The Haskins Society is an international scholarly organization dedicated to the study of Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and early Angevin history and the history of neighboring areas and peoples. Based at Cornell University, which serves as host to annual Haskins conferences in November, the society also organizes and sponsors scholarly sessions at the International Congress of Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan in early May of each year and at the Leeds International Medieval Congress each summer.
As an Affiliated Society of the American Historical Association, the Haskins Society organizes joint Haskins-AHA sessions at AHA annual meetings in early January. The Haskins Society also cooperates closely with the annual Battle Conferences on Anglo-Norman Studies (Battle, Sussex), the North American Conference on British Studies, and the Medieval Academy of America. The Society numbers more the 180 scholars, the majority from the United States and Canada, many from Britain, and others from France, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Australia, and elsewhere.
The Society was organized in May 1982, at a meeting of interested scholars at the International Congress pf Medieval Studies. With the permission of Professor George Haskins of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, it was named in honor of his father, Charles Homer Haskins (1879-1937), a great force in the development of medieval studies in America, whose Renaissance of the Twelfth Century reshaped our conception of high medieval civilization and whose Norman Institutions contributed fundamentally to our understanding of medieval Normandy.
The annual Haskins Society conferences, which convene at Cornell University, have included major addresses by such scholars as Professor Henry Loyn of the University of London; Professor Frank Barlow of the University of Exeter; Dr. David Bates of the University of Wales; Drs. David Dumville and Simon Keynes of the University of Cambridge; Professor R. H. C. Davis of the University of Birmingham and Merton College, Oxford; Professor Andrew W. Lewis, MacArthur Fellow; Sir James Holt, former President of the Royal Historical Society; Professor Olivier Guillot of the Sorbonne; and Professor Giles Constable of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Each Haskins conference includes several long plenary addresses and also a series of about twenty shorter papers scheduled in sequence (never concurrently, so that each conferee can hear every paper.) The sharp focus on the Society’s scholarly interests makes each conference paper potentially interesting to all members of the conference and results in unusually lively discussions.
Haskins Society members at all levels, from senior professors to doctoral candidates to unaffiliated scholars, are cordially invited to propose abstracts of 20-minute papers to the conference director, Professor Paul Hyams of Cornell University, by early June prior to the annual November conference. The Denis Bethell Award is presented to the author of the best short paper presented at the conference. This award honors the beloved Anglo-Norman historian of University College, Dublin, whose untimely death robbed medieval scholarship of one of its best minds and warmest friends. Beginning in 1999 the Thomas Keefe Fund will pay the registration fees of all graduate students presenting papers at the November conference. Tom will be remembered not only as a superb scholar and founding father of our Society, but as a model teacher, who always gave generously of his time and energy to students and junior colleagues alike.
The Society publishes The Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History, its own refereed journal, which is edited by C. P. Lewis and Richard Barton and published by Boydell & Brewer. The Journal includes the paper awarded the Bethell Prize and other papers selected from those presented at the conference and at other society-sponsored sessions. To be eligible for publication in the journal, papers with illustrations may require a subvention to cover the added costs of printing illustrative plates. All members receive a copy of this annual, hardcover volume a year or two after the year when the papers were first presented.
The Haskins Society also publishes a quarterly newsletter, The Anglo-Norman Anonymous, edited by Robert Helmerichs. The newsletter informs members about recent scholarly publications and major research projects under way in America, Britain, and the Continent. It also publishes abstracts of papers presented at Haskins conferences and at Haskins-sponsored sessions elsewhere. Besides receiving The Haskins Society Journal and Anglo-Norman Anonymous, Haskins members are entitled to substantial discounts on books in medieval history published by the Boydell Press; the Hambledon Press, and the University of California Press. Members may also elect to subscribe to the annual publication Anglo-Norman Studies at a special Haskins member discount.