Student wins scholarship to study early medieval Scottish history

Just five months after she graduated from University of California – Santa Cruz with a bachelor’s degree in history, Cynthia Thickpenny received a life-changing phone call. She learned in late November that she had just won a Marshall Scholarship–one of the most prestigious awards that American undergraduates can receive–to study at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She plans to specialize in Early Medieval Scottish history–particularly the culture of the Picts, a Celtic people she says are one of the most understudied groups of the Middle Ages.

“I pretty much had to pick myself up off the floor when the phone call came from the British Consulate,” recalled Thickpenny. “I am still stunned, and it has not sunk in all the way yet. To study in Scotland is one of my biggest dreams.”

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Manitoba medievalist earns prestigious scholarship

Julia Gamble, an anthropology PhD student at the University of Manitoba, is one of three graduate students at that university to be awarded by the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships program. This will allow Gamble to proceed with research on health in medieval Denmark.

Considered the Canadian equivalent to the United Kingdom’s Rhode’s Scholarship, the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship is a tool to recruit and retain top doctoral students from across Canada and around the world. Each of the 174 winners across the country will receive $50,000 annually for up to three years to assist them during their studies. Canada’s three federal granting agencies – the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council – administer the scholarships.

They recognize students who demonstrate leadership skills and a high standard of scholarly achievement in graduate studies in the social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and engineering, and health. Students are nominated by their university. Nominees are evaluated by multi-disciplinary peer-review committees and selected by a board composed of world-renowned Canadian and international experts.

Gamble's research aims to better understand if and how our health in childhood affects our health as adults. She’ll analyze the enamel on the teeth of the remains of a large Danish medieval population who experienced significant socio-economic change. Growth lines in the enamel reveal if and when our bodies were under stress. Enamel formation is disrupted when our bodies are fighting disease, a parasitic infection or even nutritional deficiency. She is the first to look at both the surface and the internal microstructure of tooth enamel.

Gamble will compare her findings with health information about the given population recorded in historical literature. Her quest to figure out if a connection exists between our health as kids and our health later in life includes determining how that might affect our longevity.

The other two PhD students from the University of Manitoba to be awarded the scholarship are Oleksandr Maizlish, a mathematician, and Renée El-Gabalawy, a clinical psychologist.

John (Jay) Doering, dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the University of Manitoba, said, “I congratulate our recipients, who have been recognized as being among the world’s top students. They are well deserving of this prestigious honour. We are very proud of them.”

Source: University of Manitoba

Anne Latowsky awarded fellowship from NEH

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded University of South Florida Assistant Professor Anne Latowsky a $50,400 faculty research fellowship in support of her project Holy Land Fictions: Journeys to Jerusalem and Constantinople in the Medieval French Tradition. Latowsky joined the USF faculty in 2004 and specializes in Medieval French literature and its relationship to Frankish and Anglo-Norman historiographical traditions.

The NEH is an independent federal agency that supports learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities and is the largest funder of the humanities in the United States.

"Dr. Latowsky's achievement is spectacular and represents the high level of quality of her scholarship and the commitment she has for her discipline," said Ralph Wilcox, provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs. "NEH fellowships are very prestigious and are an even more precious commodity in these tough economic times."

Latowsky's project follows the roots of the false tales of Charlemagne's liberation of Jerusalem through six centuries of ecclesiastical documents, vernacular poems, Latin and vernacular chronicles, and images in stained glass.

"This is a great honor and a wonderful opportunity for me to bring my book to completion," said Latowsky. "I am deeply grateful to colleagues and friends here at USF who made it possible, including members of the Department of World Languages, the Florida MedievaList, and the staff of the USF Humanities Institute."

Latowsky teaches a variety of undergraduate courses in the Department of World Languages in the USF College of Arts and Sciences, as well as advanced courses in Medieval French literature, Old French linguistics and phonetics, and French civilization.

Latowsky earned her bachelor's degree in history and French from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a master's degree in French literature and a doctorate in French studies from the University of Washington, Seattle. She is multilingual, speaking and reading French at near native proficiency, with reading knowledge of Old French, as well as classical and medieval Latin, and is proficient in speaking and reading Spanish, and has reading knowledge of Italian and German.

