This year’s distinguished cohort of Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America includes Professor Peter Jeffery, Director of Sacred Music at Notre Dame, Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, and the Michael P. Grace Chair in Medieval Studies. A small group of medievalists is elected to this honor each year, to recognize “major long-term scholarly achievement within the field of Medieval Studies.”
The annual induction ceremony takes place at the national meeting, which was in Washington, DC for 2023. The ceremony includes the reading of a citation, and the signing of the Book of Fellows, which has been signed by every Fellow since 1926. Professor’s Jeffery’s citation lauded him for “unmatched linguistic skills” which have aided in his “illumination of the relationship between Eastern and Western liturgical practice from the earliest times.” His scholarship has “contributed to our understanding of Christian-Jewish liturgical encounters, and made major contributions to the histories of medieval Greek, Latin, Egyptian and Ethiopian liturgy.” Among his many published essays, several monographs and an edited volume, there was praise for his book Re-Envisioning Past Musical Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study of Gregorian Chant, which argues convincingly for the incorporation of the techniques of ethnomusicology into research on medieval chant. Colleagues in Sacred Music, the Departments of Music and Theology, in the Medieval Institute and in the Nanovic Institute send warm congratulations to Professor Jeffery for this honor.
Originally published by at sacredmusic.nd.edu on March 13, 2023.