars as a laboratory and marketplace for a comprehensive array of historical developments. This co-sponsored panel, offered by The American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain and the Hagiography Society, is designed to offer new contributions and perspectives about Hagiography from the Iberian Peninsula in order to help continue both organizations' efforts to add greater nuance to their respective interests and build lasting multidisciplinary relationships between scholars."

Contact kyle.c.lincoln@gmail.com with a proposed abstract and author identifiers.

CFP: AARHMS-inspired panels on Western-Mediterranean Communities of Knowledge and Bodies in Motion at the MAA Meeting at Notre Dame (March 14-16, 2024)

Thomas Barton — Tue, 09 May 2023 23:02:09 GMT

Call For Proposals:

AARHMS-inspired panels on Western-Mediterranean Communities of Knowledge and Bodies in Motion at the MAA Meeting at Notre Dame (March 14-16, 2024).

DUE DATE: 22 May 2023.

AARHMS is interested in promoting two Western-Mediterranean sessions of three 20-minute papers each co-organized by Mohamad Ballan and Tom Barton for the upcoming Medieval Academy of America Meeting, which will be held at the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute on March 14-16, 2024.

• The first session plans to engage with the theme of Communities of Knowledge by exploring how interfaith interaction both shaped and was conditioned by evolving, co-produced conceptions of sovereignty within the contexts of the later medieval Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.

• The second aims to investigate the theme of Bodies in Motion through the lens of the intersecting quotidian lives and rhythms of Christians, Jews, and Muslims cohabiting cities, towns, and their associated suburban districts within the later medieval Iberian Peninsula.

Proposals should include a title, 150-250-word abstract, and one-page CV and need to be received no later than 22 May 2023. Please send to Mohamad Ballan (mohamad.ballan@stonybrook.edu) and Tom Barton (barton@sandiego.edu).

Please distribute widely.

CFP: ASPHS Annual Meeting in Boulder, CO (deadline March 6)

Thomas Barton — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 15:50:59 GMT

There's still time to submit individual or panel proposals for the ASPHS annual meeting, to be held in Boulder, Colorado, May 19-21 2023. We’re looking forward to being back in person, and we’ve extended the CFP deadline until Monday, March 6; please send your proposals and/or questions to asphs2023@asphs.net.

The ASPHS Board is also working on making travel grants available to graduate students who present their work at the conference. Stay tuned for more details.

Registration will open soon. Keep an eye on the ASPHS page for more information and updates!

ASPHS 2023 Annual Conference

Call for Papers

The Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies is pleased to invite paper and panel proposals for the Annual Meeting, to be held in Boulder on May 19-21, 2023 at the UMC (University Memorial Center) of the University of Colorado Boulder. Sessions will run on Saturday and Sunday.

All presentations dealing with any aspect of Spanish and Portuguese historical studies are welcome. These include, but are not limited to, Spanish and Portuguese history and culture, philosophy, literature, language, archeology, the classical past, film, music, theatre, architecture, religion, art, and art history. In the interest of promoting cross-fertilization within the field of Iberian history, panels that bring together papers from multiple historical eras (ancient, medieval, early modern, modern) are especially encouraged. Where possible, the association will organize panels according to themes rather than to time periods.

We are considering only fully in-person panels and individual papers. We apologize for not being able to accommodate proposals for panels or individual papers presented in entirely remote or hybrid formats. Projectors and Wi-Fi internet will be available in the conference rooms. Presenters should bring their own computers to project their PowerPoints.

Proposals should include a 250-word abstract for each paper and a one-page curriculum vitae for each participant, including chairs and discussants. Please include each participant’s name, e-mail address, and university affiliation, along with any special requirements.

Proposals should be submitted by email to asphs2023@asphs.net by Monday, March 6, 2023 (note the extended deadline).

Registration

The conference registration fee will be $150 for full-time faculty and $75 for graduate students. This fee includes the reception dinner as well as a light lunch on Friday and Saturday. Registration will be available shortly on this page. Conference participants will need to be active ASPHS members. Click here for membership information; if you are already a member, click on the “Member Login” link at the top right corner of the page to see your membership status.

Please note that the ASPHS will make available some travel awards for graduate students presenting at the conference. We’ll post more information shortly.

Events

Our invited keynote speaker for this year is Prof. Richard Kagan from Johns Hopkins University.

The reception dinner will take place on Friday May 19, 2023. Prof. Kagan will address the association members on Saturday evening May 20, 2023. Both events will take place in the Glenn Miller Ballroom (UMC).

A Sunday reception in honor of Prof. Kagan at the Homewood Suites including charcuterie and cheese boards is scheduled for $10/participant with a cash bar. Due to hotel “flow” limitation, only the first 75 registered members will be allowed to participate. Please indicate via this link if you would like to attend the Sunday reception.

Lodging

The ASPHS has secured early bird specials at the Homewood Suites by Hilton in Boulder. The rooms are guest suites which include a kitchenette, living room, and private room. The hotel has a swimming pool, bar, and all other Hilton amenities. A shuttle will run at the times of the conference and is free of charge for all hotel guests.

The rate for the suite rooms at the early bird price is $179 + tax until January 31^st2023: https://www.hilton.com/en/attend-my-event/spanish-portuguese-historical-studies-association/

The rate for registering between February 1st and April 17^th 2023 is $199 + tax: https://www.hilton.com/en/attend-my-event/spanish-portuguese-historical-studies-association/

Other nearby hotels in downtown Boulder include:

Affordable: Boulder University Inn and Basecamp Boulder

Higher end: Marriott Residence Inn and The Boulderado

Tenure-Track Job Posting at Seattle University

Thomas Barton — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 04:49:58 GMT

Assistant Professor, History Department

College of Arts & Sciences

Seattle University

The History Department at Seattle University invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean World starting September 2023.

The successful candidate will be responsible for teaching, maintaining an active program of scholarship, and performing university and college service. The ideal candidate will have a primary teaching and research field in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean World (ca. 500-1600) broadly defined. There will be opportunities to teach in a variety of programs, including History, the University Core Curriculum, the Honors Program, and in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies or other interdisciplinary programs. A specialist in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean World will support the department’s curriculum emphasizing social justice issues such as the historical roots of inequality and marginalization, and interpreting the diversity of human experience across world regions. The specialist would also help contribute to the vision of both College and University for equity, justice, and centering the margins.

The preferred candidate must have a Ph.D. in History at time of appointment. ABDs will be considered.

Founded in 1891, Seattle University is a Jesuit Catholic university located on a beautiful campus of more than 50 acres in the dynamic heart of Seattle. Our diverse and driven population is made up of more than 7,200 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs within eight schools and colleges. Seattle University is an equal opportunity employer.

In support of its pursuit of academic and scholarly excellence, Seattle University is committed to creating a diverse community of students, faculty, and staff that is dedicated to the fundamental principles of equal opportunity and treatment in education and employment regardless of age, color, disability, gender identity, national origin, political ideology, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or veteran status. The university encourages applications from, and nominations of, individuals whose differing backgrounds, beliefs, ideas, and life experiences will further enrich the diversity of its educational community.

Applicants should submit applications online at https://www.seattleu.edu/careers/

including a cover letter, Curriculum Vitae, statement of teaching philosophy, evidence of teaching effectiveness, writing sample of scholarship, and contact information for three references (letters may be solicited upon submission of application).

Application deadline is October 1, 2022. For further information please email the History Department Chair, Dr. Haejeong Hazel Hahn (hanhh@seatttleu.edu).

2022 Simon Barton Memorial Travel Grant winners

Miguel Gomez — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 19:42:04 GMT

We are pleased to announce the three winners of the 2022 Simon Barton Travel Grant.

Frank Espinosa, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, will be using his grant to support a research trip to Valencia. Nina Gonzalbez, a PhD student at Florida State University, will be using her grant to support a research trip to Sevilla in April. Jillian Bjerke, a visiting lecturer in history at McDaniel College, will be using her grant to support travel to the International Medieval Congress in Leeds this summer.

Congratulations to all three winners.

A Remembrance of Gregory Milton (1966-2021)

Thomas Barton — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 00:38:50 GMT

Gregory Milton, 1966–2021

The American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain would like to remember Gregory Milton, who passed away, tragically, on December 7, 2021, at the young age of fifty-four. While Greg came to Iberian and Mediterranean medieval history after an abbreviated career as a naval officer, he quickly established an international reputation as a highly productive researcher on economic, social, and Jewish history and world-renowned authority on notarial sources.