Medieval scholar awarded Fulbright Fellowship

Mark S. Weiner, Professor of Law and Sidney I. Reitman Scholar at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Fellowship to teach and undertake research at the University of Akureyri, Iceland, for the fall term of the 2009-2010 academic year.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Weiner will teach an intensive course on U.S. constitutional law and conduct research for his new book on the transformation of clan identity and the development of the rule of law. Professor Weiner, a member of the Rutgers-Newark law faculty since 2001, is an award-winning legal historian and author. His first book, Black Trials: Citizenship From the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of Caste (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), was selected a 2005 Silver Gavel Award winner by the American Bar Association. His latest book, Americans without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship (NYU Press, 2006), received the President's Book Award from the Social Science History Association.

The first chapter of Professor Weiner's new book will likely focus on Iceland, whose history provides a valuable case study of the relation between legal development and clan identity. Many of the country's popular medieval Sagas concern law and the legal process and, Weiner explains, generally law plays as central a symbolic role in Icelandic national identity as the Constitution does in the United States. He is especially interested in the medieval legal history of the island and the contemporary popular historical consciousness of that legal past.

The Fulbright Program is the most widely recognized and prestigious international exchange program in the world, supported for more than 60 years through an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress and by the people of partner nations. The program - working with universities, schools, binational Fulbright commissions, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector - actively seeks out individuals of achievement and potential who represent the full diversity of their respective societies and selects nominees through open, merit-based competitions.

Medievalist among new Carnegie Scholars

Hussein Anwar Fancy, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, has been named as one of 24 new Carnegie Scholars for his work on the trade of military soldiers between Christian and Islamic states during the Middle Ages.

Professor Fancy and the other scholars were selected for their compelling ideas and commitment to enriching the quality of the public dialogue on Islam. The award comes with a two-year grant of $100 000.

Professor Fancy offers a novel perspective on religious violence in the Middle Ages that challenges and redirects contemporary debates about tolerance. His research will center on a virtually unknown history of the Crusades in which thousands of Muslim and Christian soldiers were traded to serve in kingdoms of the other faith: Christian soldiers in service of North African sultans and Muslim soldiers in service of Catalan kings. These curious exchanges paradoxically reinforced religious violence, rather than acting to diminish them. Fancy argues that the language of tolerance, grounded in assumptions about medieval religion, has impeded both the understanding of the historical past and the mitigation of conflict. His work will examine unpublished archival material from the 13th century in an effort to bring to light rules and limits to the use of violence in the context of the Crusades and jihad across the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.

His upcoming publications include: "Smuggling Lives and Forging Captives in the Medieval Mediterranean," and “The Last Almohad: ‘Abd al-Wahid b. Abi Dabbus in the Kingdoms of the Crown of Aragon (1262-1289)".

The Carnegie Corporation of New York President Vartan Gregorian said, "We are cultivating a diverse scholarly community spanning a range of disciplines with the expectation that their voices will help Americans develop a more complex understanding of Muslim societies here and throughout the world--revealing Islam's rich diversity. Only through vibrant dialogue, guided by bold and nuanced scholarship, can we move public thinking into new territory."

The 2009 Carnegie Scholars are drawn from a number of disciplines. This year's awardees include:

An art historian offering a nuanced understanding of the role of contemporary mosques in the construction of modern Muslim identity.

A historian tracing the little known story of how Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers opposed dominant, negative views of Islam.

An economist exploring how pilgrims, following their return from Mecca, have an increased desire for peace and tolerance--toward fellow Muslims and non-Muslims.

A historian offering a comprehensive account of U.S.-Iran relations beginning during the time of the American colonies.

Patricia L. Rosenfield, who leads the Carnegie Scholars Program said,"America's discourse on Islam will benefit from the Scholars' enthusiastic quest to transform complex information into useful, structured knowledge. Their superb scholarship is often daring, always accessible and truly public." Rosenfield said that emerging and
established scholars alike are encouraged to orient their writing and speaking beyond purely academic audiences.