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In this short afterword, I speculate about two scenarios in other disciplines where thinking through psychoanalytic categories might afford new historical sensitivities. In experimenting with the possibilities of psychoanalysis, I draw examples from fields that are non literary or at most adjacent to literary studies. The provocative contributions to this colloquium, "The Time of Psychoanalysis," showcase the advantages of psychoanalytic perspectives in the study of medieval literature, whether in teaching or in further research. How might we imagine these advantages in other disciplines, and indeed, how might those literary scholars who work inside the frame of psychoanalysis demonstrate its value to colleagues in other linguistic and disciplinary traditions, persuading scholars in other fields to use it?

The International Anchoritic Society (IAS) celebrated its twentieth year in 2023. Despite its name, the IAS studies all forms of medieval religious reclusion, not just the titular anchorites, and not just within the Christian tradition. Starting in 1998, independently organized sessions at Kalamazoo gradually coalesced into a formal organization, recognized officially in 2003, that has always been inclusive and supportive of forward-thinking scholarship, with many members representing the queer community and medievalists of color.

The article explores recent developments in Richard Rolle scholarship, emphasizing the increasing recognition of his literary and spiritual significance in medieval studies. It discusses Rolle's distinctive eremitic spirituality, his use of musicality in religious expression, and his influence on both English devotional literature and broader European intellectual trends.

The article offers information on recent book acquisitions in the field of medieval studies. Topics include "Dante satiro: Satire in Dante Alighieri's 'Comedy' and Other Works," edited by Fabian Alfie and Nicolino Applauso, which examines satire in Dante's writings; "Power and Possibility in Early Arabic Philosophy: Three Innovators between Philoponus and Avicenna" by Nicholas Allan Aubin; and "Medieval Riverscapes: Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, c. 300–1100" by Ellen F. Arnold.

During the first millennium of Christian presence in Ethiopia (from the fourth century), church architecture was first in accordance with, and later partially based on, the basilica plan. Circa the early sixteenth century, a new and unique church plan appeared, circular, concentric, and with a square sanctuary, and became the dominant church plan in the northwestern Ethiopian Highlands. This church plan has been referred to in scholarship as an innovation, and its sources of inspiration have not yet been definitively established. In this article, I will argue that this plan is a culmination of a process with roots in the Late Antique and Medieval Holy Land, by which the concentric prayer house plan came to be associated with the Jerusalem Temple. This process transcended religious boundaries and is expressed in the religious architecture of three monotheistic religious traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The topic for this issue’s primary cluster was inspired by The Teaching Archive: A New History for Literary Study (2021) by Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan. The cluster presents four essays documenting the long-term influence of four medievalists: Aranye Fradenburg Joy, Clifford Flanigan, Joaquin Martínez Pizarro, and Derek Pearsall. This issue also includes of a recap of the longstanding undergraduate conference at Moravian University and short histories of three scholarly societies: the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, the John Gower Society, and the International Piers Plowman Society. We continue our two standard features with “How I teach…” contributions on Christina Fitzgerald’s edition of The York Corpus Christi Play (2018) and David Lawton’s edition of The Norton Chaucer (2019), and a “Conversations” response to the Medieval Studies and Secondary Education cluster in New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession’s Fall 2022 issue.

The authors reflect on fifteen undergraduate conferences featuring over 1200 student papers.  Several patterns have stood out: the vibrancy of interest in medieval and early modern studies, the extent to which students’ topical interests reflect trends within the disciplines, and the challenges to medieval and early modern studies resulting from changes in both administrative and student cultures.

This essay responds to the cluster “Medieval Studies and Secondary Education” by suggesting that we shift our attention away from our understandable, but often unproductive, anxieties about the obsolescence of Medieval Studies within school curricula and towards the promotion of the professional health and intellectual pleasure of the exhausted and harried secondary school teacher. In addition to lauding the efforts of medievalists to enhance and expand the appeal and relevance of our disciplines through immersive activities and the provincialization of Europe, this response explores and evaluates the feasibility of proposals to offer online and in-person summer seminars on medieval topics, to augment easily accessible online resources for teaching the Middle Ages, and to develop mentorship structures within universities and professional societies that connect prospective and practicing teachers with medievalists in educator preparation programs.

