The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) was established in 1981, by the Arizona Board of Regents as a state-wide, tri-university research unit that bridges the intellectual communities at Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Arizona. Located centrally on the campus of Arizona State University, ACMRS is charged with coordinating and stimulating interdisciplinary research about medieval and early modern literature and culture.
History of ACMRS
The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) was established as a statewide research unit in 1981. It is housed centrally on the ASU campus and is charged with stimulating the multi- and interdisciplinary exploration of medieval and Renaissance culture. Its activities cover a period from roughly AD 400, the fall of the Roman Empire, to AD 1700. ACMRS coordinates programs at ASU, NAU, and UA (see Appendix 1 for the current list of affiliates). The tri-university structure of ACMRS was envisioned as an instrument for enhancing cooperation and encouraging the sharing of resources among the three state universities. From 1982 to 1993, ACMRS was directed by Jean R. Brink from the Department of English at ASU. From 1994 to the present, it has been directed by Robert E. Bjork, also from the Department of English at ASU.
1982-87: In establishing ACMRS, ASU employed Professor Fredi Chiappelli, then Director of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, as a consultant. Because he directed an internationally recognized center and had previously served as a visiting professor at the University of Arizona and as a visiting lecturer at Northern Arizona University and was therefore familiar with the Arizona universities, his participation in the founding of the Center was viewed as essential.
The founding document approved by the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) in 1981 indicated that ACMRS was to be funded by a decision package submitted to ABOR by the three universities. Prior to the submission of a decision package, funding was to be provided on an ad hoc basis by ASU. The founding document also included the following provisions: ACMRS was to be located at ASU; a Director with an indefinite term was to be appointed; a Steering Committee composed of three scholars from each university was to be appointed and would serve on a rotating basis; subsequent members of the Steering Committee were to be nominated by the standing Steering Committee and appointed by the Vice President for Academic Affairs at ASU; each university was to contribute one visiting professor per year who was to visit the other two campuses; four Research Assistants (RAs) were to be funded at each university per year to assist faculty members in their research.
Immediately after ACMRS's approval by ABOR, economic recession prevented the three universities from submitting a joint decision package. Funding difficulties after one year caused the RA program to be discontinued as a statewide effort, and the efficiency of a statewide structure was thereafter understandably undercut by lack of a central funding source.
The Steering Committee, which found it difficult to meet three times per year as originally agreed because of funding problems, decided to restructure itself in two ways: 1) the actual Steering Committee was reconstituted to consist of three past presidents of the Steering Committee, one from each university; and 2) an Advisory Board was created to include six members per campus, a total of eighteen scholars. This was the status of ACMRS at the time of its first Sunset Review in 1987.
1987-93: During the next stage in ACMRS history, continued lack of funding made it more and more difficult to maintain a statewide network. Communication by telephone and electronic mail continued to flourish, and some cooperation among faculty continued independently of a formal structure as well as through ACMRS. Local campus operations at the three universities, however, began to perform many of the functions originally envisioned for a statewide Center. Local medieval and Renaissance committees previously established at both NAU and UA played and continue to play important roles in promoting medieval and Renaissance studies at their respective institutions.
At ASU, ACMRS was given regular personnel and operations budgets, covering staff, printing, mailing, and other administrative costs, and was placed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS). CLAS Deans continued to support and fund ACMRS as a clearinghouse for a statewide calendar of events and as a unit coordinating visiting scholars on a statewide basis. The Center Director was put on a fiscal contract, obtained an Assistant Director, a Program Coordinator, two RAs, and a post-doctoral fellow, as well as one visiting distinguished professor to be appointed annually. All ASU affiliate faculty nominate the visiting professor, and these nominations were screened and discussed by local faculty in consultation with department chairs. ASU continued to seek informal advice from scholars at UA and NAU on appointments and visitors. Since both UA and NAU had created local committees, it became clear that this kind of mechanism for establishing priorities was likewise required at ASU. An Advisory Council was established with six faculty from ASU and one each from UA and NAU. A distinguished scholar from outside Arizona--a former visiting professor--was also invited to join the Advisory Council.