Born in San Jose, California, on December 24, 1966, Greg spent his earliest childhood in Boca Raton, Florida, before his family returned to California. He attended elementary, junior high, and high school in the coastal city of Santa Cruz. Greg’s mother, Linda Rose, remembers how he became increasingly curious, around the second grade, about his Jewish heritage thanks largely to a Jewish friend. This interest eventually encouraged him to join the local temple and have his bar mitzvah. Greg, she remembers, was “an avid player of Dungeons and Dragons and also interested in the history and royalty of England,” early attractions that later “spurred his career direction.”

A love of airplanes and flying encouraged Greg to attend UC Berkeley on a naval scholarship. Immediately after graduating, he became an ensign in the navy. However, because he needed prescription eye glasses, he was ineligible to be a pilot and instead opted to serve as a flight officer in charge of electronic aerial reconnaissance. Greg was eventually stationed at an air base near Cádiz, an assignment that enabled him to travel widely throughout the Mediterranean. These years of exploration prompted Greg’s growing interest in medieval Spanish and Mediterranean history. He later transferred to Annapolis, Maryland, where he had the opportunity to offer classes in world history and discover his love of teaching. At this point, Greg decided to heed his passions and steer his life in a new direction. He withdrew from the navy after eight years of service to pursue a Master’s in Medieval History at Catholic University in 1997, then continuing his studies at UCLA as Teo Ruiz’s first doctoral student. Greg opted to focus on the commercial and social history of the Catalonian village of Santa Coloma de Queralt using its richly detailed and complex notarial records housed today at the Arxiu de Protocols de Tarragona. During his time living in coastal Tarragona, a city that was reminiscent of his beloved hometown of Santa Cruz, Greg developed a fluency in Catalan and became an expert on a wide range of local historical sites, which he enjoyed touring with visitors. He successfully defended his dissertation, entitled “Commerce, Crisis, and Society in a Medieval Village: Santa Coloma de Queralt, 1294-1313,” in 2005. Teo remembers Greg fondly as “an adult in every sense of the word. He was an indefatigable researcher, rendering his findings in brilliant and incisive fashion.”

Greg’s extraordinary performance at UCLA quickly earned him a visiting professorship at Marquette University followed by a tenure-track appointment at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, where he impressed students and colleagues alike with his innovating teaching and dedicated mentorship. During his time at these institutions, Greg presented at numerous conferences, produced an array of articles in respected journals and edited volumes, received prestigious fellowships and awards (such as the Solmsen Fellowship at the Institution for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), and published his path-breaking monograph on Santa Coloma de Queralt’s local economy entitled Market Power: Lordship, Society, and Economy in Medieval Catalonia, 1276-1313 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), a fascinating study of a formerly little known rural commercial system that is now widely known as an indispensable resource among scholars of economic and social history alike.

Part of Greg’s appeal to his students and colleagues was that his interests were not simply confined to premodern history. He was an avid reader of other periods of history as well as politics and science fiction and shared a love of Jane Austen with his doctoral advisor. In his diverse roles at USF, he grew especially interested, his mother recalls, “in the non-traditional student who couldn’t afford the traditional four-year, on-campus programs.” He believed strongly that “universities should spend their money on educational innovations and meeting student needs rather than on another lecture hall.” Accordingly, after seven years at USF, Greg decided to listen to his heart once again and left the research track in order to devote himself fully to developing and implementing innovative educational programs. He opted to focus on improving extended learning, serving as a director first at the University of Oregon and then at Sonoma State University, a position that enabled him to return to his beloved native state of California.

In 2019, Greg joined several colleagues to found Tarragona Associates, named in honor of Greg’s enduring connection to his adoptive home in Catalonia, which offered consulting services to universities and colleges aimed at helping them navigate the mounting challenges facing higher education. Greg was instrumental in directing and growing this new enterprise, which, shortly before his death, had just succeeded in winning a major contract with Savannah State University in Georgia. While the growing success of this project was exciting for Greg, one of the best aspects of working with Tarragona Associates over these past two years was that it enabled him to return home and spend more time with his mother.

It is fair to say that Teo Ruiz speaks for all of us at the Academy in expressing that Greg “was an affable and friendly person, a man of integrity. He left us far too early and for that we are diminished.” We join Teo in honoring Greg’s memory as a jovial colleague, diligent researcher, and beloved teacher and will miss him dearly.

-- Tom Barton

AARHMS President

Jim Powers Remembers Bernard Reilly

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 12:04:17 GMT

I believe Joe, Bernie, and I first met at the AHA meeting in Philadelphia in 1963. I remember that Edward Kealey, a Medieval English scholar, and my newly met colleague at Holy Cross, led me across a room to meet another rarely encountered Spanish medievalist. It turned out to be Joe O’Callaghan. Subsequently we bumped into Bernie, yet a third Hispanist, at a session on feudalism. We frequently saw each other during the following years at the AHA meetings and those newer sessions at Kalamazoo.

I can only echo the strongly positive views of Bernard Reilly as a scholar and a man so well detailed by Doubleday and O’Callaghan. Bernie and I occasionally shared a rental car out of the Detroit airport to Kalamazoo, and we discussed our work and our respective families. I was deeply impressed by his deft handling of episcopal archival materials and his sensitivity to how they illuminated the time periods he was covering. We were then both focused on the twelfth century, especially concerning monarchical policy regarding towns.

I have only a small correction to offer on the dating of the origins of AARHMS. Joe is right to note that Father Robert Burns fashioned the title of the organization with the word Academy leading to secure a high position on the AHA’s list of affiliated societies. However the first meeting was not in 1974, but rather at the 1973 meeting of the AHA at San Francisco. That’s the first program to reference the Society and list our meeting. We met but did not have a paper–giving session. We then withdrew to the University of San Francisco (Father Burns’ institutional employer) for a small celebration.

During the drive to the university, Fr. Burns, being a native San Franciscan, wanted to show off his city with enthusiasm. Reilly and O’Callaghan were in the back seat and I was positioned in the front. In order to get in as many vistas as possible, Burns thought haste was important to enjoy the scenic abundance of the hills. My mind began to conjure images of the film Bullitt, made only six years earlier in the same city. The tour was genuinely breath-taking. He saved the best for last, a record-setting descent down the famous steep curves of Lombard Street. Fortunately we were deprived of the record by a slower-moving vehicle in front of us; the passing of which was happily out of the question. But Joe, Bernie and I were concerned we might collectively be the shortest-lived affiliated society in AHA history. I was never more ready for cocktails in my life. I should note that in future years I was to be driven a number of times by Father Burns in a far more conservative manner. I can only assume that the exhilaration of creating AARHMS touched us all.

Joseph F. O'Callaghan Remembers Bernard Reilly

Kyle C Lincoln — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 14:48:16 GMT

In Memory of Bernie Reilly

The death of Bernie Reilly is a grave loss for all of us who study the history of medieval Spain. He was such a great good friend. About sixty years ago I met him in the midst of a large crowd of people at an AHA conference. At a time when so many medievalists were focused on the history of France and England, I remember how delighted I was to discover that there was someone else in this entire United States who was interested in medieval Spanish history.

About the same time, I encountered Father Robert Burns and Jim Powers who were also directing attention to this long-neglected field. I remember that someone remarked that we were the Irish mafia of medieval Spanish studies. Gathering one day in a dormitory room at Kalamazoo under the leadership of Father Burns, we organized the Academy of American Research Historians of Medieval Spain. Father Burns insisted on calling it an Academy so that the name would appear in the AHA program at the beginning of the list of associated societies. Bernie graciously agreed to serve as Secretary and later assumed the additional responsibility of Treasurer. In taking on those tasks, he had a major role in successfully launching this new organization.

Aside from his organizational skills, Bernie was a masterful scholar. His studies of the reigns of Queen Urraca, Alfonso VI, and Alfonso VII attest to his attention to detail and his capacity to make sound judgments and interpretations. His careful examination of every charter to determine its integrity and authenticity at a time when forgery was common is the hallmark of his work. Bernie dedicated The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain, 1031-1157, an admirable overview of a remarkable century, “to my children who completed my education.” That wry remark was no doubt true, but I think we may add that Bernie enhanced the education of every one of us who has tried to understand the complexities of medieval Spain. May his spirit be always with us.

