M. Jane Toswell Student Presentation Prize
Congratulations to/ Félicitations à Arka Chakraborty who has won the 2024 Toswell Student Prize for his presentation entitled "An Iberian peri in King Arthur’s Court? Otherworlds and Ambivalence in Locating the lai of Lanval" at the CSM Annual Conference.
Félicitations à Arka Chakraborty qui a reçu le prix Toswell 2024 pour la présentation d'un étudiant lors de la conférence annuelle de la SCM. La présentation de M. Chakraborty était intitulée " An Iberian peri in King Arthur's Court? Otherworlds and Ambivalence in Locating the lai of Lanval.
About the Toswell Student Presentation Prize
This prize is awarded annually for the best student presentation delivered at the CSM/SCM Conference. To be eligible, students must submit their papers to the President soon after the conference by email. The prize consists of a cash award as well as membership in the CSM/SCM for three years, including an annual subscription to the Society’s journal, Florilegium.
This prize has been named to honour the work of Professor M. Jane Toswell in helping to found the CSM / SCM.
While organizing the CSM / SCM archive in 2020, President Marc Cels learned of the hard work undertaken by Professor Toswell in 1992 when a group of medievalists attending the ACCUTE meetings at the 1992 Learneds—the old name for the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences Congress––decided it was high time to found a Canadian Society of Medievalists. Duties were shared out. Jane approached the Federation about starting a new society and, crucially, hunted down medievalists across Canada to mail them invitations to join. She worked on and administered the first SSHRC grant for the new society, helped organize the first meeting in 1993, and started our society newsletter. She drafted the first constitution and was part of a team that recruited the first officers, and chaired the first AGM. She went on to serve as Editor of Florilegium, and has continued to be a very active member: giving papers, taking turns on our committees, and serving as our local arrangements coordinator—a role that she took up again in 2020 only to have all her hard work thwarted by the cancelation of Congress due to Covid. Of course, Jane has also contributed to Canadian medieval studies during her career teaching in Western’s English Department and through her research and writing, but this prize has been named to commemorate her work in founding the CSM/SCM and thereby providing a community in which graduate student work on medieval topics can be presented, and honoured by this prize.
Past Winners of the Presentation Prize
2023- River Hobel, "Rethinking Christianity in Sawa During the 'Dark Ages'"
2022 - Emma-Catherine Wilson, University. of Ottawa, "“Translatio Studii et Imperii: English Cultural Politics during the Hundred Years War.”
2021–Emma-Catherine Wilson, University of Ottawa, "Medieval Used Books, Bought, Borrowed, and Bequeathed: BL Royal MS 14 E iii and the Dispersal of the French Royal Library."
2020–not awarded due to cancellation of CSM/SCM Conference because of Covid-19
2019 - Nora Thorburn, University of Toronto: “Pro myrrae troclidite: The influence of material medica substitution lists in medical recipes in the ninth century.”
2018 - Stephanie Lahey, University of Victoria: "Professional Pages, Done Dirt Cheap: On the Genre of English Offcut Manuscripts."
2017 - Matthew Roby, Oxford University: "Eating People and Feeling Sorry: Cannibals, Contrition, and the Didactic Donestre in the Old English Wonders of the East and Latin Mirabilia."
2016 - Cameron Burt, University of Manitoba: “‘Requysyte unto every astate and degree’: William Caxton and the Early Printed Book Market”
2015 - Brent Burbridge, University of Ottawa: “Benedictine Vernacular: Language and Authority in a Fourteenth-Century Trilingual Psalter”
2014 - Anna Thirion, Université de Montpellier: "De la numérisation à la reconstitution 3D. L'ancienne tribune abbatiale de Cuxa (v. 1150, France Pyrénées-Orientales)"
2013 - Ronald Lvovski, York University: "Early Medieval Asturian Architecture as Visigothic Revival?”
2012 - Jenny Weston, University of Leiden: "Books on the Move: the Exchange of Manuscripts between Monasteries in the Long Twelfth Century"
2011 - Peter Chiykowski, Dalhousie University: "'Who Will Help Me Hunt the Deer?' Robin Hood and the Labour Theory of Property in the Medieval English Forest"
2010 - Tristan Major, University of Toronto: "Wordplay and the Venerable Bede"
2009 - Adam Hutka, Dalhousie University: "Fleshly Fault and the Promise of Bodily Resurrection in Cleanness"
2008 - Michael Kightley, University of Western Ontario: "Socialism and the 'Folk' of William Morris’s Beowulf"
2007 - Corey Owen, Dalhousie University: "The Difficulty of Manifesting Enduring Fortitude in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"
2006 - Reginald Webber, University of Ottawa: "Fifteenth Century Benedictine Politics and Lydgate's 'Cartae Versificatae'"
2005 - Marc Cels, University of Toronto: “Confessing Anger”
2004 - David Watt, St. Anne's College, University of Oxford: “‘Of France and Engeland’ in Thomas Hoccleve’s Work.” 20