R. F. Yeager is the current president of the John Gower Society and the professor emeritus at the University of West Florida. This essay covers the history of the Society, exploring its long and extensive foundation from its early formation all the way to the present day. The John Gower Society ultimately is dedicated to the study of the fourteenth-century poet John Gower and promote scholarship in various forms of pedagogy

Louise M Bishop, Associate Professor emerita at the University of Oregon, reflects on the history of the International Piers Plowman Society, and its developments and major figures in the research of Langland’s poem. Bishop honors a long list of contributors to Landland’s legacy: scholars that edited Piers Plowman’s different texts, wrote about the subject, organized conferences, and even a website (Piers Plowman Electronic Archive), allowing for the expansion and diversification of academic discussion.

Elizabeth Robertson, professor at the University of Glasgow, reflects on the creation of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. Robertson identifies the beginnings of the society with The Medieval Feminist Newsletter, Third Wave Feminism, the renewed interest at universities in theory and feminism, and the need many scholars felt to study women of the Middle Ages. With this account of the society, its work, and the paths of the many people involved in the project, Robertson illustrates how the society remains relevant in our current social and political environment.

The article focuses on the exploration of race, race-thinking, and identity in the global Middle Ages, examining the intersection of these concepts with medieval studies and the challenges faced by scholars, particularly those of marginalized backgrounds. Topics discussed include the historical development of race-thinking discourses, the experiences of scholars of color navigating the field of medieval studies, and critical analyses of racial dynamics within medieval texts and societies.

Church construction was one of the most challenging, and most political, tasks undertaken by medieval cities. Comparing examples from across Europe reveals profound differences, however, in both the architecture of politics and the politics of architecture; that is, how building projects were administered and how their administration shaped their socio-political significance. Although ranging across the continent, this article is centered on construction in two representative cities: Vienna and London. While the former had a small number of churches, all under the direct control of the mayor and council, the latter had over a hundred, each overseen by locally appointed officers. In Vienna, church construction was, thus, an important field of activity for the city government, which oversaw the work and celebrated its own leadership of the project; in London, it lay outside civic control and offered local opportunities for domination by wealthy families. This difference can be found across the continent, separating the large, old cities of England, northern France, Spain, and the Low Countries, which could have numerous churches, from smaller towns and cities both in these places and across the rest of central, northern, and southern Europe, which typically had a single, major parish church and only a few subordinate ones. This article considers the implications of these two contrasting models—centralized and decentralized, civic and parochial, high government and local politics—on how architectural production functioned as a field of political activity and how church building shaped local distributions and articulations of power in medieval Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Articles and studies on medieval subjects featured prominently in the pages of Études balkaniques between 2014 and 2023. Conventionally they are divided into two larger groups, according to their focus on issues related to Byzantine and Bulgarian history. This overview begins with an outline of the studies relevant to the development of medieval Bulgaria. This category comprises the works of medievalists such as Vassilka Tâpkova-Zaïmova, Penka Danova, Sashka Georgieva, etc. Elena Kostova's article on the possessions of the Athonite monasteries in the present-day Bulgarian town of Melnik also belongs to this set of themes as it throws a natural bridge to the extensive thematic range of Byzantine studies. Among the examined studies in this field are papers dedicated to the graffiti in the Constantinople Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, Byzantium's ties to Southern Italy and Egypt, silk production, the empire's political relations with its neighbours such as the community of the Cumans and other themes from the history of what came to be known as the "Byzantine cultural circle", whose geographical reach extended up to the Caucasus and Russia. The overview ends with a discussion of two articles by Theodor Dimitrov, which examine the plague epidemics in Byzantium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report presents the aims and ongoing progress of the ERC-funded project “Re-Evaluating the Eleventh Century through Linked Events and Entities” (Grant #101002357). We introduce the rationale for the project and the innovative solution for recording historical data that we have developed, known as the STAR model. We then give details of the four case studies undertaken in the project, which will shed new light on the movement of people, the understanding of place and space, and the production of texts within and among Christian societies of the eleventh century. Through the work of this project, we hope to be able to represent, examine, and illustrate the multiplicity of perspectives and interpretations that arise in the history of a century that was so pivotal to the development of the modern Near East and Europe.

