Call for Executive Director and institutional host for the NCS

The New Chaucer Society (NCS), an international scholarly organization for teachers and scholars of Geoffrey Chaucer and his age, seeks an Executive Director and an institutional home, to begin in or around June 2026. This follows a successful period during which the Society has been housed at the University of Iceland under the stewardship of Professor Sif Ríkharðsdóttir.

The Executive Director (ED) is responsible for the administrative and financial affairs of the Society. Duties include: recommending and handling membership dues; taking a leadership and liaison role in the organization of biennial international congresses; coordinating with the Chaucer Bibliographer; and liaising with the editorial teams of Studies in the Age of Chaucer and New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy & Profession. The ED acts as Secretary and Treasurer of the Society; serves as Returning Officer for all elections; maintains the website; and supervises student assistant/s and any other staff. The term is expected to extend across four years, beginning upon the completion of a biennial congress and continuing through the two subsequent biennial congresses, renewable at the discretion of the Trustees.

Ideally, the institutional home will support the Society by providing office space, office expenses and staff help (which might, for example, include student assistantships or administrative support, either on-site or remote), and research and travel funds for the ED. Major responsibilities of the office will include overseeing the NCS website, processing dues, editing the semi-annual newsletter, managing the Society’s budget, communicating with the membership, and administrative support of the Biennial Congress Program Committee and Local Organizing Committee.

All initial inquiries should be sent to Professor Candace Barrington, President of the Society and Chair of the Search Committee (BarringtonC@ccsu.edu), who will offer advice on the details that will be required for a formal bid. Individuals and institutions are also encouraged to consult with the current ED, Professor Ríkharðsdóttir, for help in shaping bids (sifr@hi.is). Completed applications should be sent via email to the President. They will be reviewed beginning 30 September 2025, continuing until a new ED and home are found.
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With all best wishes,
Sif Ríkharðsdóttir Executive Director

We are sad to convey the news of the passing of our colleague Vincent Gillespie. Marion Turner and DanWakelin have written a tribute that they have kindly allowed us to circulate to members in honour of Professor Gillespie’s life and scholarship. The tribute can be found on the English Faculty website (Professor Vincent Gillespie, FBA (11 February 1954–13 March 2025) | Faculty of English) at the University of Oxford, where he was J. R. R. Tolkien Professor until his retirement.

Mary-Jo Arn (28 March 1942 - 14 December 2024)

Mary-Jo Arn was a person of inspiringly coherent practice in life and scholarship: both were conducted to exacting standards of clarity, candor and loyalty. For all her daunting standards, however, Mary-Jo was also blessed with a ready and generous wit. To work with her was simultaneously demanding in all the right ways, and great, invigorating fun. During a period of diminished health from which she was recovering by dint of determined discipline, Mary-Jo was tragically struck by a car as she walked to her local library December 14, 2024.

Mary-Jo held positions as tenured Professor in Groningen NL (1980-1987), and at Bloomsburg University PA (1991-1999); between 2000-2012 she worked at the Medieval Academy of America as associate editor and reviews editor for Speculum. She held positions as Visiting Scholar and then Fellow at Harvard University in, respectively, 1998-2000 and 2019. As a scholar,  Mary-Jo was indisputably the doyenne of Charles d’Orléans studies. She edited two collected volumes on Charles (2000 and 2020), and published two books on his poetry: an edition of the entire corpus (Mary-Jo’s magnificent magnum opus), Fortunes Stabilnes: Charles of Orleans's English Book of Love (1995), and a detailed, illuminating codicological study of BnF MS. f. fr. 25458, the manuscript containing Charles’ poetry (2008). Thanks to this focused scholarship, Charles is deservedly known as a great lyric poet; thanks to the generosity of the collaborative volumes, Charles is deservedly well known as a great lyric poet.

In the last seven years of her life, Mary-Jo was an indispensable and indefatigable co-worker on the The Oxford Chaucer. One of the editors reported on what a tonic it was to work with her, and to experience her “learning, dedication, optimism and, yes, her directness.” He went on: “I loved how she’d tell you just what she thought when she thought it, even if it involved saying: ‘I think you’ve got that completely wrong’”!

Mary-Jo Arn will be remembered and admired as a devoted and accomplished scholar committed to the highest standards of scholarly rigor. She will also be remembered as an extraordinary, delightful and loyal person.

James Simpson, Harvard University

Jenna Mead, University of Melbourne

In Memoriam Dolores Warwick Frese (April 9,1936–May 30, 2024). Professor of English and Fellow of the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame, Dolores was a courageous trailblazer for women’s rights in the academy and honored as such in 2009 by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship and the Institute of Women Today. Her monographic study, An Ars Legendi for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1991), was awarded the Hans Rosenhaupt Prize by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation for distinguished scholarship in the humanities. She co-edited two essay collections: Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Essays in Appreciation (with Lewis E. Nicholson) and The Book and the Body (with Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe). Her essays appeared in such journals as The Chaucer Review, Mediaevalia, Philological Quarterly, and Studies in the Age of Chaucer. She received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. A member of the famous Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, Dolores was also a novelist and poet. In addition to her teaching at Notre Dame, she held invited Visiting Professorships at the University of California—Berkeley and at the University of Northern Michigan. The Medieval Institute at Notre Dame hosted a symposium in her honor in 2014, when there were also sessions honoring her at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. Her devoted husband and three sons mourn her passing, as do her friends, colleagues, and many students. Vale atque vale.

It is with great sadness that we convey the news of the passing away of a colleague and Chaucerian scholar Dr Jenni Nuttall, Lecturer in English at Exeter College, University of Oxford. She published, among many other things, A Readers’ Guide to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (2012) that many of us will have used in our teachings. Please find below a few words written in memoriam by her colleagues:

https://english.web.ox.ac.uk/article/dr-jenni-nuttall

Our thoughts are with her family and friends.

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David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania 

We thank you in advance,

Richard Newhauser and Elizabeth Scala

If you would like to donate to the Edith Rickert Fund, you can access its donation page by clicking this link.