(her obituary, published in the Montreal Gazette):

Anne passed mildly away July 7, of esophageal cancer and its sequelae. She faced death with quiet composure. Born in Chester, England, January 4, 1943, Anne grew up in North Wales. A formative influence was her grammar school English teacher, who "taught her how to read poetry," which led to a lifetime devoted to literature. At nineteen, she entered St. Hilda's College, Oxford, in the PPE program, transferring to English, her true intellectual home, after a term. After obtaining her B.A. (and her pro forma M.A.), and a year of teacher training, she came to Canada in 1966, to teach junior high school in Prince George. A year later she moved to Vancouver, completing an M.A. (1970) and a Ph.D. (1976) at UBC. In 1974, she took a job as a sessional lecturer at the University of Alberta where she met her future husband, Dennis, whom she married in 1976. They settled in Saskatoon, holding various temporary positions in the English Department at the University of Saskatchewan. Their daughter Mary was born in 1978. Subsequently, they spent a year in Ottawa before moving to Montreal, where Dennis (having changed disciplines) was to join the law faculty at McGill. While in the academic wilderness Anne completed her scholarly edition and study The Old English Elegies, published by McGill-Queens. She also gave birth to our second daughter, Jennifer, in 1986. In 1990 Anne took a job in the English Department at UNB, specializing in Old English and History of the English Language. She moved with the two girls to Fredericton, while Dennis spent many years commuting to Montreal. After retiring from UNB, she was named professor emerita in 2009. In 2010, Dennis joined her in retirement in their much-loved Island View home. Even after retiring, Anne continued her scholarship, publishing her last book, The Voices of Medieval English Lyric, in 2019. Perhaps Anne's most notable quality, apart from her staying power, was her integrity, evident in many ways. She was a person of independent mind, chary of ephemeral intellectual fashions. She always spoke her mind forthrightly, without regard to being popular. Sometimes her candour caused her regret. But her criticisms were without rancour. Her scholarship and teaching were motivated by love of the materials and the challenge of mastering them. When an assessment committee commended her for doing an M.A. in Greek "because it enhanced her qualifications," she reacted: "I didn't do it to pad my c.v.; I did it because the poetry is wonderful and the language is hard." In her scholarship, she eschewed using translations: if she wanted to read German literature, she learned German, if Latin literature, Latin, if Greek literature, Greek, if Occitan literature, Occitan, and so on. This was part of her great respect, as an editor and a reader, for the text. Anne was a loving spouse, mother and grandmother, and a tenaciously loyal friend. Anyone who allowed themselves know her well will feel a terrible loss. She is survived by her husband of almost 47 years, by her daughters Mary (Dave Bancroft) and Jen (Debbie Friesen) and by her grandchildren Elisabeth, Raymond, Arthur, and Judith, and Debbie's daughter Charlotte-and by her beloved dog, Sally. A funeral service was held at St. Peter's Anglican Church, Fredericton, NB on Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 11 a.m. Final arrangements have been entrusted to McAdam's Funeral Home and online condolences can be made at www.mcadamsfh.com For those who wish, remembrances may be made in her name to Fredericton SPCA, or Hospice Fredericton.

The editors of The Year’s Work in Medievalism are delighted to announce the publication of volume 35.36 (2020-2021), a double issue. YWiM is the ISSM’s own peer-reviewed open access scholarly journal. The new volume volume represents work completed during the COVID-19 lockdown years, and so YWiM 35.36 contains: a pedagogy cluster; articles that discuss form, media, and medievalism; and a posthumous article by Alicia McKenzie (1976-2022), which we hope serves as a lasting memorial to her life and work.

We encourage you to visit https://ywim.net/ to read and enjoy innovative medievalism scholarship. We hope that this Table of Contents serves as a thrilling preview of the volume:

Pandemic Pedagogy: Teaching Medieval Studies with Medievalism and Baseball, M.J. Toswell, pp. 1-10

When the Digital Generation Isn’t: Pivoting Online with Traditional Campus Students, Melissa Ridley Elmes, pp. 11-26

Pedagogical Practices for Teaching through Crisis, Heather Blatt, pp. 27-33

Sister Warriors: Medievalism and Tropes of Women’s Empowerment in Netflix’s Warrior Nun, Yvonne Seale, pp. 34-49

The Disarticulation of Christendom: Dismemberment and Decapitation in Medieval Films, Caitlin G. Watt, pp. 50-58

“What Would Buffy Do?”: Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s “Storyteller” and the Hagiographic Genre, Meaghan Allen, pp. 59-70

Reading the “human braille”: Discourses of Ableism and Medievalism in the Reburial of Richard III, Rowan Wilson, pp. 71-82

“Messer Papero e il Ghibellin Fuggiasco:” Cultural Constraints on (Neo)medievalism's Adaptability, Karl Fugelso, pp. 83-94

Cynocéphales: (Ab)Uses of a Medieval Trope in Several French Texts of the Modern Era, Bryant White, pp. 95-111

Feminist Knights, Questions of Power, and Utopian Societies: Medievalism Today in Cyril Pedrosa and Roxanne Moreil’s L'Âge d’Or, Elisabeth Herbst Buzay, pp. 112-124

Rubeus Hagrid: The Resolution of Contraries, Part 1: Giant, Wild Man, and Saint, Natalie Goodison, pp. 125-135