Because of a state-wide budgetary crisis and a negative CLAS Strategic Planning Committee report about ACMRS, the Center was asked in the spring of 1993 to cut $53,539 (22%) from its 1993-94 budget and $77,780 (56%) from its 1994-95 budget of $138,893. In response to that request, the Director gave up her summer salary, eliminated the post-doctoral fellowship, further reduced operating expenses, and cut funds for the Visiting Distinguished Professor line in half. In June, 1994, Professor Brink stepped down as Director of ACMRS and returned to full-time teaching in the English Department.
1994-99: In July 1994, Robert E. Bjork was appointed Director of ACMRS. The staff of the Center by that time had been reduced to a full-time Assistant Director, a full-time Program Coordinator, and one half-time RA. Since his appointment, in addition to continuing programs already established such as an ad hoc lecture series, a graduate student travel award to the Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, and a book award for promising undergraduates intending to do post-graduate work in medieval or Renaissance studies, Bjork instituted over twenty programs or initiatives that changed the structure of ACMRS, lent it more national and international prominence, and reinvigorated cooperation among Arizona's three universities. One such early innovation was immediately to reverse a decision made before his appointment that ACMRS would not offer an annual conference, just occasional ones. Faculty and students from all three of Arizona’s universities participate in this conference, delivering papers and chairing sessions, and faculty members from all three universities edit the volumes of essays (published by Brepols in Belgium) that are developed on the conference themes. Another was to create bylaws (Appendix 2) for the unit, which, among other things, changed the term of appointment for the Director from unlimited to up to five years with extensions possible at the discretion of the Dean and University President. The ACMRS Advisory Council was likewise changed and now consists of at least four but no more than six representatives from ASU and at least one, but no more than three, representatives each from NAU and UA. The position for an Advisory Council member from outside Arizona was eliminated. In 1994, three members each from UA and NAU agreed to serve on the board. A new Council, appointed in the fall of 1998, consisted of six members from ASU and three each once more from NAU and UA.
As a result of all the programmatic changes instituted since July 1994, the ACMRS staff grew. The .50 FTE RA position was converted to a full-time Research Coordinator position; four .50 FTE RAs were added to the ACMRS staff during the academic year with an additional eight to ten RAs during the summers; and a full-time Managing Editor and full-time Production Manager were hired to run ACMRS's new, major publishing program, "Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies" (MRTS), acquired from SUNY Binghamton in 1996. In July 1998, the Managing Editor position was reduced to a .50 FTE Associate Editor position with the remaining funds being used to fund a .25 FTE student employee and to increase the salary of the Production Manager. At the time of the 1999 Sunset Review, ACMRS had a well-established annual interdisciplinary, international conference as well as well-established publishing programs, which gave it a much stronger local, national, and international presence than it had had in the past.
1999-2002: ACMRS’s local, regional, national, and international standing continued to rise during this period; new programs and initiatives were put into place; and external and internal funding continued to grow. Grant writing both externally and internally, for example, increased to an average of 16 proposals per year; and manuscript submissions to the MRTS series continued to flow in. ACMRS has never had to solicit a manuscript.
One new program began in the spring of 1999, when Bjork inaugurated the lecture series “Distinguished Lectures in Medieval and Renaissance Studies”; he entered into discussions the same year with the Research Center for Romance Studies (RCRS) at UC Berkeley that eventually led to an agreement for ACMRS to publish two of RCRS’s book series within MRTS; in 2000, he acquired for publication within MRTS the prestigious, projected 50-volume “Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile” series funded by NEH, began the “MRTS Reprints” series (which reprints important scholarly works now out-of-print), and established “Key Works in Germanic Scholarship” (which will focus on major German scholarship on historical linguistics [in English translation]) from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As of 2007, this sub-series has produced no titles.
Also during this period, Bjork continued old and entered into new joint publication ventures in the U.S. and abroad, and in 2002, he established a new book series apart from MRTS entitled “ACMRS Occasional Publications,” which includes books that relate directly or indirectly to the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and Renaissance but are not “mainline” scholarly works. And during this whole period, he made sure that cooperation among units on campus at ASU and among the three Arizona university campuses increased via various ACMRS programs but especially on the state-level through the annual conference, the Cambridge summer program (with faculty and students from all three universities participating), publications (with faculty from all three universities sitting on various editorial boards), and lectures (some supported by all three universities). Outreach programs likewise remained strong and internationally included joint meetings of the ACMRS conference with that of the Medieval Academy of America in 2001 that attracted 367 attendees from 12 countries and with that of the Renaissance Society of America in spring 2002 that attracted approximately 730 attendees world-wide.