PhD Candidate Katie Menendez has recently won the Paul E. Szarmach First Article Prize from the Richard Rawlinson Centre at Western Michigan University for her article “Gregory the Great as Intermediary Figure Between East and West: The Eleventh-Century Manuscript Context of the Old English Dialogues,” published in Viator 51 (2020).
The prize is awarded annually to the author of a first article on the culture and history of early medieval England that is judged to be of outstanding quality by the selection committee. Katie’s article argues that two eleventh-century manuscripts of the Old English Dialogues made Gregory the Great into a teacher of eastern asceticism through an association between the Dialogues and other ascetic texts understood as eastern. Doing so gave the eastern texts an unimpeachable lineage that ran through Gregory and Benedict of Nursia, and as a consequence subtly altered the use of the translatio studii such that in these manuscripts it provides justification for past texts as well as present ones.
Next year, Katie will begin a three-year teaching position as Faculty Fellow in the Humanities in the Foundation Year Program at King’s College in Halifax.
Congratulations Katie!