Penn Press Log

Echard Wins the 2009 Labarge Prize for Printing the Middle Ages

The Canadian Society of Medievalists has selected Siân Echard to receive the 2009 Margaret Wade Labarge Prize for her book, Printing the Middle Ages. The prize committee wrote:

Siân Echard has written an admirable work of mature scholarship. Her erudition shines through on every page, but the book is nonetheless very accessible and will reach a broad audience. Echard is especially clear on the twisted partisan and commercial routes by which medieval texts reached us.

Last year's Labarge Prize went to Penn Press author Fiona Griffiths.

Recent Awards for Newman and Ruggles

Penn Press is pleased to share the great news about two recent awards for our authors.

Barbara Newman received the Haskins Medal for 2009 from the Medieval Academy of America for God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages.

D. Fairchild Ruggles won the John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies for Islamic Gardens and Landscapes.

Congratulations to Professor Newman and Professor Ruggles!

Congratulations to Barbara Newman, Distinguished Achievement Award Winner

We recently received the news that Penn Press author Barbara Newman has received one of this year's  Distinguished Achievement Awards from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for her groundbreaking work in medieval history, women's history, and religious studies.

According to www.mellon.org, the Distinguished Achievement Awards are "intended to underscore the decisive contributions the humanities make to the nation’s intellectual life. Amounting to as much as $1.5 million each, the awards honor scholars who have made significant contributions to humanistic inquiry and enable them to teach and do research under especially favorable conditions while enlarging opportunities for scholarship and teaching at the academic institutions with which they are affiliated."

Among Newman's many books are God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages and From Virile Woman to WomanChrist.

Congratulations!

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett in the Forward 50

Today, the Jewish Daily Forward released the Forward 50, the publication's "annual list of 50 machers and shakers in the Jewish world." This year, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett was among the group. Here's a quote from her listing.

"After years of being one of the keenest analysts and supporters of Jewish art, New York University professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett edited the definitive book on what "Jewish" has meant across the gamut of modern art. With essays tracing a plethora of different types of art she interrogates the concept of Jewishness without falling into essentialism. She co-edited the Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times with Jonathan Karp."

Aceh, Indonesia Book Receives Currey Award

Elizabeth F. Drexler has accepted the Association of Third World Studies Cecil B.Currey Book-Length Publications Award for 2007-2008 for her book, Aceh, Indonesia: Securing the Insecure State. This award is named in honor of one of the foremost experts on the war in Vietnam.

Congratulations, Elizabeth!

Griffiths' The Garden of Delights wins Labarge Prize

The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century by Fiona Griffiths has been awarded the Margaret Wade Labarge Prize by the Canadian Society of Medievalists. The Labarge Prize committee wrote:

Fiona Griffiths' book The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century blends forensic codicology, art-historical research, theological investigation, and pure old-fashioned archival detective work in the first book-length study of the Hortus deliciarum, a twelfth-century illustrated manuscript anthology of Latin theological and scholarly works intended for the ongoing education of the Alsatian community of Augustinian canonnesses in which it was produced.

Robin Chapman Stacey wins ACIS Prize

The American Conference for Irish Studies presented Robin Chapman Stacey with the James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for Books on History and Social Sciences for his Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland. Stacey accepted the prize at this year's ACIS national conference held at  St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa.

Blaszczyk Receives BHC Award

Regina Lee Blaszczyk, editor of Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers, received the Harold F. Williamson Prize from the Business History Conference. The award, which honors mid-career scholars who have "made significant contributions to the teaching and writing of business history," was presented to Blaszczyk at this year's BHC meeting in Sacramento, California.

Medieval Academy Prize Goes to Sara Poor

Sara S. Poor's Mechthild of Magdeburg and Her Book: Gender and the Making of Textual Authority has received another award. The Medieval Academy selected this study of a thirteenth-century mystic as cowinner of the 2008 John Nicholas Brown Prize for the best first book in Medieval Studies.

Poor is the third Penn Press author to win this Medieval Academy prize. She is preceded by Iain Macleod Higgins, author of Writing East: The "Travels" of Sir John Mandeville, and Robin Chapman Stacey, author of  The Road to Judgment: From Custom to Court in Medieval Ireland and Wales.

Judith S. Schwartz Receives NCECA Honors Award

Judith S. Schwartz, author of the forthcoming Penn Press release Confrontational Ceramics, recently received an Honors Award from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA). The award was presented to Schwartz at the NCECA's annual conference in March.

Schwartz, curator of the touring exhibitions Confrontational Clay and Confrontational Clay Part 2, teaches at New York University and is President of the newly established Museum of Ceramic Art.