Joseph F. O'Callaghan

The Passing of Bernard Reilly

Kyle C Lincoln — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 14:41:37 GMT

Bernard Francis Reilly, 1925–2021

Bernard F. Reilly, who passed away on December 11, 2021, at the age of ninety-six, was a pioneering scholar in the modern field of medieval Spanish history, and a formative figure in the early history of the Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS).

Born in Audubon, New Jersey, on June 8, 1925, Reilly was a World War II veteran (served 1944-46) who rose to the rank of corporal during the war in the Philippines and later participated in the US occupation forces in Japan. He later remarked that the U.S. bombing of the Japanese mainland, and the nuclear holocausts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had made him a pacifist. During the Vietnam War he worked with a group of parishioners at St. Philomena’s church in Lansdowne, PA, to provide counseling to young men on ways in which they could avoid the draft as conscientious objectors.

Having received his bachelor’s degree from Villanova University (1950), and his Master’s in History from the University of Pennsylvania (1955), Reilly returned to his first alma mater to become an instructor of History at Villanova. He remained on the faculty from 1955 until 1992, becoming promoted to the rank of Full Professor, teaching widely on the High Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. In 1966, he completed his doctoral thesis at Bryn Mawr, “The Nature of Church Reform at Santiago de Compostela during the Episcopate of Don Diego Gelmírez, 1100-1140 A.D.”

His scholarly output was formidable: he was author of many works that remain essential both for experts in the field and for the classroom, helping to forge our understanding of the rise of Christian Spain and the genesis and consolidation of the kingdom of Leon-Castile in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. His scholarly monographs include The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under Queen Urraca 1109-1126 (Princeton University Press, 1982); The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065-1109 (Princeton University Press, 1988); The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain, 1031-1157 (Blackwell, 1992); The Medieval Spains (Cambridge University Press, 1993); and The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VII 1126-1157 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998). He was also the editor of a volume of essays entitled Santiago, Saint-Denis, and Saint Peter: The reception of the Roman liturgy in León-Castile in 1080 (Fordham University Press, 1985). His son, Bernard F. Reilly, Jr. – one of eight children – reports that he had been the first faculty member at Villanova to compose a scholarly book on the computer. Several of his books have been translated into Spanish and Portuguese.

Reilly’s final project, a study of León-Castile under King Fernando I and Queen Sancha, is to be co-written by Simon R. Doubleday and is forthcoming with the University of Pennsylvania Press. It was his conviction—one that will underlie this volume—that, as he expressed in a private letter, Fernando was “a traditional king of the Asturian line”, preoccupied with the Iberian northwest rather more than with the meseta, and that “the supposed turn to Cluny, and the French interest, proves to have been much overdone… The affairs of Castile are important but peripheral”. In contrast, Galicia and especially Portugal were, in Reilly’s view, surprisingly central.

Collectively, Reilly’s meticulous scholarship has proven profoundly important for several scholarly generations and will continue to be so. He was awarded the John Nicholas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America for the best first book in the area of medieval studies, and remains the only scholar to have won the American Historical Association’s Premio del Rey award twice: he was the inaugural recipient in 1990 for The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, and enjoyed similar success with the successor volume, The Kingdom of Leon-Castilla under King Alfonso VII 1126-1157, for which he received the same prize in the year 2000. Over the course of his career, he was the recipient of Fellowships and Research grants from the Fulbright Foundation (1982), the American Philosophical Society (1979), and the American Council of Learned Societies (1969). He was named Academic Correspondent of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de Toledo (1981), Honorary Fellow of the Hispanic Society of America (2003), to which he has bequeathed his personal papers before his death, and a Corresponding Member of the Academia Portuguesa da História (2004).

Reilly’s major book projects were complemented by articles in Speculum, Medieval Studies, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, Viator, and the Catholic Historical Review, as well as the relatively new Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, and by many book chapters; he contributed no fewer than 33 articles to Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia. In addition to his scholarly output, Reilly was also the author of three historical novels, all set in medieval Iberia: Treasure of the Vanquished: A Novel of Visigothic Spain (Combined Books, 1994); Secret of Santiago: A Novel of Medieval Spain (Combined Books, 1997); and Journey to Compostela: A Novel of Medieval Pilgrimage (Combined Books, 2001).

As president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) chapter at Villanova University, Reilly represented faculty interests in collective bargaining with the University; he also headed the Pennsylvania Division of the American Association of University Professors (1969-72) and was also a Member of the Executive Committee of the National Council of the American Association of University Professors (1971-73). He also served as president of the American Catholic Historical Association.

Reilly’s role in the formation and early years of AARHMS, founded in 1974, is worthy of particular note. While Father R.I. Burns served as the organization’s first president, Reilly served as its first “Acting-Secretary”, assuming responsibility—among other tasks—for the composition of the AARHMS newsletters (early examples of which are accessible on the website). He performed this unglamorous task with wry elan. “If the preferred focus of this Academy in the decently detailed document”, he wrote in the October 1977 newsletter, “it ought perhaps to provide for the employment of future generations of scholars by the modest production of further documentation. Accordingly, we may report that as of this date, some fifty-eight of members have paid dues for 1977….”. The position soon morphed into that of Secretary-Treasurer, a position that he held from 1976-82 – a period that encompassed the 900^th anniversary of the official adoption of the Roman rite in León-Castile in 1080.

Following the presidency of Joseph O’Callaghan, Reilly was elected president of AARHMS in 1982 (taking office in 1983) and re-elected to that position two years later, serving until 1987. “In those days,” James Brodman recalls, “AARHMS was not terribly formal. It was a place for those of us interested in medieval Iberia to gather, to eat dinner together (we could all fit around a table), to listen to each other's papers and generally encourage each other at a time our field was on the fringes.” Reilly himself appears to have relished the friendly academic sociability that AARHMS provided. Reflecting on its tenth anniversary, still in his capacity as newsletter editor, he wrote: “It is pleasant to recall those whom the Academy has been able to assist to their first serious scholarly exposure… One thinks fondly of the camaraderie, the banter, the leisurely meals, and the occasional libation which smoothed away the frazzle of strange rooms, large crowds, late planes, and absolutely incomprehensible points of view”.

A great many scholars will remember Prof. Reilly and his work with equal fondness. His acuity, and unmatched familiarity with the archives, will be missed by every medieval Iberian historian.

Simon R. Doubleday, Hofstra University

AARHMS Elections Results

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 20:04:01 GMT

Dear AARHMS members,

After three memorable years of serving as President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain, I am stepping down effective May 31. I will continue to serve on the Executive Council in the role of Past President until 2024.

I am delighted to announce that Dr. Thomas Barton (University of San Diego) has been elected President of AARHMS for the three-year term, 2021-2024.

As AARHMS members know well, Prof. Barton is a highly accomplished scholar whose research focuses on the relationship between different ethno-religious communities within Iberia and the Western Mediterranean during the medieval period. His first book, Contested Treasure: Jews and Authority in the Crown of Aragon (Penn State, 2015), explores how different non-royal Christian authorities sought to challenge the crown's claim that Jews (and Muslims) were its exclusive regalian preserve. It won two prestigious book awards: the 2017 Jordan Schnitzer Award from the Association for Jewish Studies, and the 2016 Best First Book Award from the Association of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies. His second book, Victory’s Shadow: Conquest and Governance in Medieval (Cornell University Press, 2019), which examines Christian-Muslim interaction along the lower Ebro River valley between the eleventh and later thirteenth centuries, also won a major book award: the 2020 Premio del Rey Prize from the American Historical Association. Dr. Barton edited three volumes of collected essays: Boundaries in the Medieval and Wider World: Essays in Honour of Paul Freedman (2017), Iberia, the Mediterranean, and the Larger World in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods (special volume of Pedralbes published by the Universitat de Barcelona, 2020) and Constructing Iberian Identities, 1000-1700 (forthcoming from Brepols Press).

I would like to congratulate both Dr. Barton and Dr. Miguel Gomez (University of Dayton), who has been re-elected as Secretary-Treasurer of AARHMS, as well as to thank all the members of the Executive Council for their dedication and service.

As always, we welcome your ideas and initiatives, and hope that you will continue supporting AARHMS as it enters a new chapter in its history.

