What RGME People are Doing
Virtual Bulletin Board
[Posted on 9 September 2024, with updates]
London, British Library, MS Royal 17 E iii, fol. 209r, detail: illustration. Bartholomaeus Angelicus’ De proprietatibus rerum, France (Paris?), 1st quarter of the 15th century.
We launch a new Page in the History of the RGME Website by opening this Corner Kiosk, as a virtual Bulletin Board to share news about projects, conference papers, publications, and other activities by our Associates, Volunteers, Officers, Friends, and others in our community. Who are we? See:
Not a member yet? Join the Friends!
Thanks go to Zoey Kambour, our Intern Executive Assistant, for suggestions about this page, its contents, and its approach.
Excited to get started.
As another contribution for our RGME Anniversary Year of 2024, with its Theme of Bridges, this Bulletin Board is designed as building a bridge between individual or group activities and our wider community.
Ronda, Galicia, Spain, Puente Nuevo Bridge. Photograph 14 August 2007 by Mark Gilbert. Image: Judas6000 at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Punte_Nuevo_Bridge,_Ronda_-_Spain.jpg.
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2026
In 2026, issues with our RGME website arising through its management service occupied so much attention that this page for announcements lay waiting for a while. Now we resume, as we announce the activities and celebrate accomplishments of our Officers and Associates in their own right.
Book Awards
This year, two of our Associates have received well-deserved awards of recognition for their publications. Both Associates have presented accounts of these books for RGME online or hybrid events. We offer our hearty congratulations!
1. Richard A. Kopley
In April, the Mystery Writers of America presented the 2026 Edgar Award to Richard for his monumental biography.
Winner of the 2026 Edgar Award
for Best Critical/Biographical book
Richard A. Kopley
Edgar Allen Poe: A Life
(University of Virginia Press)
Best Critical/Biographical Work
#Edgars2026
Richard presented a description of this book for our 2024 RGME Autumn Symposium (online). He presented a follow-up for our 2026 RGME Visit to The Grolier Club (hybrid).
Associates and Officers of the RGME continue to sing the praises of this exceptional book, representing deep study and broad horizons for the understanding of a significant figure in the history of literature.
2. Reid Byers
ACRL
2026 Leab Award
Reid Byers
Imaginary Books
(Oak Knoll Press)
Excellence in Description Print Catalog Category:
Oak Knoll Press in New Castle, Delaware
for Imaginary Books:
Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books
by Reid Byers
In August, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced the recipients of the 2026 Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Catalog Awards.
These annual awards recognize excellence in the production of catalogs and brochures that accompany exhibitions of library and archival materials, as well as for electronic exhibitions of such materials. The Leab Awards are administered by the Exhibition Awards Committee of the ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts (RBMS) Section, whose operating expenses are covered by a generous endowment from Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab, former editors of American Book Prices Current. This year, Leab Award recipients were determined by popular vote from ACRL and RBMS members.
—— 2026 Leab Awards Recipients Announced
We note with pleasure that, by Reid’s choice, this book is the first full-length book to be set in our copyright multi-lingual digital font RGME Bembino.
Reid presented a preview of this book, and its companion exhibition at The Grolier Club, for our 2023 RGME Autumn Symposium (online). He presented a follow-up for our 2026 RGME Visit to The Grolier Club (hybrid) and for our several collaborative presentations in 2026 on RGME Bembino for a variety of audiences (online or hybrid), including Episode 24 for our online series “The Research Group Speaks”.
- 2024 RGME Autumn Symposium-at-the-helm
- 2026 RGME Visit to The Grolier Club
- Meet RGME Bembino: Facets of a Font
We look forward to Reid’s continuing work on the fascinating subject of “Imaginary Books” and the exhibitions which continue to flow from his work as the collection travels from place to place, including California and The Netherlands.
Architectural Talk in Chicago
In October, our Associate Martha Frish will speak at the headquarters of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) in Chicago. The event is co-sponsored by the Chicago Vassar Club.
“Advancing the Goal of Educating Women:
Symbols in the Architecture at Vassar College”
Thursday 8 October 2026 (in person)
Society of Architectural Historians
Charnley-Persky House
A National Historic Landmark
(designed by Louis Sullivan with assistance from Frank Lloyd Wright)
1365 N. Astor Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
We are delighted that Martha continues to present her work on the architectural history of Vassar College and the significance of its buildings and their intentions and interactions. She first introduced the RGME to her perspectives on the subject for our 2024 RGME Spring Symposium at Vassar, with an invited follow-up also for our 2025 RGME Visit to Vassar.
