Upcoming Events

Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, Boston, MA, 30 March - 1 April, 2006

Call for Participants

"Reflections on the first year on the job; or, what I wish I had known while still in school"

This special topic panel is back by popular demand after the success of the 2005 Kalamazoo panel. The roundtable session will bring together five or six junior faculty from a variety of disciplines and colleges who will have just completed or will be near the end of their first year of employment since completing their degrees. Members of the panel will be asked to reflect on issues of pedagogical training, opportunities for research (including turning the dissertation into a book), the politics of tenure, spouse/family moves, working with graduate students after just being one, student loans, and so on. The panel will appeal to graduate students at all stages of their programs - from those who are currently on the job market to those who are just beginning their programs of study.

If you are interested in participating in this panel, and either just completed your first year after the PhD or will be starting a new job for the 2005-06 academic year, please contact Ryan Szpiech at ryan.szpiech@yale.edu or Jen Gonyer-Donohue at jengd@u.washington.edu. Those who accepted post-docs or adjunct positions are also welcome to participate. The cfp deadline is August 1, 2005. Please note that you may not participate in the panel if you are also presenting a paper at the meeting.

41st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 4-7, 2006

Call for Participants

Teaching for Dummies, or, What I Wish My Department Had Told Me: Pedagogy and Graduate Student Teaching”

This panel, sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America Graduate Student Committee, will address the issues faced by graduate students as they teach a variety of medieval topics to undergraduates. Possible topics might include how to relate the medieval period to popular culture and current events, teaching classes you feel unqualified to teach, teaching far outside the medieval period, designing your own course, teaching well-established courses, and teaching using multimedia and technology. These are just suggestions, however, and panelists are encouraged to speak on issues that relate in any way to teaching as a graduate student.

We are looking for panelists from a wide range of disciplines and with graduate student experience teaching medieval material in any of a variety of situations. If you would like to participate in this panel at Kalamazoo, and have not participated in a MAA - GSC panel before, please contact Patricia Kiernan at patricia.kiernan@gmail.com. The CFP deadline is September 15, 2005.

2005 CONFERENCE PANELS

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 11-14 July, 2005
3rd Annual Roundtable Discussion on Graduate Student Professionalization
Sponsored by the Medieval Academy Graduate Student Committee

Getting Published: What Every Postgraduate Should Know
Presider: J. Patrick Hornbeck II, University of Oxford

Panelists:
Christine Appel, Routledge
Richard K. Emmerson, Executive Director, MAA, and Editor, Speculum
Simon Forde, Brepols Publishers
Gordon C. F. Forster, Leeds University, and Editor, Northern History
Kate Maxwell, University of Glasgow, and Editor, eSharp (a graduate journal)
David Watt, University of Manitoba (recently hired faculty member to speak about his publication experience)

The session will be followed by an informal social gathering for a chance to meet fellow students and GSC members; details TBA in the conference program.

VAGANTES

The GSC is affiliated with Vagantes, an annual traveling graduate student conference on the Middle Ages.

The conference was conceived with several goals in mind, including the fostering of a sense of community among junior medievalists, providing exposure to an interdisciplinary forum, and showcasing the resources of the host institutions -- all hopefully kept within a student budget.

Vagantes 2006 will take place at the University of California-Berkeley. To learn more about Vagantes and for information about the conference program and registration, please visit www.vagantes.org.

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Med-Grad Listserv

Med-Grad, a listserv for graduate students interested in the Middle Ages, is maintained by the Academy's Graduate Student Committee. To join, contact the administrator of Med-Grad, Ronald Ganze (Ronald.Ganze@Valpo.edu) and provide him with the following information:

1. Your name
2. The email address under which you wish to subscribe to this list
3. The name of the university at which you are studying or teaching
4. Your department
5. Your estimated graduation date (or when you graduated, if you're a new hire or post-doc)
6. The name of any regional medieval group you may be affiliated with.

If you are new to the Med-Grad Listserv and would like to learn about the beginnings of the Graduate Student Committee and prior email exchanges, you may read through the GSC archives at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rganze/med-grad/index.html.

Euro-Med-Grad Listserv

The GSC recently created a new electronic listserv as a subsidiary to its main list Med-Grad. The new list, Euro-Med-Grad, is designed to bring together graduate medievalists working in the U.K. and continental Europe. While the list will predominantly include students whose university affiliations are outside North America, we also welcome applications from those whose research interests, national backgrounds, and conference travel plans are situated in a European context. To subscribe to euro-med-grad, fill out the very simple form at https://mailman.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/euro-med-grad.