One of our team members, Dr. Frank Brandsma, has been awarded the competitive and prestigious James Randall Leader prize by the International Arthurian Society’s North American Branch for 2019, ex aequo with Don Hoffman. The annual award recognizes the academic excellence of an author of the best article to appear on an Arthurian subject in the previous year.
The article, published in the journal Arthuriana 29.4 (2019), is titled “‘Al was hi sward, wat scaetde dat?’ Emotions and courtly cultural exchange in the Roman van Moriaen”. Brandsma points out that there is no word for ‘race’ in Middle Dutch and that ‘Dutch Arthurian research has not (yet) taken a postcolonial “turn”.’ He demonstrates that a noble black knight can be accepted by Middle Dutch courtly heroes, as well as by modern readers, and that this acceptance is enabled by emotional affect, which encourages the audience to sympathize with the protagonist, Moriaen.
It can be accessed online on Project MUSE: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/745569.