A Note from TEAMS President, Gale Sigal: 2023 Edition
Posted by Becky Straple-Sovers on August 21, 2023
Each year as the beginning of the school year approaches, we check in with the Teaching Association for Medieval Studies and publish an annual TEAMS update. This year we bring you a note from TEAMS President, Gale Sigal!
A note from TEAMS President, Gale Sigal
The Teaching Association for Medieval Studies (TEAMS) had an especially active and successful year. We organized or co-sponsored five sessions at the May 2023 International Congress for Medieval Studies (ICMS), as well as a reception. The second year of our collaboration with Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) has been so fruitful that we are putting forth another co-sponsored session for next year. We were especially delighted to have the opportunity to celebrate the TEAMS founder, Prof. Bonnie Wheeler. There were four sessions in her honor: two organized by TEAMS and two organized by the Medieval Foremothers group.
To further celebrate Prof. Wheeler’s founding of TEAMS, we have announced a new prize, “The Annual Bonnie Wheeler Outstanding Professor Award,” to be presented at the ICMS. More will be forthcoming on this shortly. We have made a further commitment to honor Bonnie by establishing an annual TEAMS Bonnie Wheeler session. This session at the upcoming May 2024 ICMS conference will be titled after one of Prof. Wheeler’s well-known essays: "The Seductions of Chivalry." We are looking forward to another round of effective sessions at the ICMS 2024 conference, where we will sponsor or co-sponsor seven sessions (see the 2024 ICMS Call for Papers).
Don’t forget The Once and Future Classroom, our peer-reviewed online journal dedicated to encouraging and facilitating medieval studies at the K-12 and college levels! We are always receptive to essays on innovative teaching approaches to works, films, and games in any field of Medieval Studies. Contact me to make inquiries or send submissions.
Finally, the TEAMS Editorial Board has approved two new proposals for Medieval Institute Publications. The first, from David Clark and Perry Harrison, is a new translation of and commentary on the "Hêliand," with the first English translations of its Latin prefaces and the Old Saxon "Genesis" fragments. Ernst Gerhardt is the editor of the second project, a critical edition of the anonymous mid-sixteenth-century interlude "The History of Jacob and Esau," which meta-theatrically stages a dramatic entertainment scripted, organized, and managed by a female character.
On that note, please consider submitting a proposal to the TEAMS Editorial Board for one of our nine Classroom Texts series! Originally focused on making available accessible editions of Middle English texts, the TEAMS publishing program has now successfully expanded into translations or facing-page editions and translations from other medieval vernacular languages (French of Medieval England Bilingual Editions, Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions, and Medieval Textual Cultures of Central and Southeast Europe series), biblical and secular commentary genres, historical documents, musical treatises and works, and other texts and critical works. The most successful editions have today sold more than six thousand copies and have been adopted in classrooms for twenty years or more.
TEAMS classroom texts series
TEAMS Commentary Series: This series is designed for classroom use with a goal to make available to teachers and students useful examples of the vast tradition of medieval commentary on sacred scripture.
TEAMS Documents of Practice Series: The goal of this series is to make available to teachers and students volumes that contain translations of selected primary documents that illustrate various aspects of the life experience of medieval men and women.
TEAMS Medieval German Texts in Bilingual Editions Series: This series is designed for classroom use in German and medieval studies, as well as for the more advanced scholars in fields adjacent to that of German literature: the historian, Latinist, theologian, or romanist who wishes to extend her or his reading and research across those largely artificial borders that still divide medievalists unnecessarily.
TEAMS Middle English Texts Series: The goal of this series is to make available to teachers, scholars, and students texts that occupy an important place in the literary and cultural canon but have not been readily available in print or online editions. The series does not include authors, such as Chaucer, Langland, or Malory, whose English works are normally in print. The focus is, instead, upon Middle English literature adjacent to those authors that are needed for research or teaching.
TEAMS Secular Commentary Series: This series provides modern English translations of medieval texts that analyze, annotate, and explicate classical and vernacular works.
TEAMS Varia Series: This series is designed to be used by both scholars and instructors. It provides a home for texts and critical works that do not fit neatly into the other TEAMS series.
Plus three new TEAMS series!
French of Medieval England Bilingual Editions
This series is designed to encourage the editing and translation of significant Anglo-French texts. The volumes are designed for classroom use in courses in medieval English, medieval French and Anglo-Norman, and comparative medieval studies, and they will also be valuable to advanced scholars in related fields. In most cases, books will feature edited texts and facing-page modern English translations.
Medieval Music in Context Series
This series seeks to publish editions, translations, and studies of medieval music-theoretical treatises and literary texts with significant musical engagements, including works of poetry and prose with embedded music (notated or unnotated). The volumes are designed for classroom use in, e.g., music history, music theory, literature, and medieval studies courses, while still offering contributions useful for more specialized research. The series encourages a global reach and is intended to encompass texts and musical traditions in Latin and European vernaculars, Byzantine Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian.
Medieval Textual Cultures of Central and Southeast Europe Series
This series that publishes modern English translations of medieval texts of diverse genres and content that focus on central and southeastern European lands in order to promote and make teaching and research of this region accessible to wider audiences. By making primary sources available and properly contextualized in contemporary academic discourse for use in the classroom and in research for medievalists working in a range of disciplines and linguistic traditions, the series strives to fill an important gap in the cohesive study of medieval European Latinity and related Slavonic traditions of Central and Southeast Europe.