REMINDER: Michael Camille Essay Prize Deadline: June 30th

Figure 1. Michael Camille in Paris avec the Chimera of Notre Dame [photo taken by Stuart Michaels]

by EILEEN JOY

Just a reminder that the deadline for the first Biennial Michael Camille Essay Prize, jointly sponsored by postmedieval, Palgrave Macmillan, and the BABEL Working Group, is looming: JUNE 30th. To recap:

The competition is open to early career researchers: those currently in M.A./Ph.D. programs or within 5 years of having received the Ph.D. (that will include those graduating in 2007 or later). Essays in all disciplines are encouraged. The prize is for the best short essay (4,000-6,000 words), the 2012 thee for which, inspired by Camille’s last book on the gargoyles of Notre Dame, is: Medievalism and the Monsters of Modernity (conceptualized and imagined in any way the author sees fit). The award for 2012 will include: publication in postmedieval, 250 dollars, and one year’s free print and online subscription to the journal.

The prize is named after Michael Camille (1958-2002), the brilliant art historian whose work on medieval art exemplified playfulness, a felicitous interdisciplinary reach, a restless imagination, and a passion to bring the medieval and modern into vibrant, dialogic encounter. In addition, we wish to honor Camille for his attention to the fringes of medieval society, to the liminal, excluded, ‘subjugated rabble,’ and disenfranchised, and to the socially subversive powers of medieval artists who worked on and in the margins. The prize is also named after Camille because his work was often invested in exploring ‘the prism of modernity through which the Middle Ages is constructed’ and because, as his colleague at the University of Chicago Linda Seidel said shortly after his death, he had ‘a mind like shooting stars.’

Submissions will be judged by a panel of scholars selected from postmedieval’s Editorial Board, and the winner will be announced at the 2nd Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group, to be held September 20-22, 2012 at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. Please send submissions (as a Word document, formatted according to Chicago Manual, author-date format with endnotes + list of references at end) to the editors, Eileen Joy and Myra Seaman, at postmedievaljournal@gmail.com.