Professor Stephanie Batkie Wins Medieval Academy of America Award
January 15, 2025
The Medieval Academy of America has announced that Sewanee Teaching Professor of English
Stephanie Batkie received the association’s Robert L. Kindrick-CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies. Presented annually since 2002, the award recognizes individuals who have developed, promoted, and administered medieval studies programming, curricula, and research—work that often goes unrecognized by the profession at large.
A member of the English Department since 2017, Batkie has taught courses in writing instruction and pedagogy, classical literature in translation, medieval and early modern literature, and contemporary critical theory. Her scholarly work focuses on the late medieval period, and she has published on literature written in Middle English, Medieval Latin, and Anglo-Norman. At Sewanee, Batkie also serves as the director of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program and director of the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium.
Batkie was nominated for the Kindrick-CARA prize by her peers in the medieval studies field. In their letter to support her nomination, they noted her work with the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium as an essential contribution to their field of study. “Over the course of the last decade, Professor Batkie has profoundly shaped the intellectual culture of medieval studies through the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium,” they wrote. “Through this work, Professor Batkie has cultivated a space of remarkable generosity, conviviality, and intellectual rigor.”
The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium is an interdisciplinary gathering of scholars from across the field of medieval studies. In February, the colloquium will mark its 50th edition—its jubilee year—with a focus on celebration, exaltation, feasting, and festivals. As established scholars and new voices in the field congregate, the colloquium will consider how a marker like this represents a half century of change in the field, while also looking ahead to where it might go next.
