Medieval Academy News

2009 CARA Awards for Teaching and Service

The Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service

The 2009 Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies is presented to Thomas H. Ohlgren, professor of English, Purdue University.

Over the past thirty-five years, Professor Ohlgren has been an important national advocate for medieval studies in his leadership role in CARA, especially during its formative years when John Leyerle served as its chair; founded and has administered the influential interdepartmental medieval studies program at Purdue; has amassed a record of inspired mentoring and teaching; and has committed himself through community outreach to educating the general public about the Middle Ages. His scholarly achievements have consistently reinforced these service activities. As a founding member of CARA, Professor Ohlgren served as secretary in 1971 and 1972, was very active in the annual meetings of the committee in its beginning stage, and served as Purdue’s representative on the committee until he stepped down as chair of medieval studies in 2003. He also participated in the planning and execution of the CARA sessions at the annual meetings of the Academy and coedited with John Leyerle the proceedings of several of these sessions, including the proceedings of the 1971 session: Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies and the Training of Students (Purdue University Press). In 1970 he, along with Thomas E. Kelly, professor of French at Purdue, persuaded the dean of the School of Humanities to appoint a school committee on medieval studies, comprising members from seven departments, which was the first step in the creation of an undergraduate degree program in medieval studies. Because of his visionary leadership Professor Ohlgren was subsequently appointed assistant dean for interdisciplinary studies, the first such appointment in the college dedicated to interdisciplinary research and teaching. Today, because of Professor Ohlgren’s efforts, the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue is now home to fifteen other interdisciplinary programs. The program in medieval studies that he founded has since developed into the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program—a flourishing, substantial, well-funded, interdisciplinary program encompassing fifteen subject areas.

The longevity and breadth of Professor Ohlgren’s influence are due to his vision: it has been accurate; it has been sustainable; and it has had a far broader reach than anyone, in the early days, could ever have anticipated. That longevity is also due to his ability to foster collegiality and cooperativeness (as well as his inestimable skill in persuading deans). But it is not least due to his mentoring and scholarship, which go hand in hand, and the fruits of that union are best realized in the Medieval Photographic Archive that he created at Purdue. This project, the result of a long-term collaboration with the Bodleian Library in Oxford that led to two large computer-generated subject indices that Professor Ohlgren published in 1977 and 1978, contains subject access to over twenty thousand color transparencies of medieval illuminated manuscripts and early printed books. In its accessibility and depth, the collection represents an encyclopedia of knowledge and visual history of early Western culture unmatched in North America. It has inspired and been the main source for numerous papers and dissertations in medieval studies at Purdue and elsewhere. Professor Ohlgren’s commitment to disseminating information about manuscript art and iconography continued in 1986, when his iconographic catalog to Insular and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts was published. In the years following, he continued to update this valuable work and has reproduced it in a database format. Through these projects, Professor Ohlgren has made significant and enduring contributions to the international adoption of standards for iconographic documentation. For all this we are in his debt.

Because of these and an abundance of other administrative, pedagogical, and scholarly achievements—all of a piece for Professor Ohlgren—we take great pleasure in bestowing upon him the 2009 Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Distinguished Service to Medieval Studies. He has been unfailingly generous with his time, expertise, and erudition with colleagues at all stages of their careers and with students, the public, and the profession at various stages in theirs. He manifestly deserves this small token of our large gratitude.

Respectfully submitted,

James M. Murray

Paul E. Szarmach

Robert E. Bjork, Chair

The CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching

The recipient of the 2009 CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies is Richard K. Emmerson, professor and chair of art history and courtesy professor of English at Florida State University.

Professor Emmerson’s dedication to teaching has always been central to his academic life. It first became internationally visible during his tenure as executive director of the Medieval Academy of America. Under his direction and with his full support, CARA developed awards for service and teaching, which were first bestowed in 2002–3; under his direction and with his full support and that of the Fellows of the Academy, graduate students now have a strong voice in Academy affairs through their Graduate Student Committee, the only standing committee besides CARA in the Medieval Academy; under his direction, the Vagantes national graduate student conference took shape and now makes its way successfully around the country. The commitment to teaching thus reflected arises from Professor Emmerson’s firm belief that the future of medieval studies and of the Medieval Academy of America rests predominantly in the hands of our graduate students. By mentoring graduate students not his own, encouraging their active participation in Academy affairs, advising them on professional matters big and small, he has been a mentor to us all.

Professor Emmerson has invested significant amounts of time and energy in the future of the profession at the local level as well, beginning in the Department of English atWalla Walla College in 1975. While there, he also worked for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), overseeing the Endowment’s seminar programs. In that capacity he labored diligently to improve the quality and range of the seminars and was subsequently appointed deputy director of the Division of Fellowships and Seminars, a position he held from 1987 to 1990. Throughout his service to the NEH, he remained active in teaching in the Department of English at Georgetown University, a habit he clung to—although at Tufts and the Harvard Divinity School—during his directorship of the Medieval Academy as well. Through all these teaching and interconnected administrative ventures and his eleven years of teaching and chairing the Department of English at Western Washington University before his move to the Academy, Professor Emmerson maintained an open-door policy for students. They have access to his time for any aspect of their work, and to his own work, which he encourages students to critique with him as a way of honing their analytical skills and bolstering their confidence. His openness, his erudition, his rigor, his humility, and his sincere respect for both undergraduate and graduate students make their transition into the profession as colleagues all the more effortless. A host of them from many disciplines can attest and have attested to his abiding influence on their lives.

Given this abundant evidence of both pedagogical acumen and pedagogical success, we are delighted to bestow the CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies upon Richard K. Emmerson, whom Chaucer would have undoubtedly assessed with the same words he used to laud the Clerk: “And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche” (and gladly ay wolde he administrate—a Bjorkian emendation).

Respectfully submitted,

Richard Gyug

William Chester Jordan

Robert E. Bjork, Chair

The Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies recognizes Medieval Academy members who have provided leadership in developing, organizing, promoting, and sponsoring medieval studies through extensive administrative work and other forms of institutional and disciplinary service. Nominations for the 2010 award should include a letter that details at length the nominee’s achievements and two additional supporting letters from individuals who have first-hand knowledge of the nominee’s contributions to medieval studies.

The CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies recognizes Academy members who are outstanding teachers and who have contributed to the profession by inspiring students at the undergraduate or graduate levels or by creating innovative and influential textbooks or other materials for teaching medieval subjects. Nominations for the 2010 award should include a letter that details at length the nominee’s accomplishments as a teacher and two additional supporting letters from individuals who are familiar with the nominee’s teaching and curricular and pedagogical contributions to medieval studies. At least one of the letters should be from a former or current student.

The deadline for nominations for the 2010 awards is 15 November 2009. Three copies of the letter of nomination and supporting materials should be sent to CARA Awards, Medieval Academy, 104 Mt. Auburn St., 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138.

The awards will be made at the 2010 annual meeting in Chicago. Citations are printed in the July issue of Speculum. Further information about both awards is available from the Executive Director (PES@MedievalAcademy.org).

The Medieval Academy News is published on a continuing basis by the

Medieval Academy of America
104 Mt. Auburn St., 5th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138-5019.

Editor: Mary-Jo Arn (MA@MedievalAcademy.org)

All items are subject to editing.

©2009. The Medieval Academy of America