Introduction. The article examines some rites and customs once practiced in the medieval ethnopolitical alliance of Moghuls. Goals. The study attempts an insight into Tarikh-i Rashidi by Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat for data pertaining to customs and rituals of the medieval Moghuls. Materials and methods. The study focuses on medieval Eastern Muslim historical sources — primarily the well-known Persian-language Tarikh-i Rashidi — as well as related scholarly publications. So, those are messages from Tarikh-i Rashidi by Mirza Muhammad Haidar of the Moghul Dughlat that serve as key reference data. The work employs the descriptive, historical comparative and other generally accepted research methods. Results. Our insights into Tarikh-i Rashidi by Mirza Muhammad Haidar have yielded some discoveries of rites and customs once spread among the Moghul tribes. These are of significant interest, since they cast some light on interior life of the medieval Moghuls that has remained virtually unattended by researchers of the past. Some of the Moghul customs and rituals mentioned in Tarikh-i Rashidi had also been witnessed among other ethnopolitical alliances of the Middle Ages. And some of the customs have even survived to date. For example, the First Kumis Festival used to be celebrated by many Turko-Mongols, including Kazakhs. Furthermore, the Moghul custom of yangilik is comparable enough to the Kazakh custom of amengerlik. Other customs and rituals of Moghuls described in the historical work under consideration need additional investigations with the involvement of new materials from historical sources and ethnographic data on modern Turkic and Mongolic peoples.

Named in honor of Professor Terry Barry, TCD, in recognition of his lifelong commitment to graduate student scholarship, the ASIMS Barry Prize is an annual prize awarded for the best conference paper on a subject of relevance to Irish Medieval Studies delivered by a graduate student. The prize is open to graduate students from any field who either have presented or have written and intend to present a paper on a subject of relevance to Irish Medieval Studies at any conference during the year beginning with the Kalamazoo Congress (ICMS) in May 2021 and ending with the Kalamazoo Congress (ICMS) of 2022. The prize consists of a check for reimbursement of the current year's ICMS registration fees costs, or a check of equivalent value. It is a requirement that the winning entry submits a summary statement of the presentation for publication in Eolas. Especially worthy entries may also be considered for eventual publication in the journal. More information can be found at: http://www.asims.org/prizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report presents the aims and ongoing progress of the ERC-funded project "Re-Evaluating the Eleventh Century through Linked Events and Entities" (Grant #101002357). We introduce the rationale for the project and the innovative solution for recording historical data that we have developed, known as the STAR model. We then give details of the four case studies undertaken in the project, which will shed new light on the movement of people, the understanding of place and space, and the production of texts within and among Christian societies of the eleventh century. Through the work of this project, we hope to be able to represent, examine, and illustrate the multiplicity of perspectives and interpretations that arise in the history of a century that was so pivotal to the development of the modern Near East and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-standardised early vernaculars present a problem for search tools due to the high degree of variation. The challenge lies in the variation found in orthography, syntax, and lexicon between titles, incipits, and explicits in manuscript copies of the same work. Traditional search methods relying on exact string matching or regular expressions fail to address these variations comprehensively. This project presents a web-based search tool specifically designed to handle linguistic and textual variation. The software is made available as a part of the Index of Middle English Prose (IMEP). The search tool addresses the issue of variation by utilizing a database of incipits and explicits, character-based n-gram language models (LMs) built with the Stanford Research Institute Language Modelling (SRILM) toolkit, and a fuzzy search script (IMEP: FSS) written in Python. The tool optimizes for recall, retrieving multiple potential matches for a search string, without attempting to identify the ‘correct’ one. The search process involves looking up exact matches in the database while simultaneously using the fuzzy search script to evaluate the incipits and explicits against a model of the search string, followed by a match of the search string against models of the incipits and explicits. This two-step process shortens the processing time, which would otherwise be unreasonably long, because while using SRILM to match the search string against each incipit or explicit in the IMEP for precision could be time-consuming, running a first step where all texts are matched against a single LM built from the search string allows for faster processing. A web application, built using Django and Docker, combines the results of the direct database lookup and the fuzzy search script, presenting them as a list with exact matches followed by fuzzy matches ordered by increasing model perplexity. The tool is made available Open Access and can be adapted to other datasets.

Editors Robert Meyer-Lee and Matthew Giancarlo offer some personal and historical reflections on the work of editing a contemporary scholarly journal in medieval literary studies, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. This essay considers some of the ambivalences and challenging assumptions involved in editing a journal that has been established for a long time in our field of scholarship.

