In the wake of the well-documented appropriation of medieval imagery by white supremacists, the horrors of racially-motivated aggression and violence at Charlottesville over the summer, and now the online harassment of valued medievalist and activist Dorothy Kim, the Canadian Society of Medievalists wishes to publicly register its condemnation of racism and white supremacism in its various forms and its desire to see medieval studies move forward as a field to address its problematic relationship with the structures of white nationalism.

If you have not already, we urge you to read the collective statement by the Medievalists of Color who responded to recent controversies in our field over the summer. The Society of Medieval Feminist Scholarship, The Medieval Academy of America and The New Chaucer Society have also issued responses to the uncivil discourse of recent days. 

The Canadian Society of Medievalists

Congratulations to Levi Roach! He won the Margaret Wade Labarge prize for his book Aethelred the Unready(Yale UP, 2016). For details on the winning book, see below.

From the publisher:

An imaginative reassessment of Æthelred "the Unready," one of medieval England’s most maligned kings and a major Anglo-Saxon figure

The Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred "the Unready" (978–1016) has long been considered to be inscrutable, irrational, and poorly advised. Infamous for his domestic and international failures, Æthelred was unable to fend off successive Viking raids, leading to the notorious St. Brice’s Day Massacre in 1002, during which Danes in England were slaughtered on his orders. Though Æthelred’s posthumous standing is dominated by his unsuccessful military leadership, his seemingly blind trust in disloyal associates, and his harsh treatment of political opponents, Roach suggests that Æthelred has been wrongly maligned. Drawing on extensive research, Roach argues that Æthelred was driven by pious concerns about sin, society, and the anticipated apocalypse. His strategies, in this light, were to honor God and find redemption. Chronologically charting Æthelred’s life, Roach presents a more accessible character than previously available, illuminating his place in England and Europe at the turn of the first millennium.

Levi Roach is lecturer at the University of Exeter, and formerly a junior research fellow at St John’s College, Cambridge. He lives in Exeter, UK.

The "Medievalist of the Month" feature is currently on hiatus while we focus on some updates to the CSM website. To contribute to Medievalist of the Month in the future, please contact canmedievalistsPR@gmail.com!

The Canadian Society of Medievalists would like to remind scholars of the Margaret Wade Labarge Book Prize.  Submissions for the 2017 Labarge Prize (books published in 2016) should have 3 copies of eligible books sent to the committee chair, Kenna Olsen, to the mail address below by 15 April 2017:

Dr. Kenna Olsen

Department of English, Languages, and Cultures

Mount Royal University

4825 Mount Royal Gate SW

Calgary, AB, Canada

T3E 6K6

Eligibility:  Any book in the field of medieval studies (including monographs, editions, translations, and other categories as determined by the Prize Committee), authored or co-authored, translated or co-translated, edited or co-edited, etc. (the test being at least 50% participation) by a Canadian or someone resident in Canada. Edited collections of essays are not eligible.

For the up-to-date program for the 2017 conference, please download the PDF.

Annual Congress 2017.pdf