MEM Fellowship for Graduate Students of Color
As promised in our July 2020 Statement on Anti-Racism, the Board of Directors of Middle East Medievalists (MEM) is pleased to announce the launch of a new fellowship to support graduate students of color in medieval studies who wish to attend the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). We expect to award a total of up to $1,500 to offset the costs of attending the 2021 meeting for successful applicants. We will open a first round of applications as soon as MESA issues its program decisions to help graduate students of color who are formally participating in the meeting to pay the registration fee. Details about our simple, needs-based application process will be forthcoming, but we wanted to make the announcement now, in conjunction with MESA’s 2021 call for papers, in order to encourage those who might otherwise opt out of the conference due to cost. We would like to express our gratitude to the anonymous donor who enabled us to launch this fellowship. We plan to fundraise for this fellowship in order to offer it every year.
MEM Panel Sponsorship at MESA 2021
As part of the efforts of Middle East Medievalists (MEM) to raise the profile of medieval studies at MESA, the MEM Board of Directors announces our 2021 call for panel sponsorship. MEM is a MESA affiliate and thus may sponsor up to three panels at each annual meeting. We cannot offer financial support, but selected panels will appear as MEM-sponsored panels on the MESA program. We will also publicize MEM-sponsored panels to our membership and highlight them in MEM’s annual “Medieval MESA” circular. We urge medievalists organizing panels for MESA 2021 to send us all relevant materials, including abstracts for both individual papers and the panels themselves, as well as the names of participants, by February 5, 2021, so that the MEM board may consider them for sponsorship before the MESA submission deadline. Please email your materials and/or any questions to Zayde Antrim (zayde.antrim@trincoll.edu).