In 1925, the Medieval Academy of America (MAA) was founded as a learned society dedicated to pursuing scholarly research on the Middle Ages in North America. A century later, the MAA occupies a central position in the landscape of medieval studies, and Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, the flagship journal of the MAA, has long served as the premier platform for new research in the field. In the January 2025 themed issue of Speculum, contributors reflect on the past and present of medieval studies, especially as refracted through both the MAA and its sister organizations that emerged in the second half of the century. As editor Katherine Jansen notes, “it is a must-read issue for any medievalist who wishes to know not only about our past but our present as well.”
Commissioned by the MAA, the issue opens with the guest editors’ introduction, in which Roland Betancourt and Karla Mallette ask a question of fundamental importance: “how has medieval studies been shaped by its institutions?” The editors identify major shifts in medieval studies over the last few decades, including the adoption of a more global perspective on the Middle Ages and a turn toward scholarship informed by feminism, queer theory, trans studies, critical race theory, and Indigenous studies. The themed issue tells the story of how these changes came about and the labor and institutions—both inside and outside traditional structures of the Academy and established professional organizations—that were central to this history.
As Betancourt and Mallette put it, there is a “Janus face of Crisis and Optimism” that serves as a unifying thread throughout the issue and its concluding roundtable. While some articles dig into the context of the foundation of the MAA and some of the public universities that supported it, others focus on the many crises faced by medievalists, past and present. These include the general precarity of humanities scholarship, as well as the challenge of reckoning with the colonial and imperial underpinnings of medieval studies’ major institutions and the problematic “founding myths” of the field. A few of the contributors look toward the future, pointing toward the potential for medieval studies to work toward liberatory practices and confront imperialist narratives head-on. Several articles in the issue offer histories of para-academic groups such as the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, BABEL, and the Material Collective—groups that have reimagined the field and given a voice to diverse groups of scholars. While it is true that some of these collectives eventually dissolved, Betancourt and Mallette suggest that we can learn from their stories: “the purpose of some institutions is not to endure a century but to provoke, question, and inspire meaningful action.”
Speaking to their vision for the January 2025 issue of Speculum, Betancourt and Mallette write: “we have strived to present a narrative that imagines a future for our field and studies the past in order to explore new and established ways of formulating and reformulating community when our conventional institutions fail us.” 100 years after the MAA’s founding, this themed issue takes a critical look in the mirror. It offers readers an opportunity to reflect on the utility of current institutions and to imagine new ways in which to invigorate, challenge, and reshape the field of medieval studies going forward.
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