Fall 2022

Director's Message

To all newcomers to MEST, whether you are a new faculty member, staff, student, or community member, welcome! And to our longstanding MEST community, welcome back! It’s exciting to write my first Director’s message in an academic year that promises a return to in-person events. Even though the 2021-2022 academic year remained, if you’ll indulge me one final use of the expression, “challenging,” MEST had an event-packed schedule. In Fall 2021, Prof. Jordan Pickett of the University of Georgia presented our annual Distinguished Alumni Lecture, “Climate Change & Cities in the Eastern Mediterranean: From Rome to Byzantium.” In January, IU Jacobs School graduate Brett Arjormand and Prof. Alexander Lingas of City College, London, presented a multimedia event on the history and historical performance of the hymns of the 9th century Byzantine nun Kassia. Our mini-series on historical performance continued in the Spring, with a presentation by Anne Azéma, Director of the Boston Camerata. I’d like to express MEST’s gratitude to faculty and staff of the Jacobs School, especially the Historical Performance Program, for helping to make these collaborations a great success. The Spring also saw virtual versions of our annual Symposium, organized by the MEST GSAC, on the theme “Medieval Care,” and Mediaevalia at the Lilly, where Prof. Eric Johnson of Ohio State spoke on “Meetings with Mundane Manuscripts.”

For me, the most exciting part of 2021-2022 was the chance to award over $15,000 in direct support of graduate student research. The full list of our Fellowships and Grants-in-Aid awardees can be found below in this newsletter. The range—geographic, linguistic, and methodological—of research funded showcases MEST’s commitments to the study of a genuinely “global” middle-ages. Congratulations to all awardees!

Already in Fall 2022 MEST hosted another highly successful Global Medieval Pilgrimage event as part of the IU Arts and Humanities Council’s September First Thursday. This multidisciplinary project, co-developed by MEST and the Indiana Digital Arts and Humanities Institute, allows participants to turn the IU campus into a virtual journey to famous pilgrimage sites from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The project expands our idea of the Middle Ages to celebrate the breadth of cultural, religious and social interchange that characterized the entire world between 500 and 1500.

On behalf of the entire MEST community, I would like to thank our two departing MEST Executive Committee members: Prof. Diane Reilly (ARTH) and Elizabeth Hebbard (FRIT). My first years as MEST Director would have been immeasurably more difficult without their insight and advice! I would also like to thank and welcome our two newest Executive Committee members: Prof. Deborah Deliyannis (HIST) and Prof. Heather Blair (REL). Also joining MEST this year are two mission-critical student assistants: Erin Walden, who will be serving as Assistant to the Director, and Jeanne McGill, serving as Editorial Assistant for The Medieval Review.

– Jeremy Schott, MEST Director

Medieval Studies Fellowship Awardee: Zofia Ahmad

I graduated from Bates College with a double-major in Classics and Economics and went on to do a MA in Global and Comparative History at the University of Warwick and a MA in Economics at the Vancouver School of Economics before coming to IU for my doctorate in Central Eurasian Studies. My past research has focused on imperial structures and identity, as well as interactions across Eurasia in the ancient and medieval time periods and the impact of these interactions on understandings of space and the ‘other.’ I am particularly interested in the role that trade and the transportation of physical goods, people, and ideas played in the way individuals of all classes understood distant lands and cultures. I’m hoping to use my time here in Bloomington to merge my past experience with GIS and other digital methods with my historical interests to continue studying questions of imperial identities in antiquity from a diverse set of perspectives.

Clifford Flanigan Memorial Fellowship: Josh Harris

The Clifford Flanigan Memorial Fellowship enabled me to attend the Summer School in Scandinavian Manuscripts in Reykjavík, in which I prepared a new edition of a text (Stúfs þáttr) preserved in some 41 Medieval and post-Medieval manuscripts. I learned a great deal about Medieval Norse studies from my teachers and fellow students, and I even came away from the course with a dissertation topic!

Josh (second from right), looking at the manuscript AM 426 folio, which has three very famous pictures of the saga heroes Egill Skallagrimsson, Grettir Ásmundarson, and Guðmundr inn ríki (the powerful).

Meet Our MEST Awardees

Takatomo Inoue, Grant-in-Aid Awardee

My research explores alchemy in medieval Islam as a discipline from the perspective of the history of science, focusing on experimentalism. In the research, I specifically shed light on the alchemy of Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (d. 925), one of the alchemists who has written on laboratorial work without spiritual or symbolic expression.

Lindsay Ruth, Grant-in-Aid Awardee

My project was a paper arguing that, in Syriac Christian literature, the Bride of Christ was a higher level of holiness for women than virgin, and that furthermore, the Bride of Christ did not have to be a virgin to obtain this status. This paper was presented at the XIII Symposium Syriacum in Paris, France on July 4th, 2022.