Larry Scanlon reflects on editing SAC from 1997 through 2003.

This is the third portion of an invited piece on the editing of the journal Exemplaria.

As part of a continued conversation about academic publishing, the editors of Interfaces: A Journal of Medieval European Literatures reflect on the founding and early years of this open access publication.

Introduction to the special cluster on incorporating medieval studies into secondary education curricula, including a discussion of partnership between secondary, post-secondary and community institutions, and their importance.

In this article the formation of A. S. Bartenev as a medieval scholar is considered against a broad background of institutional changes and reform of the system of higher education and postgraduate studies in the USSR in the second half of the 1920s – first half of the 1930s. The development of the system of academic training in the field of medieval studies took place under the direct influence of the scholars of the “old” school, who sought to adapt the traditional requirements for qualifying essays to the new conditions. Thus, they established continuity in the development of science.

This response to “#MeToo, Medieval Literature, and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy” takes up the themes of identification, consciousness raising, and calling out.

In this interview Bitterroot Salish medievalist Tarren Andrews and Tongva medievalist Wallace Cleaves discuss the past, present, and future of medieval studies. Their conversation focuses on what it means and has meant to be a Native American scholar in the field of medieval studies, their hope and concerns for the Indigenous turn, and what interested them in medieval studies to begin with. Most important, Andrews and Cleaves discuss how their Native communities impact their medieval scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently scholars have called for an Indigenous turn in medieval studies that challenges the historical assumptions of the field by actively engaging in a decolonial and anticolonial praxis. This essay argues that this turn must confront the problem of reciprocity that arises from distinct Indigenous and medieval articulations of sovereignty, which reveal the potential of this tenuous intersection despite the possibility of irreconcilable antagonisms. Tracing sovereignty--specifically through a "politics of recognition" as proposed by the Yellowknives Dene scholar Glen Coulthard--in Dante's Monarchia (and Paradiso) and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony provides an analytic example of this comparative framework, since both authors challenge readers to question the imposition of authority and the logics that legitimate and justify dominant forms of governance. Yet Dante and Silko also draw on distinct articulations of sovereignty that suggest the limitations of decolonial and anticolonial praxis within a field bound to a Western episteme that underwrites colonial and imperial authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay describes a plan for Indigenizingmedieval studies that has two elements. The first is an area of research inquiry, "The Global Far North, 500-1500 CE," which moves past the written records of the Vinland sagas to privilege alternative forms of evidence about cultural contact in the defined period, particularly the oral traditional evidence of Indigenous communities. The project's investigations will apply the emerging protocols for research ethics and for reciprocity with Indigenous communities, and they will aim to historicize and challenge settler notions of legality that rely on written documents. The essay concludes by arguing that teaching, service, and community outreach must be prioritized over publication as modes of professional activity more conducive to Indigenization's political goals. Decolonizing medieval studies will require not only that we engage with Indigenous communities but also that we actively center their concerns and contributions at every step. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how medievalism, particularly in its academic form of medieval studies, might contribute to decolonization through exploration of how the Western "cultural archive" (Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies) draws on the teleological temporality embedded in the idea of the "medieval" to rationalize "white possessive logics" (Moreton-Robinson, White Possessive). It explores medievalisms in legal, mainstream, and academic contexts that focus on Indigenous land rights and law in the Australian settler-colonial state. It examines the High Court of Australia's ruling in Mabo and Others v. Queensland (2) (1992), a landmark case that challenged the legal doctrine of terra nullius, on which claims to British sovereignty were founded, and on comparisons of Anglo-Saxon and Indigenous law in the post-Mabo era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the author's views about the teaching of online college classes involving epistolary novels and writings by women in the medieval and early modern history periods, and it mentions literary works such as "Liber Manualis" by Dhuoda of Uzas and "Love-Letters between a Noble-Man and His Sister" by Aphra Behn. The online posting of college students' personal opinions is assessed, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and the social connections that are formed in college classrooms.

The article focuses on three open-topic issues of the journal. Topics include the exploration of historical inquiry alongside contemporary theoretical debates, the intersection of medieval studies and postcolonial theory with a focus on new directions, and an examination of community formation through lyric poetry in premodern worlds, addressing questions related to social, political, religious, and intellectual relations.