Medieval Studies, as a discipline, often protests popular understandings of the medieval period as the ‘Dark Ages’. In an effort to counter this imagining of the Middle Ages, scholars have looked for medieval expressions of diversity and tolerance, as opposed to episodes of oppression, persecution, and violence (Gabriele and Perry 2021). Feminist medievalists in particular have adopted a ‘recuperative’ approach to the medieval past, seeking to recover women’s experiences and voices from the archive, in order to rectify enduring perceptions of the Middle Ages as a uniquely misogynistic period. Yet, recent critiques (Blurton and Johnson 2017; Rambaran-Olm 2022) have emphasized that in an effort to ‘recuperate’ the Middle Ages, medievalists…

We invite proposals for the SMFS-sponsored panel at 2024 the American Historical Association conference: Feminist Futures and Premodern Pasts: Global History in Perspective. The panel will cover topics from textbook authorship and source editing to course design and in-class strategies. Teaching nuanced history from a feminist perspective can face challenges from administrators and students, but also speak to students’ desire to understand the relevance of history to how they confront the future in an uncertain present. Strategies of feminist pedagogy include ways of helping students from diverse backgrounds engage with emotionally challenging content. The panel is designed to appeal to historians of all specialties with interests in feminist praxis and global history,…

The members of the SMFS Advisory Board are pleased to announce the call for nominations and submissions for the 2023 SMFS Best Article of Medieval Feminist Scholarship Prize. Journal articles and chapters in edited collections published in calendar years 2021 and 2022 will be considered for this prize. Articles submitted for this prize will be assessed on both scholarly merit and relevance to the remit of SMFS. Topics are open, including issues regarding women, gender, trans studies, feminist approaches and theory, and intersectionality. Range of study must, however, focus on the medieval period (ca. 500 to 1500). The prize is US $300.00. Deadline for submissions is 30th January 2023. Announcement of the prize winner will occur on 15th March…

6th December 2022 Dear Professor David Latchman, Professor Matt Innes, and Sir Andrew Cahn, We write on joint behalf of the Gender and Medieval Studies Group (GMS) and the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS), organisations which represent the study of medieval English Literature, and medieval studies more broadly, in the UK, the US, and globally. We wish to strongly express our concern at the news of the devastating cuts proposed for The Department of English, Theatre & Creative Writing at Birkbeck. Given the department’s recent success in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, a success which has been much lauded in the global arena, your proposal to render 50% of…

It is time to begin the process of our annual elections to the Advisory Board of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. Here is a summary of elections-related activity occurring this year: Advisory Board members concluding terms of service in 2022: Michelle Armstrong-Partida  Jill Hamilton Clements Dana Oswald Alexandra Verini Graduate Student Representative concluding term of service in 2022: Kersti Francis The executive team, on behalf of the Advisory Board and society membership, wishes to express our gratitude to these departing members for your efforts in support of our organization’s many initiatives over the past several years. Thank you to all of you! 2023 Elections The SMFS Advisory Board is…

Please consider submitting a proposal to this SMFS-sponsored virtual paper session at ICMS 2023! And circulate widely! Proposals due Sept. 15 via the Confex portal. Please reach out to Abby Ang with any questions (aang@populardemocracy.org). The COVID-19 pandemic instigated a burst of mutual aid activity across the globe, inspired partly by Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902). Kropotkin draws from a variety of sources, including biological sciences, sociology, and history, to argue that horizontal cooperation, rather than competition, is what has allowed various species to survive and even thrive. He describes the guilds and unions of the later Middle Ages as sites where mutual aid thrived. 120…

Originally circulated May 9, 2022 We, the Advisory Board of SMFS, in every respect condemn the recent online harassment of Dr. Mary Rambaran-Olm (@ISASaxonists).There is no room for race-policing or misogynoir–as these attacks are clearly misogyny in action and undermine the intersectional field of medieval studies we aim to cultivate. As an intersectional feminist community, we deeply respect and value Dr. Rambaran-Olm’s expertise, experience, and activism. She is dedicated to anti-racist work and the mentoring of graduate students and early career scholars of all backgrounds. She has strongly advocated for survivors of sexual harrassment, and has done much to transform the profession at large. We reaffirm our support for Dr.…