Professor Gerhild Williams is awarded the 2022 Sixteenth Century Society & Conference Medal.
The SCSC medal is awarded every five years to the member who has done the most to promote and advance the area of early modern studies through scholarship and service to the field. Recipients have demonstrated a long-term commitment to the SCSC and sustained significant contributions to the field through publications, papers, leadership, service, and support of younger scholars. There were two awardees this year. The professional contributions of both awardees have furthered the SCSC in its efforts towards greater interdisciplinarity, geographic breadth, and inclusion.
Gerhild Williams's scholarship, her collaborations on edited volumes, and her leadership of SCSC (prior to Covid, she was the first person to serve as President of SCSC for two years, in 2005 and 2006) have all modeled interdisciplinarity. Over the course of her career, her scholarship has connected with colleagues interested not only in Germanic and comparative literature, but also in the history of science, gender history, history of print, historical theology, and the social history of early modern Europe. She has published extensively in both English and German, reaching a broad international audience. Her books have explored the ways that early modern Europeans engaged with the world around them, especially through print. And her most recent book, 2021's Ottoman Eurasia in Early Modern German Literature, reflects the increasing breadth of SCSC's interests and membership.