George P. Yfantidis, Grant-in-Aid Awardee

I used the funding to attend the 2022 session of the Cappadocia in Context Program sponsored by the Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilization. The two week program included visits to Late Antique, Byzantine, and Post-Byzantine archaeological sites and churches, with an emphasis on the famous rock cut churches of Cappadocia.

Yiwen Zheng, Grant-in-Aid Awardee

My project uses digital humanities methods (computationally detecting language change) to locate Chinese medieval miscellanies that do not fit the time periods that they were originally assigned. I then attempt to explain how and why these miscellanies were different from their contemporary works through literary and historical approaches.

Cox Travel Awards

Zachary Engledow (ENG): Presented at Leeds International Medieval Congress
Maggie Gilchrist (ENG): Presented at Biennial New Chaucer Society Congress in Durham
Eduardo Acarón Padilla (CMLT, CEUS): Presented at Middle Eastern Studies Association
Pouyan Shahidi (MELC): Presented at Middle Eastern Studies Association

McRobbie Award

Kayla Lunt (ARTH): Leeds International Medieval Congress

Grants-in-Aid

Takatomo Inoue (HPSC)
Tyler Nighswander (ANTH, MELC)
Lindsay Ruth (CEUS)
George Yfantidis (ARTH)
Yiwen Zheng (EALC)

Join Us for Mediaevalia

Wednesday, November 2nd, 3:30-5:30 at the Lilly Library

Mark your calendars! We are happy to welcome Prof. Eric Johnson of Ohio State University back to Indiana for the workshop portion of the 2022 Mediaevalia at the Lilly. In the Spring, we were treated to Prof. Johnson's public lecture, "Meetings with Mundane Manuscripts." Join him in November for a workshop focusing on Lilly's collections.

MEST Past Events and Engagements

We held a hybrid event with both in-person and virtual attendees that melded scholarship and performance around the hymns of late antique composer Kassia, one of the few women composers whose works survive from Late Antiquity.Watch the broadcast here

Would you like to journey through the Global Middle Ages? Whether you're traveling for contemplation, worship, healing or the thrill of a new encounter, you've come to the right place. We have xix pilgrimages that connect IU to our Global Past.Start your pilgrimage

Calling All Graduate Students!

MEST GSAC is a way for medieval studies graduate students to stay connected, meet fellow medievalists, create connections across departments, and participate in academic, professional, and social events. Previously, GSAC has hosted the MEST Spring Symposium, Reader's Circle, show-and-tell, and the Medieval Movie Series (featuring screenings of "bad" medieval movies). If you are interested in participating in GSAC or helping to organize some of these events, please reach out to mest@iu.edu.

Join our Grad Student Mailing List

Support Medieval Studies

Your tax-deductible financial contribution allows MEST to continue to provide a diverse array of lectures, programs, and fellowships that promote the scholarship and teaching of the Middle Ages.

Gifts can be directed to any following funds:

The Medieval Studies Institute General Fund: Your donation will provide general support to the Institute, helping us host events, invite speakers, and continue with our outreach
The Medieval Review Support Fund: Gifts will support the Medieval Review, an open-access journal that publishes reviews of books in medieval studies.
The C. Clifford Flanigan Awards: Your donation will help support medievalist graduate students.
The Shirley Jean Cox Undergraduate Fellowships: Your donation will help fund our two undergraduate prizes (for the best thesis and paper in medieval studies) and several grants to support undergraduate summer study, study abroad, or internships.

How to donate:
By mail: Checks made out to “Indiana University Foundation” may be mailed to The Medieval Studies Institute, Lindley Hall 201G 150 S Woodlawn Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405
On our website: https://medieval.indiana.edu/about/alumni-giving/index.html
Recurring bank or payroll deductions: Perhaps the easiest way to offer ongoing support of the work of the Institute, you can make a recurring monthly, quarterly, or annual gift that is deducted from your credit card or bank account. IU Employees can also set up recurring donations through payroll deduction. See https://www.myiu.org/

Contact Us

If you have communications you would like to have distributed as a general announcement in Medieval Studies, or for general correspondence with the Institute, please contact Erin at mest@ indiana.edu.
For direct and confidential communications with the MEST Director, please contact mestdir@indiana.edu. This is an administrative account that will transfer from director to director. Please note that dirmest@indiana.edu is the personal account of another faculty member.

We also maintain six distribution lists, one each for undergraduate students, graduate students, alumni, faculty, core faculty, and community members. If you would like to be added to any of our lists, please contact mest@indiana.edu.