Maya Soifer Irish

AARHMS Elections

Kyle C Lincoln — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 12:23:07 GMT

As specified in our bylaws, the time has come once again to elect a president and secretary-treasurer for AARHMS. Please send nominations or self-nominations via email to the current secretary-treasurer, Miguel Gomez, mgomez1 AT dayton DOT edu. The Deadline for Submissions is 31 April 2021.

The description of official duties for both posts are below.

Duties of the President shall include but need not be limited to the following:

i. represent the Academy faithfully;

ii. work directly with the Secretary-Treasurer in matters related to the Academy;

iii. appoint individuals to serve as conference organizer, communications officer,

book review editor, at-large members of the Executive Council, and any other

such role required for the Academy’s proper functioning;

iv. report yearly to the membership on the activities of the Executive Council;

v. serve on the Executive Council for one term after serving as President.

Duties of the Secretary-Treasurer shall include but need not be limited to the

following:

i. oversee the maintenance of the membership records;

ii. determine the times for sending notices and reminders of dues payments;

iii. under the direction of the Executive Council, establish and oversee the

internal financial procedures of the Academy in accord with best financial

practices;

iv. collect and record contributions and thank the donors;

v. keep the financial records of the Academy, receiving and depositing dues and

other income and disbursing funds as directed by the Executive Council;

vi. make the financial records of the Academy available for an annual audit or

review as determined by the Executive Council;

vii. keep current the Academy’s listing in various directories and guides to grants

and prizes;

viii. in consultation with the President, organize meetings of the Executive Council

and keep the minutes;

ix. assist the President in the preparation of an annual report to the membership

Bishko Prize Announcement from ASPHS

Kyle C Lincoln — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 15:18:33 GMT

The Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies solicits submissions for the annual Charles Julian Bishko Memorial Prize for the best article or book chapter published in 2020 in the field of medieval Iberian history by a North American scholar. This year’s prize, which carries an honorarium of $250, will be announced at the 2021 annual meeting of ASPHS, which will be held virtually April 23-25, 2021.

Initiated in 2003, the Bishko Prize honors Professor Charles Julian Bishko, the distinguished historian of medieval Iberia who taught for 39 years at the University of Virginia.

Articles or book chapters may be written in Castilian, English, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese or French. Authors must be current members of the ASPHS.

Authors should submit one copy of the article or book chapter and a short (two-page) CV in PDF form to committee chair Andrew Devereux, using the following email address: BishkoPrize@asphs.net

The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2020.

The 2020 winner was Pamela Patton, for her article “Demons and Diversity in León,” Medieval Encounters 25, no. 1-2 (2019): 150-179.

CFP: Saint Louis SMRS, 2021

Kyle C Lincoln — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 14:57:41 GMT

Ninth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies
June 21-23, 2021
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis, Missouri

The Ninth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (June 21-23, 2021) is a convenient summer venue in North America for scholars to present papers, organize sessions, participate in roundtables, and engage in interdisciplinary discussion. The goal of the Symposium is to promote serious scholarly investigation into all topics and in all disciplines of medieval and early modern studies.

The plenary speakers for this year will be David Abulafia, of Cambridge University, and Barbara Rosenwein, of Loyal University, Chicago.

The Symposium is held annually on the beautiful midtown campus of Saint Louis University. On campus housing options include affordable, air-conditioned apartments as well as a luxurious boutique hotel. Inexpensive meal plans are also available, although there is a wealth of restaurants, bars, and cultural venues within easy walking distance of campus.

While attending the Symposium participants are free to use the Vatican Film Library, the Rare Book and Manuscripts Collection, and the general collection at Saint Louis University's Pius XII Memorial Library.

The Ninth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies invites proposals for papers, complete sessions, and roundtables. Any topics regarding the scholarly investigation of the medieval and early modern world are welcome. Papers are normally twenty minutes each and sessions are scheduled for ninety minutes. Scholarly organizations are especially encouraged to sponsor proposals for complete sessions.

For more information go to: https://www.smrs-slu.org/

Announcement from ASPHS: Bishko Prize

Kyle C Lincoln — Fri, 27 Dec 2019 20:32:46 GMT

An annnouncement for members from Michelle Partida-Armstrong for ASPHS about the Charles Julian Bishko Prize:

Dear Fellow Iberianists,

I'd like to bring to your attention the Charles Julian Bishko article prize, supported by the Association of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, for the best article published in 2019 in the field of medieval Iberian history by a North American scholar. As chair of the prize committee, I'd like to reach out to as many scholars as possible to consider submitting an article.

This year’s prize, which carries an honorarium of $250, will be announced at the 2020 annual meeting of ASPHS in Toronto (April 22-25, 2020).

The submission deadline is January 15, 2020.

Articles may be written in Castilian, English, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese or French.

Authors must be current members of the ASPHS. Authors should submit one copy of the article and a short (2-page) CV in PDF form to the chair of the committee and the committee members via email by 15 January, 2020. For those who are not current members, membership is $50 for one year or $25 for non full-time faculty. Please direct your queries to me (marmstrongpartida@emory.edu), and send your submission to all committee members: Núria Silleras-Fernández (nuria.silleras-fernandez@colorado.edu) and Tom Barton (barton@sandiego.edu).

Happy holidays to everyone,

Michelle

Call for Applications: 2020 Barton Memorial Grants

Kyle C Lincoln — Wed, 20 Nov 2019 17:57:13 GMT

The American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS) welcomes applications for the Simon Barton Memorial Junior Scholar Travel Grants. In 2020, AARHMS will offer up to three grants of $500 each in support of travel for research or conference presentations in the field of medieval Iberian history. These grants are offered in memory of Simon Barton, a historian of medieval Iberia whose research was surpassed in quality only by the depth of his commitment to mentoring young scholars. It is AARHMS's hope that these small grants will make a big difference for the devoted young scholars who are striving to achieve great things.

Qualifications and Scope: The grant program is open to US citizens or permanent residents wishing to travel abroad for research or conference presentation, and to non-US citizens who wish to travel to the US for one of these purposes. All applicants must be active members of AARHMS, and must either be enrolled in doctoral programs or have received their doctorate within the previous five years.

Application Process: Applicants must send a current CV, a letter of application explaining how they intend to use the grant, a brief external letter of endorsement, and a simple proposed budget. Applicants for a conference travel grant must also provide proof of their acceptance on an academic conference panel. All applications must be submitted as PDF files, via email, to the Secretary of AARHMS, at sec.tres.AARHMS@gmail.com. Please submit any questions to the same email address. Applications must be submitted by February 1, 2020.

Conditions: The names of successful applicants will be announced by March 1, 2020. Grants will be directly payable to the awardees, who will be asked to write a reflection on their travel and experiences for the AARHMS website blog. All publications resulting from research or conference presentations supported by the grant must acknowledge the support of AARHMS.

CFP: Leeds co-sponsored sessions "Negotiating Medieval Iberian Borderlands"

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 16:08:59 GMT

Organizer: Erica Buchberger, University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley

Sponsors: American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS) and Texas Medieval Association (TEMA)

It has long been recognized that the "border" between Christian and Muslim Iberia was not a tidy line of us and them with a no-man's land in between; it was a fluid border region of shifting alliances, diverse layers of identity, and code-switching, much like the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. The myth of a clear-cut division between Christians and Muslims was built through various stages of narrative and artistic construction for specific purposes in specific eras.

Papers are welcome on any aspect of borders and borderlands in medieval Iberia. This may include (but is not limited to) how medieval people experienced these borders, how they aimed to construct or reinforce them, and how modern impressions of medieval Iberia get it wrong (or right).

Papers will be 15-20 minutes in length. Participants will need to pay a registration fee to attend the conference, and may only present one paper (round tables do not count toward this limit). Please email a working title and short abstract to erica.buchberger@utrgv.edu by September 20, 2019.

Kalamazoo 2020 CFP

Kyle C Lincoln — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 19:06:45 GMT

CFP: Kalamazoo 2020

The Sneak Preview of the Kalamazoo CFPs has already come out, so it's time to start organizing panels for AARHMS's 2020 ICMS programming!

