SMFS joins with the New Chaucer Society and other recently vocal groups in condemning all uncivil practices involving the belittling, ridiculing and otherwise denigration of the scholarly work and/or opposing positions of others. It also especially deplores any unprofessional practices involving the publicizing of images and information concerning the private lives of individuals with a view to invoking harm, whether intellectual or physical. Whilst recognizing the need for the academic freedom to publish research and personal opinion, we nevertheless categorically deplore the type of insouciant practice that willfully exposes individuals to third-party aggression by means of such so-called doxxing. We concur that this, and other forms of aggressive harassment have…

  Call for Submissions: 2017 Prize for Best First Feminist Book on the Middle Ages The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship announces that its 2017 competition for the best first monograph of feminist scholarship on the Middle Ages is now open. The Societys Awards Committee is therefore soliciting nominations of first monographs in any area of medieval studies. Nominated books should represent the best first monographs of feminist medieval scholarship published in 2016 and 2017 and the authors of books may self-nominate. The prize (an award of $500), will be announced in the spring, and formally awarded at the SMFS reception at the Kalamazoo International Medieval Congress in 2018. Self-nominations…

The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship has always advocated for a methodologically and demographically diverse medieval studies. Inclusivity, capaciousness, and variation are, we think, essential for the continuing intellectual vitality of the field. The IMCs recent failure to responsibly engage notions of Otherness and the resistance of the congress organizers, represented by Axel Mller, to implicate their own decision processes in the choosing of plenary speakers, is therefore dismaying to this body. In August 2016, nearly a year before the 2017 Congress, SMFS President Liz Herbert McAvoy wrote to the organizers of the IMC at Leeds to question their choice of overwhelmingly white, middle-aged, and male plenary speakers in a…

GENDER AND MEDIEVAL STUDIES / SMFS CONFERENCE Gender, Identity, Iconography Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford 8th-10th January 2018 Plenary Speakers: Prof. Annie Sutherland (University of Oxford); Prof. Trish Skinner (Swansea University); Dr Alicia Spencer-Hall (Institute of Advanced Studies) ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS The glittering beauty of the Alfred Jewel, the rich illustration of the Lindisfarne Gospels, the dominating Great West Window of York Minster, the intricate embroidery of the Bayeux Tapestry, the luminous Maest of Duccio, the opulent Oseberg ship burial, and the sophisticated imagery of the Ruthwell cross are all testament to the centrality of the visual to our understanding of a range of medieval cultures. Constructed…

The 2018 SMFS Foremothers Fellowship The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship invites applications for the 2018 Foremothers Fellowship. Funded through the generous gift of royalties from the editors and authors of theOxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe (Judith Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras), the grant provides $2,000 for a current doctoral candidate (at the time of the proposed project) to undertake a significant professional development initiative. The winner will be partnered with a senior medieval scholar whose guidance and association can assist the student in developing and executing the project. Such projects might include: Travel to a conference relevant to medieval feminist scholarship Travel to visit archives,…

It is with deepening concern that I have responded to the recent controversy regarding racially offensive comments made at the introduction of one of the plenary sessions at the Leeds IMC this year and, on behalf of SMFS, wish to support the current demands of many medievalists for systemic changes to be made in the way policies and programming at the IMC appear to be operating. Indeed, I raised just such concerns with the IMC management in August of 2016, when the theme of ‘Otherness’ was announced for the 2017 Leeds IMC. At that point, I wrote to express our entirely valid concerns about the combined whiteness and maleness of…

The Society of Medieval Feminist Scholarship joins those other communities around the globe in unequivocally deploring the anti-LGBTQIAA laws and initiatives recently instated in Indiana, Mississippi and North Carolina. SMFS utterly rejects these retrograde developments that serve to deny LGBTQIAA persons their human right to access medical and other services within a non-prejudicial environment and prevent them from using those facilities in the workplace and other public spaces with which they identify. SMFS therefore speaks out strongly against any such initiatives permitting covert, open or legal discrimination against LGBTQIAA people and threatening both their safety and wellbeing. As a long-standing international society of scholars working within the context of sex…

Graduate Student Essay Contest The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS) is pleased to announce that this year’s  Graduate Student Essay Competition is now open.   This  competition is open to all graduate students, including those who will complete their degree in the current year. The paper should be under 25 pages (double-spaced)  and engage in interesting ways with questions of gender and/or sexuality in the Middle Ages. Papers in all disciplines are encouraged. The prize will be 5 years’ membership of SMFS and publication of the winning paper, subject to editing, in our journal Medieval Feminist Forum. There may be years when the prizes will not be awarded, depending on submissions…