Two faculty members in Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences — Charles Atkinson and Leslie Lockett — have been honored with prestigious awards this month by the Medieval Academy of America, the world’s oldest and largest organization of medievalists.

The Haskins Medal is awarded annually by the Medieval Academy of America for a distinguished book, published within the last five years, in the field of medieval studies. First presented in 1940, the award honors Charles Homer Haskins, the noted medieval historian, who was a founder of the Medieval Academy and its second president.

Leslie Lockett, associate professor, English, was awarded the John Nicholas Brown Prize for her book, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (University of Toronto Press, 2011), which develops an original, lucid and compelling argument about how an extraordinarily wide range of Anglo-Saxon texts represents the human mind. Lockett specializes in Old English language and literature, medieval Latin, manuscript studies and early medieval intellectual history.

The John Nicholas Brown Prize, established by the Medieval Academy of America in 1978, is awarded annually for a first book or monograph on a medieval subject judged by the selection committee to be of outstanding quality. Brown was one of the founders of the Medieval Academy and for 50 years served as its treasurer.

“The fact that faculty members from Ohio State won two of the academy's three major publication awards is very special indeed,” Atkinson said. “As you can imagine, all of us from Ohio State who were at the meeting were on Cloud 9!

“As I’ve said before, if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a university to train and sustain a scholar,” he added. “Ohio State has fulfilled both of those roles for me. I couldn’t have wished for a more intellectually stimulating and supportive place to work. Hence, this award should be credited to the university as a whole, and not just to me.”

The awards were announced at the academy’s annual convention. The Medieval Academy of America supports research and teaching in medieval records, literature, languages, arts, archaeology, history, philosophy, science, life and other aspects of medieval civilization.