Bridging the Divide: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberian Studies

Scholarship on medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Iberian Peninsula intersects far less often than it should. Particularly conspicuous is the disciplinary divide between the study of Jewish and Muslim communities and cultures, on the one hand, and Christian communities and cultures, on the other, in medieval Iberia. Scholars in different sub-fields often work on similar topics, but do not always engage in a conversation with each other. This session aims to bring together scholars interested in bridging this disciplinary gap. We welcome topics of common interest to Iberianists, including (but not limited to) law and legal discourse; development of state and bureaucracy in Muslim and Christian kingdoms; empire and imperial ideology in Al-Andalus and Christian Iberia; ideas of jihad, crusade, and martyrdom; shared visual and literary cultures between the three faiths; women and gender roles in different religious groups; conversions to another faith; and piety and charity among Iberian Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

Race Before Raza in Medieval Iberian Studies I-II

(co-sponsored with TEMA)

Modern assumptions about race and identity have shaped scholarship on the Middle Ages since such work began. Few fields of study make this more evident than medieval Iberia, where centuries of interaction among diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural communities offer up a canvas for the projection of modern paradigms and ideologies. Although such models can provide a fresh lens through which to consider problems obscured by time and cultural distance, when employed carelessly or unconsciously they can badly distort our image of the medieval Iberian past. Our interdisciplinary sessions invites papers exploring how post-medieval discourse about race and identity has intersected—or could intersect—with modern understanding of the history and culture of the medieval Iberian peninsula. Submissions might consider the efficacy of applying modern concepts and terms to the study of medieval problems; the impact of unconscious or unspoken bias in evaluating medieval evidence; promising methodological strategies in study of the past; and the uses and misuses of medieval Iberian history in modern public and political discourse on race and identity. Both illustrative case studies and scholarly position papers will be considered.

Bishops at the Borders

(co-sponsored with Episcopus)

A recent book review in Speculum noted that it was cool to study bishops again, and the importance of Medieval Iberia as a culturally-diverse space has commanded considerable attention in scholarly and public discussions. The intersection of these two recent scholarly trends presents an obvious and attractive overlap between the fields, creating lasting connections and conversations between both organizations’ interest groups. The differences between the kingdoms in Iberia, the subject of AARHMS scholarship, provide both similarity and contrast between the source bases while the focus of Episcopus on the role of bishops and the secular clergy provides a wider conversation in which Iberianists can participate.

Interested persons should contact the Conference Organizer.

Call for Applicants: 2019 Barton Junior Scholar Travel Grant

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 16:36:57 GMT

The American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS) welcomes applications for our newly-renamed Simon Barton Memorial Junior Scholar Travel Grants. In 2018, AARHMS will offer up to three grants of $500 each in support of travel for research or conference presentations in the field of medieval Iberian history. These grants are offered in memory of Simon Barton, a historian of medieval Iberia whose research was surpassed in quality only by the depth of his commitment to mentoring young scholars. It is AARHMS's hope that these small grants will make a big difference for the devoted young scholars who are striving to achieve great things.

Conditions: The names of successful applicants will be announced by March 15, 2019. Grants will be directly payable to the awardees, who will be asked to write a reflection on their travel and experiences for the AARHMS website blog. All publications resulting from research or conference presentations supported by the grant must acknowledge the support of AARHMS.

CFP: Intermediality in Iberian Manuscripts: Materiality in Meeting and Context

Kyle C Lincoln — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 13:18:13 GMT

The Centro de Estudos de Sociologia e Estetica Medieval (CESEM) and the Instituto de Estudos Medievais (IEM) of the NOVA University of Lisbon are organizing two sessions for scholars working in the following areas: Musicology, Art History, Political and Social History, Codicology and Palaeography, Philosophy, Literature and Material studies.

We aim to approach Iberian manuscripts from the point of view of their materiality and production processes as well as from analysis of their artistic and literary meanings and contents. These two sessions promote an intense engagement with the concept of ‘intermediality’. Manuscripts are multifaceted and can be seen as material artefacts and as repositories of artistic creations, ideas, concepts, as well as of Iberian culture in a broader sense. The concept of intermediality helps us to understand how these aspects interact and can be approached by discussing texts, images and music, but also techniques, institutions, communities, geographical spaces, and changes along time. Concepts such as convergence, combination, influence, interaction, dependence (both explicit and implicit), communication, transmission, reception, integration, common and multiple discourse, might also be explored.

Intermediality will be tackled from both a methodological and epistemological perspective. Indeed, we encourage the analysis of case studies by multidisciplinary teams that work together by applying knowledge and methods that complement one another in addition to papers from individual researchers.

The deadline for sending the proposals is September 15, 2018. Please send your proposal (up to 300 words) and CV to Alicia Miguélez (amiguelez@fcsh.unl.pt). More info at: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress

CFP: "Coins in Medieval Material Culture"

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 18:21:08 GMT

"Coins in Medieval Material Culture"

Proposed Sessions for the Leeds International Medieval Congress,

July 1-4, 2019

Commentators from Aristotle to Aquinas have recognized that coinage is primarily a

medium used to measure the need for or utility of other objects. But by its nature, coinage also forms a conspicuous part of a society’s material culture. While medieval coins did not carry the high-relief portraits of their ancient predecessors, they nonetheless give us direct evidence of visual and textual messages promulgated by governments. These sessions will broadly consider the extent to which coins in Latin Europe, Byzantium and Islam helped shape or were shaped by

the societies in which they circulated. Was the success of a coin dependent simply on its reliable fineness and weight or was its physical appearance a factor? Did authorities successfully employ coins as propaganda? How relevant were coin legends in a world where literacy was not widespread? Did coins successfully circulate across political or cultural boundaries?

Please send a one‑page abstract along with a very brief curriculum vitae no later than 21 September 2018 to either:

Alan M. Stahl

Curator of Numismatics

Firestone Library RBSC

One Washington Road

Princeton NJ 08544

astahl@princeton.edu

(609) 258-9127

James Todesca

Department of History

Georgia Southern University

Savannah, GA 31419

jtodesca@georgiasouthern.edu

(912) 344‑2850

An Announcement about the AARHMS Annual Junior Scholar Grants

Kyle C Lincoln — Tue, 08 May 2018 14:32:30 GMT

Conditions: The names of successful applicants will be announced by June 30, 2018. Grants will be directly payable to the awardees, who will be asked to write a reflection on their travel and experiences for the AARHMS website blog. All publications resulting from research or conference presentations supported by the grant must acknowledge the support of AARHMS.

Announcement from Simon Doubleday

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 21:48:38 GMT

After three years with the honor of serving as President of the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain, I am delighted to announce that-following the recent AARHMS elections-I will be succeeded by Prof. Maya Soifer Irish (Rice University) for the three-year term 2018-2021.

As AARHMS members will know, Prof. Irish is a highly accomplished scholar whose pivotal book Jews and Christians in Medieval Castile , which examines the rich fabric of a multiethnic society along the Camino de Santiago and beyond, mines a wide range of local archival sources in order to trace the waxing and waning fortunes of the Jewish community over a three-hundred-year period, to the brink of catastrophic violence. Her article "Beyond convivencia," published in the very first issue of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, has become an essential point of reference for all of us working on interfaith relations in medieval Spain. The first female president of AARHMS, Prof. Irish will bring new perspectives to the field at a time when exciting changes are afoot in the framing of medieval studies as a whole, while continuing our efforts to expand outreach to new communities of scholars in all parts of the world.

My warmest congratulations both to Prof. Irish and to Prof. Miguel Gómez (University of Dayton), who has been re-elected as Secretary-Treasurer of AARHMS. Prof. Gómez has helped to ensure that the organization remains on an excellent financial footing, allowing us to offer a number of junior scholar travel grants in 2017, for the first time in the organization's history. Finally, thanks to Kyle Lincoln (Kalamazoo College), who-inter alia-has been responsible for the smooth running of our elections and our website. As we move into a new phase of AARHMS history, we welcome your ideas and initiatives, your blog entries and your book reviews; don't forget to renew your membership, and consider offering one as a gift to a junior colleague in the field!

Election Results

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 21:12:58 GMT

To the Membership:

Our triennial elections had a solid turnout, and have selected as the new President of AARHMS:

Maya Soifer Irish, Associate Professor of History, Rice University

Simon Doubleday now assumes the position of Former President, and retains ex officio, a seat on the AARHMS' Executive Board.

The election for Secretary-Treasurer confirmed for re-election to that same post:

Miguel D. Gómez, Lecturer of History, Dayton University.