We look forward to Martha’s next steps with this important subject, grounded in her own experiences as a Vassar College alumna and across her career as an architectural historian.
“The Quad as Exterior Room”. Photograph of the Residential Quad by Martha Frish (2016).
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2025
With the arrival of 2025, we continue this page with the addition of the year’s theme of Thresholds & Communities. Thus we point to the door, portal, or gate which mark activities, projects, and publications or planned publications of our RGME Officers, Associates, Volunteers, and Friends.
Venice, Ca’ d’Oro, built for the Contarini family by Bartolomeo Bon in 1428-30: Facade. Photograph by Didier Descouens (10 May 2011), Image via Wikimedia Commons by Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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CFP: “Out of Bounds”
From our Associate Antony R. Henk, an announcement and a Call for Papers:
Dear RGME colleagues,
We issue the call for papers for an upcoming English medieval studies volume in Anglo-Germanic Literary Studies (Estudios Literarios Anglo-Germánicos, Universidad de Jaén). We are especially seeking contributions from graduate students and early-career researchers; established researchers are also fully welcome to contribute.
Call for Papers
“Out of Bounds: Peripheral Texts of the English Middle Ages”
For over a century now, both the study and the teaching of medieval English have often orbited certain canonical landmarks: Beowulf and Chaucer, Ælfric and the Pearl poet (cf. Baker 2012; Simpson/David 2012; Treharne 2004). Yet, canonical works and authors make up only a tiny fraction of the corpus of Old and Middle English writing: outside of the invisible boundaries that a canon by necessity establishes, there lies a vast, largely uncharted textual landscape. A few representatives of these ‘peripheral’ or non-canonical texts in Old English might be the list-like Old English Menologium (Karasawa 2021) and Secgan be (Liebermann 1889; Foys et al. 2019), or linguistically and chronologically transitional works like The Old English Apollonius (Treharne 2004), The Grave (Bucholz 1890; Foys et al. 2019), or Durham (Bjork 2014; Foys et al. 2019). In Middle English, one might denote as rather peripheral the early romance King Horn (Drake/Salisbury/Herzman 1997) or Caxton’s life of Charlemagne (Herrtage 1867). Furthermore, a significant portion of medieval English vernacular writing lies outside the aesthetics traditionally concomitant even to ‘literature’ itself. Non-literary texts—lists, inventories, charters, liturgy, legal writings, didactic texts, letters, marginalia, glosses, and more—have only recently attracted scholarly notice. While these recent studies have advocated for the merits of the list as a literary form (von Contzen 2023) and explored short texts as varied as coin inscriptions, blessings, and manuscript marginalia (Lenker/Kornexl 2019), little has been done to ask how and why such works are rejected for canonization or dismissed on aesthetic grounds.
In light of continuing discussion on the problems of maintaining a traditional canon in studying and teaching medieval English (Heng 2024), crossing over into the peripheral or non-canonical texts of the English Middle Ages may provide an additional means of bringing in new perspectives and readings. Interrogating how and why these peripheral texts are adjudicated non-canonical may further allow a fuller understanding of the writings of the English Middle Ages as a complex, nuanced, and interrelated whole.
For a new volume in the series Anglo-Germanic Literary Studies (Estudios Literarios Anglo-Germánicos, Universidad de Jaén) we are seeking contributions on peripheral or non-canonical medieval English texts, engaging with the following questions and topics:
- What are the characteristics regarding form and content of writings which fall well outside the literary canon or which have not traditionally been regarded to be of high literary or aesthetic quality? What can we gain from engaging with such texts?
- How might readings of peripheral texts (including those within a particular genre or group of texts, or of a particular date or dialect) shed light on contemporary medieval aesthetics, or on the current scholarly consensus, and how do they deepen or subvert our perspectives on canonical literature?
- Can we trace developments and/or continuities in the history of English Medieval Studies which (have) influence(d) the building of the canon edifice, and how can we ourselves defy them?
We particularly encourage submissions from post-graduate students and early-career researchers. Abstracts of 250 words are to be submitted to medieval-english@rub.de by 30 July 2025, with notice of acceptance following shortly thereafter. Accepted articles to the volume should not exceed 20 pages (max. 5,000 words, bibliography excluded). The deadline for full article submissions will be 2 February 2026. All chapters submitted for the volume will be subject to double-blind peer review.
