Prizes

In 2004, it was decided that the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship would sponsor an award to recognize scholarly contributions in our field. Each year, SMFS seeks nominations/submissions for its annual prize for outstanding feminist scholarship on the Middle Ages. Prizes alternate between "best first medieval feminist book" and "best published feminist medievalist article." Each submission is evaluated in context of how it contributes to the study of women and feminist values in Medieval Studies. The prize carries an award of $300, which is awarded at the annual business meeting each May at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, MI).

Books and articles may be nominated for consideration or may be self-submitted. All efforts should be made to send at least two (2) copies of a book under consideration, although only one (1) is required. It is expected that four (4) copies of each article will be sent to the SMFS President for distribution. Books must be the author's first monograph, and may not be edited collections. Articles must have been published within the preceding four years (e.g. articles published 2003-2006 are eligible for the 2007 prize). Submissions in languages other than English are welcomed.

All submissions, whether self-nominated or otherwise, should be accompanied by a cover letter explaining the merits of the work under consideration, particularly in a feminist medievalist context. The letter should be addressed to, and all materials should be sent to, the SMFS President. Deadlines are generally in the early part of January.

The 2009 Prize for Best Article has been awarded to Professor Rebecca Winer, Department of History, Villanova University, for her paper “Conscripting the Breast: Lactation, Slavery, and Salvation in the Realms of Aragón and Kingdom of Majorca, c. 1250-1300,” Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008).

Honorable Mention:

• Professor Nicole Nolan Sidhu, Department of English, East Carolina University, for “Weeping for the Virtuous Wife: Laymen, Affective Piety and Chaucer’s ‘Clerk’s Tale,’” published in Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing,  and Household in Medieval England, edited by Maryanne Kowaleski P. J. P. Goldberg (Cambridge University Press,  2008)

In 2008 SMFS awarded two essay prizes for students. The Graduate Prize went to Sarah Celentano, University of Texas, Austin, for her paper “Commentary from the Canoness: Female Agency and Christian-Jewish Debate in the Hortus Deliciarum,” and the Undergraduate Prize went to Amy Brown, The Women’s College, University of Sydney, for her paper “Gender, Power and Heroism in Ælfric’s Judith.”

Previous Winners

2008 [book] Virginia Blanton  
Signs of Devotion: The Cult of St. Æthelthryth in Medieval England, 695-1615 (Pennsylvania State University   Press, 2007)

Honorable Mentions:

• Andrea Pearson, Envisioning Gender in Burgundian Devotional Art, 1350-1530: Experience, Authority, and   Resistance (Ashgate, 2005).
• Paula Rieder, On the Purification of Women: Churching in Northern France, 1100-1500 (Palgrave Macmillan,   2006)
• Anne Bagnall Yardley, Performing Piety: Musical Culture in Medieval English Nunneries (Palgrave Macmillan,  2006)
  
  

2007 [article] Nicola McDonald
"Games Medieval Women Play." In Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women': Context and Reception. Ed. Carolyn P. Collette. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2006. 176-97.

Honorable Mentions:

• Kara A. Doyle. "Thisbe Out of Context: Chaucer's Female Readers and the Findern Manuscript." Chaucer Review 40.3(2006): 231-61.
• Kathy Krause. "Generic Space-Off and the Construction of the Female Protagonist: The Chanson de Florence de Rome." Exemplaria 18(2006): 93-136.
• Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner. "Writing Religious Rules as an Interactive Process: Dominican Penitent Women and the Making of Their Regula," Speculum 79 (2004): 660-87.
• Adrian W. B. Randolph. "Gendering the Period Eye: 'Deschi da Parto' and Renaissance Visual Culture." Art History 27.4(2004): 538-62.

2006 [book] Sarah S. Poor
Mechthild of Magdeburg and her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority (Penn, 2004)

2005 [article] Jane Chance
"'Classical Myth and Gender in the Letters of 'Abelard' and 'Heloise': Gloss, Glossed, Glossator." In Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth-Century Woman. Ed. Bonnie Wheeler. New York: St. Martin's, 2000: 161-185.

• Honorable Mention: George Ferzoco, "The Massa Marittima Mural," Toscana Studies 1(2004): 71-105.