Thanks to all who voted in these elections, and best wishes to Maya and Miguel as they embark on their new, three-year term.

Anthony Minnema: Reflections on a Junior Scholar Grant from AARHMS

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 13:42:09 GMT

I would like to thank the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain for their generous support of my research through the 2017 Junior Scholar Travel Grant. This award facilitated my participation in the bi-annual conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean at the University of Ghent in July 2017. For this conference, I organized a panel with other junior scholars with the title “Political Ideology and the Search for Legitimacy in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century al-Andalus.” The panel explored the exercise and expression of power in different Muslim kingdoms and taifastates, and examined how leaders projected their authority through a range of materials and forums to their subjects with varying degrees of success. The fruit of this research bridges a gap in the narrative of medieval Spanish history about Andalusi politics after the collapse of the taifa states and the rise of Magrebi regimes on the peninsula.

I also provided a paper for the panel, “A Taifa in Exile: The Survival of the Banu Hud in the Twelfth Century and Beyond,” which represents the first chapter of a new book. The project traces the history of the Banu Hud over the course of two centuries, examining how the exiled Zaragozan dynasty participated in Andalusi political affairs and exercised power in the face of Magrebi and Christian overlordship and conquest. This particular chapter establishes trends in the Banu Hud’s political platform after their exit from Zaragoza, showing how one Hudid leader used Islamic political traditions, coinage, and a network of fellow exiles to become a symbol of resistance and solidarity.

The panel’s focus on the fashioning of legitimacy fit well within the conference’s theme of “Communities, Imaginations and Emotions in the Medieval Mediterranean” and generated a productive discussion after the panel about future directions for research. I am particularly grateful for the support of the AARHMS through this grant as it allowed me to present a new project to a diverse body of distinguished scholars from around the world. With the feedback that I received during and after the panel, I look forward to incorporating my notes from the conference into the project as I go forward with the monograph. Many thanks again to the grants committee and fellow members of the AARHMS.

AARHMS Junior Scholar Travel Grants

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 16:47:57 GMT

The American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS) welcomes applications for our newly-created AARHMS Junior Scholar Travel Grants. In 2017, AARHMS will offer three grants of $500 each in support of travel for research or conference presentations in the field of medieval Iberian history.

Conditions: The names of successful applicants will be announced by May 31, 2017. Grants will be directly payable to the awardees, who will be asked to write a reflection on their travel and experiences for the AARHMS website blog. All publications resulting from research or conference presentations supported by the grant must acknowledge the support of AARHMS.

Conference announcement: The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Muslim-Christian Interchange

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 13:48:44 GMT

In collaboration with the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Madrid and Princeton's departments of Art & Archaeology and History, the Index of Christian Art will sponsor a two-day interdisciplinary conference, “The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Muslim-Christian Interchange,” on 19-20 May 2017.

The medieval treasury offers an extraordinary material witness to the desires, aspirations, and self-conception of its creators. Treasuries could function as sources of gifts (and obligations) for their allies, as prestigious private storehouses for ostentation before an elite audience, or as financial reserves that could be made use of in times of need. Luxury items from non-Christian cultures, such as the many Islamic objects that found their way into church treasuries, or those made from materials of great intrinsic value, such as ivory, gold, silver, or silk, became even more valuable if the piece were turned to a sacred use. We will examine these dimensions of the treasury by giving special emphasis to the rich holdings of the royal-sponsored monastery of San Isidoro de León in northern Spain. Taken as a whole, both texts and objects offer a rich body of evidence for interdisciplinary investigation and serve as a springing point for larger questions about sumptuary collections and their patrons across Europe and the Mediterranean during the central Middle Ages.

Hosted at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the conference brings together international and US scholars from multiple disciplines and professions, with specializations including Islamic law and sumptuary production, Christian chronicles, patronage and royal studies, identity and gender studies, and political history across the cultures of medieval Spain. The diversity of questions and perspectives addressed by these scholars will shed light on the nature of treasury collections, as well as on the broad efficacy of multidisciplinary study for the Middle Ages.

For further information, contact Pamela Patton: ppatton@princeton.edu

SPEAKERS

THOMAS BURMAN, ROBERT M. CONWAY DIRECTOR OF THE MEDIEVAL INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME

“Seeing and Not Seeing Islam in Twelfth-Century Europe”

ANA CABRERA, VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM, AND MARÍA JUDITH FELICIANO, INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR AND DIRECTOR, “MEDIEVAL TEXTILES IN IBERIA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN”

“Medieval Textiles in León in the Iberian and Mediterranean Context”

JERRILYNN DODDS, SARAH LAWRENCE COLLEGE

“The Treasury, Beyond Interaction”

AMANDA DOTSETH, MEADOWS MUSEUM, SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY AND PRADO MUSEUM, MADRID

“Medieval Treasure and the Modern Museum: Christian and Islamic Objects from San Isidoro de León”

MARIBEL FIERRO, INSTITUTO DE LENGUAS Y CULTURAS DEL MEDITERRÁNEO Y ORIENTE PRÓXIMO, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS

“Christian Relics in al-Andalus”

JULIE HARRIS, SPERTUS INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH LEARNING AND LEADERSHIP

“Jews, Real and Imagined, at San Isidoro and Beyond”

EVA HOFFMAN, DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ART HISTORY, TUFTS UNIVERSITY

“Arabic Script as Text and Image on Treasury Objects across the Medieval Mediterranean”

JITSKE JASPERSE, INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS

“Set in Stone: Questioning the Portable Altar of the Infanta Sancha (d. 1159)”

BEATRICE KITZINGER, DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

“The Treasury, a Material Witness to Long-Distance Contact and Pivot Point for Interdisciplinary Exchange”

EDUARDO MANZANO, INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS

“Beyond the Year 900: The ‘Iron Century’ or an Era of Silk?”

THERESE MARTIN, INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS

“Ivory Assemblage as Visual Metaphor: The Beatitudes Casket in Context”

PAMELA A. PATTON, INDEX OF CHRISTIAN ART, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

“Demons and Diversity in León”

ANA RODRÍGUEZ, INSTITUTO DE HISTORIA, CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTÍFICAS

“Narrating the Treasury: What Medieval Iberian Chronicles Choose to Tell Us about Luxury Objects”

ITTAI WEINRYB, BARD GRADUATE CENTER

“The Idea of North”

https://ica.princeton.edu/conferences/

HISPANEX Opens Tomorrow!

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 18:05:21 GMT

The annual race for funding from the Ministerio de Cultura, Educación y Deporte begins tomorrow:

http://www.mecd.gob.es/mecd/servicios-al-ciudadano-mecd/catalogo/general/cultura/201577/ficha.html

New Initiatives: Coming Soon!

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 13:48:35 GMT

Members will be delighted to know that, when so many other organizations are suffering, AARHMS is excited to be launching a series of new programs designed to help promote scholarship on the Medieval Iberian world.

Details will be coming soon from the Secretary-Treasurer, Miguel Gomez, who will be spearheading these new projects, with help from the executive board and with the continued support of active and involved members.

News from a Sister Organization and a CFP

Kyle C Lincoln — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 14:34:36 GMT

An announcement from the organizers of the annual Royal Studies Network's Kings & Queens Conference:

We are delighted to announce that the call for papers for Kings & Queens 6: ‘In the Shadow of the Throne’ is now open. The conference will be held in Madrid, hosted by UNED and will take place 12-15 September 2017. Deadline for proposals is 30 March 2017 and please note that we have 20 bursaries for postgraduate students and early career scholars. Full details can be found on the Royal Studies Network website: http://www.royalstudiesnetwork.org/k-q-conference-series

If your research intersects with queenship and/or royal studies you might be interested in the Royal Studies Journal/CCCU prize scheme. We offer two prizes, one for the best monograph in the field and another specifically for postgraduate students/early career scholars for the best article/chapter. The prize is £50 and for the article/chapter prize, the winning piece will be published in our open access electronic journal. Prizes will be conferred at the K&Q6 conference in Madrid and submissions are now open-deadline for nominations is 15 May 2017. For more information on the prizes, including the guidelines and nomination forms, seehttp://www.rsj.winchester.ac.uk/index.php/rsj/pages/view/CCCU

ASPHS Prizes

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 16:50:25 GMT

News from our sister society, the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, about their annual round of prizes :

The ASPHS offers three prizes for excellence in scholarship in Iberian history. To be eligible, authors must be current members of the ASPHS. All prizes have a call for submissions in the fall of each year and are awarded the following spring.

