Mellon Colloquium
This Year's Mellon Colloquium
This year's Mellon Colloquium will be held on April 19, 2024, and will feature the 2023–24 Mellon Fellow, John Mulhall, Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University. He will be joined by discussants Charles Burnett (The Warburg Institute), Peter Adamson (King's College, London), and Thomas Burman (University of Notre Dame).
About the Mellon Fellowship
Since 2001, through the generous response of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to a challenge grant awarded to Notre Dame by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Medieval Institute has offered an A. W. Mellon Junior Faculty Fellowship in Medieval Studies to an outstanding young tenure-track faculty member to do research while in residence for the year at Notre Dame.
The intent of this Fellowship is to enable its holders to complete research and writing on a book manuscript in advance of tenure. To that end, towards the conclusion of their residencies, Fellows present their work at our Annual Mellon Colloquium.
Three senior scholars, chosen in cooperation with the Medieval Institute, are invited to campus for a half-day public seminar discussing the Fellow’s research. Informal conversation continues with the speakers over lunch. In a private afternoon session, the senior scholars also read and discuss a draft version of the Fellow’s work with a view to improving the manuscript before its submission to a press.
Fellowship application details
See our list of current fellows
Past Fellows
2022–23
Mireille Pardon, Assistant Professor of History, Berea College
2021–22
Mohamad Ballan, Assistant Professor of History, Stony Brook University, “Lord of the Pen and Sword: Genealogy and Sovereignty in the Medieval Islamic West"
2020–21
As part of the university's response to the 2019 coronavirus pandemic, the Medieval Institute did not appoint a Mellon Fellow for the 2021–21 academic year.
2019–20
Michael Heil, University of Little Rock, Arkansas, "Clerics, Courts, and Legal Culture in Early Medieval Italy"
2018–19
Stephen Ogden, University of Arkansas, Little Rock, "Clerics, Courts, and Legal Culture in Early Medieval Italy"
2017–18
Taylor Cowdery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (English), "Matter and Form in Premodern Literature: English Poetics from Chaucer to Donne"
2016–17
Laura Veneskey, Wake Forest University (Art History, Ancient, Medieval, and Byzantine Art), “Earthly Icons: Between Matter and Figuration in Early Byzantine Art”
2015–16
Lindy Brady, University of Mississippi (English), "Writing the Welsh Borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England"
Published as Writing the Welsh Borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester University Press, 2017)
2014–15
Jay Diehl, Long Island University (History), "From Piety to Parchment: Spirituality and the Making of Monastic Literary Cultures, 1050-1150"
Published as "Masters and Schools at St.-Laurent: Rupert of Deutz and the Scholastic Culture of a Liègeois Monaster" in Medieval Liège at the Crossroads of Europe: Monastic Society and Culture, 1000-1300, eds. Steven Vanderputten, Tjamke Snijders, and Jay Diehl (Brepols, 2017), 151-82.
2013–14
Clara Pascual-Argente, Rhodes College (Spanish Literature), "The Invention of Medieval Antiquity: Memory and Anachronism in the Castilian Roman Antique"
Published as “The Survival of Medieval Antiquity: Fifteenth-Century Transformations of the Roman Antique Tradition in Castile and Beyond,” in Early Modern Constructions of Europe: Literature, Culture, History, eds. Florian Kläger and Gerd Bayer (Routledge, 2016), 71-89.
2012–13
Christina Normore, Northwestern University (Art History), "A Feast for the Eyes: Art and Performance in the Late Middle Ages"
Published as A Feast for the Eyes: Art, Performance, and the Late Medieval Banquet (Chicago, 2015)
2011–12
Suzanne LaVere, Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne (History), "Out of the Cloister: Scholastic Exegesis of the Song of Songs, 1100-1250"
Published as Out of the Cloister: Scholastic Exegesis of the Song of Songs, 1100-1250 (Brill, 2016)
2010–11
Tanya Stabler Miller, Purdue University-Calumet (History), "Beguine Communities in Medieval Paris (1250-1472)"
Published as The Beguines of Medieval Paris: Gender, Patronage, and Spiritual Authority (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)
2009–10
Bryan Carella, Assumption College (English Literature), "The Ideological Foundations of Insular Law and Its Sources, c. 600-c. 900"
2008–09
Susan Dudash, Fordham University (French Literature), "Giving Voice to the People: Poetic and Theological Responses to Social Class Conflict in Medieval France, 1270-1422"
2007–08
Cristina Maria Cervone, Villanova University (English Literature), "Love’s Leap: Incarnational Poetics in Late Medieval England"
Published as Poetics of the Incarnation: Middle English Writing and the Leap of Love (University of Pennsylvania, 2013)
2006–07
June Mecham, University of Nebraska, Omaha (History), "Performative Piety and Female Monastic Devotion in Late Medieval Germany"
Published as Sacred Communities, Shared Devotions: Gender, Material Culture, and Monasticism in Late Medieval Germany, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts 29, ed. A. Beach, C. Berman, L. Bitel (Brepols, 2014).
2005–06
Susanne Hafner, University of Texas at Austin (German Literature), "Vergilian Masculinities: Medieval Readings of the Aeneid"
2004–05
Anne Lester, University of Colorado (History), "The Convents of Champagne: Female Piety and Social Networks, 1150-1300"
Published as Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Cornell UP, 2011). Winner, 2012, Best First Book of Feminist Scholarship on the Middle Ages (Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship).
2003–04
Florin Curta, University of Florida (History), "Merovingian and Carolingian Gift-Giving Practices"
Published as “Merovingian and Carolingian Gift-Giving” in Speculum 81.3 (July 2006), 671-699.
2002–03
Deborah L. McGrady, Tulane University (French Literature), "Controlling Readers—the Audience’s Impact on Late Medieval French Literature"
Published as Controlling Readers: Guillaume de Machaut and His Late Medieval Audience (University of Toronto Press, 2006)
2001–02
Alice Sheppard, University of Pennsylvania (English), "Making and Unmaking Anglo-Saxons: Reading the Past of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle"
Published as Families of the King: Writing Identity in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (University of Toronto Press, 2004)
