We are happy to announce that the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Book Committee is accepting submissions for the 2024 Best First Book of Feminist Scholarship on the Middle Ages. We are soliciting submissions of first monographs in any area of medieval studies. Nominated books should represent the best first monographs of feminist medieval scholarship published AND with a copyright date in 2022 or 2023.
The prize (an award of $500), will be announced in the spring. Self-nominations are acceptable; presses may nominate more than one title.
Please arrange for TWO copies (preferably hard copies) of each nominated book to be sent to SMFS President, Dr. Nicole Lopez-Jantzen, at the address below, along with a letter of application that summarizes the book’s merits and its contribution to feminist scholarship. If you are sending hard copies, please also email the letter of application to the email address below. The deadline for nominations and receipt of books to be considered is Thursday, 29 February 2024. Please note that if your book is copyrighted for 2024, you should wait for the next iteration of this contest, in two years.
Please send all submissions (remember: two copies!) to:
Nicole Lopez-Jantzen
3965 52nd Street, 5H
Woodside, New York 11377
If you have an e-book version of your book available to send, please make sure that it can be duplicated so that everyone on the committee is able to read the book, and that it is not owner- or password-protected. Please also remember that sending proofs of a book that is as yet unpublished might be a violation of copyright law, so if that is what you have available, you must check with the publisher to make sure that the use of the proofs for the purposes of the prize contest is acceptable to them.
Please also note that the SMFS Advisory Board’s Book Committee has limited numbers of members with fluency in (modern) languages other than English, so if you are interested in submitting a monograph in a language other than English please do send a query BEFORE sending the book so that we can see if we have members available to read and assess it.