On a three-year rotation, the Association offers a prize for the best dissertation award, the best first article award, and best first book award. Prizes carry an honorarium of $250. Click here for more information on this year’s award and call for submissions.

In 2007 ASPHS held the first competition for the A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History. The prize was created through an endowment from Dr. Harold Johnson, and it carries an honorarium of $250. Click here for more information on the Oliveira Marques prize and call for submissions.

The annual Bishko Prize, in honor of Professor Charles Julian Bishko, recognizes the best article on medieval Iberian history published by a North American scholar. The prize carries an honorarium of $250. Click here for more information on the Bishko Prize and call for submissions.

The Rome Prize, Call for Proposals

Kyle C Lincoln — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 14:44:27 GMT

The American Academy in Rome supports innovative artists, writers, and scholars living and working together in a dynamic international community. Founded in 1894, the Academy is the oldest American overseas center for independent study and advanced research in the arts and humanities. A not-for-profit, privately funded institution, the Academy awards the Rome Prize to thirty emerging artists and scholars who represent the highest standard of excellence and who are in the early or middle stages of their working lives. The winners are invited to Rome to pursue their work in an atmosphere conducive to intellectual and artistic experimentation and interdisciplinary exchange. The Rome Prize consists of room and board, a stipend ($28,000 for full-term fellowships; $16,000 for half-term fellowships) and separate work space, and privileged access to Rome. Rome Prize winners are the core of the Academy's residential community, which also includes Affiliated Fellows, Residents and Visiting Artists and Visiting Scholars.

The deadline for the nationwide Rome Prize competition is Tuesday, November 1, 2016. Applications will also be accepted between November 2-15, 2016.

The on-line application is available on the American Academy in Rome website at www.aarome.org/apply

Leeds CFP

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 22:05:39 GMT

AARHMS Call for Papers (Leeds International Congress, 3-6 July 2017): Roundtable, “Alterity in Medieval Iberia”

As part of its ongoing commitment to research, scholarship, and community-building among scholars of the Medieval Iberian and Western Mediterranean worlds, the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS) plans to host a roundtable at the 2017 International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds.

We seek welcome participants interested in addressing any form(s) of otherness/alterity, as they relate to culture and gender, religion and ethnicity, or the (ins)significance of frontiers, and to any parts of the Iberian Peninsula. We welcome encourage early career researchers as well as more advanced scholars. Send a working title and very short abstract indicating themes you wish to address by September 27 to simon.r.doubleday@hofstra.edu or Kyle.Lincoln@kzoo.edu

Participants should ensure their membership of AARHMS in advance of the International Medieval Congress.

An Announcement from Simon Doubleday

Kyle C Lincoln — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 15:33:59 GMT

AARHMS (the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain) is delighted to initiate a new blog series, accessible to fully-paid-up members of our organization, in which guest authors report on their research activities across the globe. Our very first blogger, Tom Devaney (University of Rochester), writes to us from Helsinki, and describes for us the resources and opportunities of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (HCAS), where he has been spending a sabbatical year. In addition to the academic and intellectual information he provides, Tom offers some fascinating glimpses into adjusting to life in Finland with a family (“it’s common to see seven-year-olds navigating the city on their own”!) and undercuts the myth of Scandinavian reserve, emphasizing the warm reception he has received in Helskini.

We welcome volunteers for new blogs from across the globe. AARHMS currently has social media followers from most Latin American countries, and a number in Asia (from Iran to Mongolia and beyond). We would prefer blogs to be written in English, but would consider submissions in Spanish and Portuguese as well. We would be delighted to discuss possibilities with you; Tom Devaney’s model, well-illustrated with photos and replete with hyperlinks, provides an excellent model. To contribute you need not necessarily be an AARHMS member, although would we encourage this. Please write to simon.r.doubleday@hofstra.edu if you are interested.

HISPANEX Program from the Spanish MCED

Kyle C Lincoln — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 15:34:12 GMT

Members will be delighted to hear that the HISPANEX Program (heir to the Ministry for Cultural Cooperation grants) has been renewed for another year.

The convocatoria went out recently, and the necessary details are to be found in the Boletín de Estado, here.

Interested members can begin the process at the Program's own site.

N.B. You must first obtain a clave de acesso before entering the site and completing the application.

Last Call: Bishko Prize for Best Article in Medieval Iberian History (ASPHS)

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 15:17:57 GMT

A final call for submissions.

You need to be an ASPHS member by the deadline, but it's easy and inexpensive to sign up (http://asphs.net/membership.html):

The Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies solicits submissions for the annual Charles Julian Bishko Memorial Prize for the best article published in 2014 or 2015 in the field of medieval Iberian history by a North American scholar. Initiated in 2003, the Bishko Prize honors Professor Charles Julian Bishko, the distinguished historian of medieval Iberia who taught for 39 years at the University of Virginia. This year's prize, which carries an honorarium of $250, will be announced at the 2016 annual meeting of ASPHS in San Diego, California. Articles may be written in Castilian, English, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese or French. Authors must be current members of the ASPHS. Authors should submit one copy of the article and a short (2-page) CV in PDF form to each member of the committee via email by 31 December, 2015. Please direct queries to the chair of the prize committee.

Marie Kelleher, California State Univ. Long Beach: M.Kelleher@csulb.edu
Hussein Fancy, University of Michigan: fancy@umich.edu
Tom Barton, University of San Diego: barton@sandiego.edu

Bishko Prize for Best Article in Medieval Iberian History (ASPHS)

Kyle C Lincoln — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 00:21:14 GMT

The Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies solicits submissions for the annual Charles Julian Bishko Memorial Prize for the best article published in 2014 or 2015 in the field of medieval Iberian history by a North American scholar. Initiated in 2003, the Bishko Prize honors Professor Charles Julian Bishko, the distinguished historian of medieval Iberia who taught for 39 years at the University of Virginia. This year's prize, which carries an honorarium of $250, will be announced at the 2016 annual meeting of ASPHS in San Diego, California. Articles may be written in Castilian, English, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese or French. Authors must be current members of the ASPHS. Authors should submit one copy of the article and a short (2-page) CV in PDF form to each member of the committee via email by31 December, 2015. Please direct queries to the chair of the prize committee.

Marie Kelleher, California State Univ. Long Beach: M.Kelleher@csulb.edu
Hussein Fancy, University of Michigan: fancy@umich.edu
Tom Barton, University of San Diego: barton@sandiego.edu

The 2014-2015 Charles Julian Bishko Memorial Prize went to Glaire D. Anderson, "Sign of the Cross: Contexts for the Ivory Cross of San Millán de la Cogolla," Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 6:1 (Jan. 2014), 15-41.

American Academy in Rome Felowships

Kyle C Lincoln — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 02:24:56 GMT

The 2016 Rome Prize online application is available on the American Academy in Rome website at www.aarom.org.

The American Academy in Rome invites applications for the 2016 Rome Prize.

For over a century, the Academy has awarded the Rome Prize to support innovative work in the arts and humanities. Through a national juried competition, Rome Prizes are awarded to emerging and established artists and scholars working in the following disciplines:

Ancient Studies
Architecture
Design (includes graphic, industrial, interior, exhibition, set, costume, and fashion design, urban design, city planning, engineering, and other design fields)
Historic Preservation and Conservation
Landscape Architecture (includes environmental design and planning, landscape/ecological urbanism, landscape history, sustainability and ecological studies, and geography)
Literature
Medieval Studies
Modern Italian Studies
Musical Composition
Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
Visual Arts (includes painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, film/video, installation, new media, digital arts, and other visual arts fields)

Ranging from six months to two years, the thirty fellowships include a stipend, room and board, and individual workspace at the Academy’s eleven-acre center in Rome.

Submissions due: NOVEMBER 1, 2015
Visit aarome.org/apply for guidelines.

Erasmo, Revista de Historia Bajomedieval y Moderna, New Volume and Call for Articles

Kyle C Lincoln — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 11:08:28 GMT

Members may be interested to know that a new volume of the journal, Erasmo has appeared in circulation (and is available here.) The journal's successful first and second volumes suggest an additional venue for contributions ot the study of Medieval Iberia, and members are invited to consult the journal's homepage for more information about the underlying project that supports it. One brief highligh from this volume: a contribution from the distinguished former AARHMS President, Teo Ruiz, is included .