Medievalism, Fakelore, and the Commodification of Story-Telling in the Afterlives of Harry Potter, Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand and Olga V. Trokhimenko, pp. 136-148

How (Not) to Design a Progressive Viking: “Desynchronized” Morality in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, In Memorium Alicia McKenzie (1976-2022), pp. 149-154

Be well,

Valerie Johnson and Renée Ward

Le prix Leonard E. Boyle, 2023, est décerné à // The 2023 Leonard E. Boyle Prize is awarded to Arnaud Montreuil, Écrire, décrire, saisir l’adoubement chevaleresque : une histoire de l’hippotogenèse dans l’Europe du Nord-Ouest, le Midi de la France et l’Italie centro-septentrionale (v.1175- v.1300), Université d'Ottawa. 

Arnaud Montreuil a rédigé une thèse exceptionnelle qui s'appuie sur des preuves littéraires et historiques et utilise l'analyse de texte assistée par ordinateur pour illustrer les nombreuses variations et l'évolution de la chevalerie en Europe à la fin du Moyen-Âge. Tous les membres du comité Boyle ont souligné la qualité de l'écriture et l'utilisation exceptionnelle des preuves. Bravo, Arnaud !

Arnaud Montreuil has written an exceptional dissertation which draws on literary and historical evidence, and utilizes computer-assisted text analysis to illustrate the extensive variation and development of knighting in Europe in the late Middle Ages. All of the Boyle committee members commented on how beautifully written it is, as well as the exceptional use of evidence. Bravo, Arnaud!

Click here for more details / cliquez ici pour plus de détails

Read the insightful blog post by Erika Dilling (Global Health and the Environment Honours Major, 3rd year at York University) on the our Congress open session organized by Kathy Cawsey, and featuring papers from Matthew Roby, Gavin Foster, Mariah Cooper, and Kathy Cawsey.  https://www.federationhss.ca/en/blog/reckonings-and-re-imaginings-rethinking-medieval-gendered-violence-after-metoo

Are you looking for video content for your Fall courses? Many of the Jesuit Centre's Formations and Reformations in Catholic Thought public talks

 continue to be available through our Youtube channel. Some talks which might be of interest to medievalists are those by Fr. Robert Godding, SJ of the Société des Bollandistes, or CSM/SCM members like Dr. John Osborne or Dr. Donna Trembinski. 

The Medieval Studies Research Group (MSRG) at my institution (the University of Lincoln, UK) has recently secured funding for three new doctoral posts as graduate teaching fellows. They are for four years of study, fully funded, with teaching built into the programme, and they are framed around three core areas under the umbrella of ‘Transcending Boundaries in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages’. The three strands have flexibility, and projects on Arthuriana and/or medievalism are featured in the third stream especially. If anyone has any questions or would like to chat about this opportunity, please contact Dr. Renée Ward (rward@lincoln.ac.uk).

I am pleased to share with you the preliminary program for our Annual Conference, which runs May 27-29 at York University in Toronto. You can check out all the details here: https://www.canadianmedievalists.org/resources/Documents/Preliminary%20Schedule%20Canadian%20Society%20of%20Medievalists.pdf

Remember to register before March 31^st to take advantage of the Early Bird Congress rates: https://www.federationhss.ca/en/congress/congress-2023/register.

****

J'ai le plaisir de partager avec vous le programme préliminaire de notre colloque annuel, qui se tiendra du 27 au 29 mai à l'Université York de Toronto. Vous pouvez consulter tous les détails ici : https://www.canadianmedievalists.org/resources/Documents/Preliminary%20Schedule%20Canadian%20Society%20of%20Medievalists.pdf

N'oubliez pas de vous inscrire avant le 31 mars pour bénéficier du tarif "Early Bird " : https://www.federationhss.ca/fr/congres/congres-2023/inscription.

The CSM/SCM is a member association of the Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences. Follow this link to the Federation's February communique: https://www.federationhss.ca/en/february-communique

Le CSM/SCM est une association membre de la Fédération des Sciences Humaines et Sociales. Suivez ce lien pour accéder au communiqué de février de la Fédération :

https://www.federationhss.ca/fr/communique-de-fevrier

The UiB Literature & Religion Research Group is looking for applicants for a 4-year post-doc for researchers working on literature with a religious angle. Any period welcome, but medievalists especially so!

https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/240483/postdoctoral-position-at-the-department-of-foreign-languages-literature-religion?fbclid=IwAR3GHcV-E8gKLYd6G8OyDoDPtshvRleMqER_Eryan3LrHbbfb0CguWGEhaA

(or tinyurl: https://tinyurl.com/mry3vczm )

There are also 2 PhD positions and another post-doc connected to 6 other research groups in the department, all of which are 4-yr positions:

• Ph.d. engelsk https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/240476/phd-research-fellowship-2-positions-at-the-department-of-foreign-languages

• Postdoc engelsk https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/240493/postdoctoral-research-fellow-at-the-department-of-foreign-languages

All the positions are well-paid, with good benefits, and reasonable teaching and administration work. 

The application deadline is 14 March and the positions should start August/Sept.

Any questions may be directed to Laura Laura Saetveit Miles (Laura.Miles@uib.no)