Thursday, May 22, 2008

Five Graduate Students Win 2008 Schallek Awards

The Richard III Society, American Branch, has been supporting graduate study into later medieval English history and culture since 1980. Since becoming fully funded by the generous $1.4 million bequest from the estate of co-founder Maryloo Spooner Schallek, the award is now administered on our behalf by the Medieval Academy of America. Five students were chosen to receive $2,000 awards to help fund their dissertation research:

  • Sonja Drimmer, The Visual Language of Vernacular Manuscript Illumination: John Gower's Confessio amantis (Pierpont Morgan MS M126)
  • Donna E. Hobbs, Telling Tales out of School: Schoolbooks, Audiences, and the Production of Vernacular Literature in Late Medieval England
  • Mollie M. Madden, The Black Prince at War: Late Medieval Military Logistics
  • Rosemary O'Neill, Accounting for Salvation in Middle English Literature
  • Matthew Sergi, Recreation and Festival in Chester's Pageants, 1400-1577

In addition to these five awards, a $30,000 Schallek Dissertation Fellowship is awarded in the fall. This award essentially frees an advanced graduate student from the need to teach or hold other employment in order to concentrate on research.

The Schallek scholarship program, named by founders and principal contributors William B. and Maryloo Spooner Schallek, supports scholarship that deepens and enriches our understanding of the history and culture of later medieval England and, thus, Richard III and his contemporaries, and strengthens the American Branch's ties to the medieval studies community. A list of award recipients from the program's inception to its move to the Medieval Academy of American can be found at http://www.r3.org/edu.html#schallek . This list will be updated with the Medieval Academy-awarded recipients in the near future.

For grant guidelines, see http://www.medievalacademy.org/grants/gradstudent_grants_schallek.htm