Additionally, Erasmo, Revista de Historia Bajomedieval y Moderna's Call For Articles is now open for its third number. Erasmo is an open-acess and peer-review journal whose headquarters are located at the University of Valladolid (Spain). We accept original papers focused on case studies or longue-durée essays related to the European and American contexts between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. The theme of the issue is miscellaneous, covering different topics that include, though are not limited to, History, Art History, Literature, or Musicology. The articles, including footnotes, tables, figures and appendices may not exceed 75,000 characters. Especially welcome are interdisciplinary perspectives and new methodological contributions to each discipline. For more information please contact as at revista.erasmo.fyl@uva.es

Discounted subscriptions to Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies

Simon Doubleday — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 16:16:11 GMT

For individual members of AARHMS, there is still a special discounted rate of $27 annually to the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies. Click here for details; be sure to call 44 (0)20 7017 5543 or email Taylor and Francis at societies@tandf.co.uk for the special offer rate.

Knowledge, Heresy and Political Culture in the Islamic West (eighth to fifteenth centuries)

Simon Doubleday — Tue, 20 Jan 2015 14:46:04 GMT

A valuable web site, associated with a CSIC research project on "Knowledge, Heresy and Political Culture in the Islamic West" (eighth to fifteenth centuries): http://kohepocu.cchs.csic.es/

New AARHMS officers elected

Mark D. Johnston — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 17:43:24 GMT

Congratulations to Simon Doubleday (Hofstra University) and Miguel Gómez (University of Dayton) on their election as president and secretary-treasurer, respectively, of AARHMS. Their three-year terms will begin in 2015.

Vote for new AARHMS officers until 1 December 2014

Mark D. Johnston — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 14:52:59 GMT

Voting for new AARHMS officers is open until 1 December 2014. Only active (paid) members are eligible to vote, and have received an email with a URL link to the ballot.

$500 article prize (Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies)

Simon Doubleday — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 13:30:45 GMT

Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies: Best Article Prize (2015)

The editors of the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (JMIS) and Routledge are delighted to offer a $500 prize for the most outstanding article published in JMIS in 2015. This prize will be offered thereafter on an annual basis. All articles published in JMIS in 2015 will automatically be considered for the Best Article Prize, and all submissions received during the calendar year 2014 will be considered for publication in 2015.

All submissions should be uploaded electronically through our online submission system (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jmis).

Please direct any inquiries to simon.r.doubleday@hofstra.edu.

The Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (JMIS) is an interdisciplinary journal for innovative scholarship on the multiple languages, cultures, and historical processes of the Iberian Peninsula, and the zones with which it was in contact. We encourage submission of all innovative scholarship of interest to the community of medievalists and Iberianists. JMIS, which aims to bring theoretically informed approaches into creative contact with more empirically minded scholarship, encompasses archaeology, art and architecture, music, philosophy and religious studies, as well as history, codicology, manuscript studies and the multiple Arabic, Latin, Romance, and Hebrew linguistic and literary traditions of Iberia.

We welcome work that engages peninsular Iberia in relation to other parts of the ‘post-classical’ world; which explores links of colonization and exchange with the Maghreb, addresses Iberia’s presence in the Mediterranean, or adopts a transatlantic frame.

The prize will be awarded by a panel of judges appointed by the Editor-in-Chief of JMIS. The judges’ decision will be final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

Call for nominations of AARHMS officers

Mark D. Johnston — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 19:24:42 GMT

As specified in our bylaws, the time has come once again to elect a president and secretary-treasurer for AARHMS. Please send nominations or self-nominations via email to the current secretary-treasurer, Mark D. Johnston, at mjohnst4@depaul.edu. The deadline for nominations is 15 October 2014.

AARHMS Members Participate in Innovative New Conference

Kyle C Lincoln — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 14:45:17 GMT

Earlier this month at Saint Louis University's annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies, several AARHMS members participated in a new type of conference-within-a-conference which focused on what the Symposium is venturing to call "Special Topics." These conferences aimed to provide the focused discussion and intimate conversation of smaller seminars or conferences, while still providing all of the grand amenities of a larger scholarly gathering.

Among the Symposium's wise selection of sessions, AARHMS' panels and presentations were among the best attended, and were all hosted in the luxurious and stately Pere Marquette Gallery. The AARHMS members who participated were widely congratulated for the conference, and collectively acclaimed the conference a resounding success.

The AARHMS conference, which discussed the Kingdom of Castile during the reign of Alfonso VIII (r. 1158-1214), was an unqualified success. Participants included Janna Bianchini, Miriam Shadis, José Cerda, Martín Alvira, Sam Conedera, Jim Todesca, Damian Smith, Linda Jones, Tom Burman and Miguel Gómez. The papers are being collected into a volume which is planned for appearance next year.

Not only was the conference the first of its kind hosted at the Saint Louis University Symposium, but it was also the first commemorative conference to celebrate the 800th anniversary of King Alfonso and his Queen Leonor Plantagenet.

AARHMS members interested in hosting another such conference- on any topic within the organization's purview- at SLU's Symposium should email the Symposium directly (smrs@slu.edu) or can inquire internally with either AARHMS' Conference Organizer, Jim Todesca, or its Webmaster, Kyle Lincoln.

Medieval Academy Olivia Remie Constable Fund

Adam J. Kosto — Thu, 22 May 2014 17:47:15 GMT

From the Medieval Academy of America:

The friends and family of Olivia Remie Constable invite you to join them in establishing the Olivia Remie Constable Award for junior, adjunct and unaffiliated scholars, to be presented annually in her memory.

Remie was the director of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America who died in April 2014 in the prime of her life and distinguished career. A scholar and teacher specializing in the fields of interactions between medieval Christians, Muslims and Jews; the Mediterranean world; economic and social history; the history of medieval cities and urban life; and medieval Spain, Remie held a prominent place in Medieval Studies.

Remie was a consummate scholar who was aware that gaps in funding exist for emerging scholars. The Constable Award, which will be administered by the Medieval Academy of America, will be awarded annually to an emerging junior faculty member, adjunct or unaffiliated scholar (broadly understood: post-doctoral, pre-tenure) for research and travel. The award is meant to reflect the high standards of Remie's scholarship as well as her broader interdisciplinary interests in Medieval Studies (as exemplified by her teaching, her leadership, and her service to the discipline). Remie's family agree that this award will be an appropriate and effective way to honor her memory.

The Olivia Remie Constable Award will be granted on the basis of the quality of applicants' proposed projects and estimations of the ways in which an award will facilitate their research. The Award may be used to fund travel to archives or scholarly conferences; for acquiring copies of documents; to pay for images, equipment, hardware, software, or digital access; and/or to purchase library privileges if necessary. Preference will go to scholars and teachers who have limited or no institutional support. The Medieval Academy will establish a committee to adjudicate the Constable Award, of which at least one member will be a junior scholar not on a tenure track.

A special donation site has been set up here:

http://www.medievalacademy.org/donations/fund.asp?id=10951

Donations may also be sent by check to:

The Olivia Remie Constable Fund

Medieval Academy of America

17 Dunster St., Suite 202

Cambridge, Massachusetts

02138

With your help, the Olivia Remie Constable Award will soon be permanently endowed. We look forward to announcing the first Awardee at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy at the University of Notre Dame next March.

In Memoriam: Olivia Remie Constable

Adam J. Kosto — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 13:24:39 GMT

It is with the greatest sadness that AARHMS notes the passing of Olivia Remie Constable on 16 April 2014, in South Bend, Indiana. Remie was Professor of History and Director of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame. As AARHMS members are well aware, she was a key figure in making the Arabic-speaking Mediterranean central to medieval studies. She was a warm-hearted supporter of younger scholars in our field and a treasured colleague to many of us. Funeral arrangements are private; a public memorial service is being planned, and we will post details when they are available.

Tenth-Century Vineyards Uncovered in Álava

Adam J. Kosto — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:11:08 GMT

www.archaeology.org/news/1679-zaballa-zornoztegi-salvatierra-iruna-de-oca-medieval

New Member Book

Adam J. Kosto — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 17:05:15 GMT

Congratulations to William D. Phillips, Jr. on the publication of Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)