Contact
Antony R. Henk, PhD Assistant in English Medieval Studies, Ruhr University Bochum
&
Kerstin Majewski, Junior Professor of English Medieval Studies, Ruhr University Bochum
E-mail: medieval-english@rub.de
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New Website and Digital Edition:
Middle English Text Series
From our Associate Anna Siebach-Larsen, an annnouncement and a launch:
The Middle English Text Series (METS) Editorial Board is pleased to announce the launch of a new website and digital edition for METS, a project long in the making. Join us to celebrate METS’ next phase with an online launch party on November 1, 2024, 3 pm EST. We’ll introduce the site and some of its features, discuss future plans, and laud our collaborators. We look forward to celebrating with you!
Please register here: https://tinyurl.com/
We are grateful to our sponsors and partners: University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries, Rossell Hope Robbins Library, and Department of English; TEAMS; Medieval Institute Publications; and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Middle Ages for Educators (MAFE):
Sweet 16 Competition
First up [that is, when we opened this page in September 2024], this announcement from our Associate Laura Morreale, who co-organizes the Medieval Women’s Networks webinars which the RGME co-sponsors for October 17–18 2024 by Zoom.
At Laura’s suggestion, we invite you to consider the competition proposed by the Princeton-based Middle Ages for Educators (MAFE). The Princeton Directors for this initiative are our Associates Helmut Gneuss and Jack Tannous. Some RGME Associates have presented podcasts for this initiative, including Eric White and Pamela Patton, who recorded their podcasts at the Princeton University Library on the same day as our Director. We warmly applaud this initiative, and look forward to its further work.
Sweet 16 Competition
for Middle Ages for Educators (MAFE)
With the support of a Centennial Grant from the Medieval Academy of America (MAA), the Princeton-based Middle Ages for Educators (MAFE) is sponsoring a bracketed Sweet16 competition to encourage medievalists to create open access resources (OARs) for inclusion and publication on the site.
All Sweet 16 OAR submissions will be assessed by a panel of judges who will choose the top 16 OARs, which will then be entered into a public-facing competition. Voting for the best OAR will take place on social media, with the winner of each pairing advancing to the next round. The top 16 submissions will receive a cash prize, and the 4 semi-finalists will receive an additional cash prize and a travel stipend to present their work, along with the judges, at a round-table at the MAA’s Centennial meeting in Boston in March 2025. The overall winner of the Sweet 16 competition will receive an additional prize of $1,000. Anyone may enter the competition.
Guidelines for creating and submitting OARs are found on the Sweet 16 page of the MAFE site; all submissions are due by October 1, 2024.
We hope this competition will be an exciting opportunity for the medievalists in your community to learn about MAFE, to consider new ways to disseminate knowledge, and to represent your program and all you have to offer to the thousands of people who use MAFE every year.
Please feel free to send me any questions or concerns you might have (as MAFE Project Coordinator) at my personal email, lmorreale3@gmail.com.
Remember the due date of 1 October 2024 for your submissions.
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Matters of Death and Life in Acre:
A New Publication
Another update for our Associate Laura Morreale and her collaborators.
This time we celebrate the publication of this book:
A Crusader’s Death and Life in Acre:
The 1266 Account-Inventory of Eudes of Nevers,
by Anne E. Lester and Laura K. Morreale, with others
Medieval Societies, Religions and Cultures
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2025).
At a recent book-launch, it was possible to meet members of the team and their families, celebrate book-signings, and enjoy the company of authors, contributors, editors, reviewers, and colleagues in a welcoming setting. We give thanks for the hospitality and conviviality.
We offer congratulations and look forward to the next collaborations!
Book Launch for “A Crusader’s Death and Live at Acre,” with co-author Laura Morreale 18 May 2025). Photograph by Mildred Budny.
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Do you have announcements and news that you would like us to circulate? Please let us know.
Contact Us
For information, please Contact Us or write to director@manuscriptevidence.org.
For updates, please visit
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- our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
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- our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List
- Friends of the RGME.
We look forward to hearing from you.
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London, British Library, MS Royal 17 E iii, fol. 209r, detail: illustration. Bartholomaeus Angelicus’ De proprietatibus rerum, France (Paris?), 1st quarter of the 15th century.
Note on the Image: On the manuscript, see Royal MS 17 E III, the scholastic author Bartholomaeus Anglicus (before 1203 – 1272), and his widely circulated work De proprietatibus rerum, “On the Properties of Things” (circa 1240), an early forerunner of the modern encyclopedia.
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