From Joelle Rollo Koster

New book dedicated to Shona

Greetings, the new book that Kay Reyerson and I edited, a collection of essays on women and last wills in medieval and early-modern France is out electronically. It is dedicated to Shona. I know that she liked the project, we had discussed it so this is for her. This volume is in an open access format.  You can find more info by following the links below including the address to download the book for free.

http://www.history.ac.uk/news/2012-08-29/new-book-centre-french-history-and-culture-university-st-andrews

http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/3052

all best, Joëlle

From Deborah Deliyannis

It is a strange thing in the modern world to know people primarily through email. That is how I knew Shona, although we did meet twice in person. I oversee the electronic journal "The Medieval Review," and Shona was one of our editors since 2008. All of our business is conducted via email, and there is enough of it that I do feel that I get to know the editors, or at least an electronic version of them. When Shona died, my first impulse was to go back and look at the emails we had recently received from her; of course, they were mainly business, the last one from April 25, absolutely routine. I know that Shona was having a fabulous time in Italy, and that she had established a very regular pattern of work. She was a very active editor, she enthusiastically weighed in on all of our issues and controversies, she was an extremely good editor, and she really did help to keep this particular academic enterprise going.

I met Shona in person at Kalamazoo, and when I was again at the conference last week I was constantly thinking of her - a lovely brunch at one of my favorite restaurants, dancing with her one year at the dance. I wish that I had had more opportunities to know her better.

From Jean-François Nieus, University of Namur

The organisers and all participants of the international conference “Archival Scribes in the Medieval West: Training, Careers, Connections”, held in Namur (Belgium) on 2-4 May 2012, have heard with consternation that their colleague Shona Kelly Wray passed away in Florence two days after the end of their common scientific activity. Shona had given on 3 May a brilliant lecture on “Notarial families and households in 14th-century Bologna”, unanimously welcomed as one of the most interesting papers of the conference. Those who had the privilege to talk further with her during these days will remember a very charming person and an enthusiastic scholar.

The organisers’ condolences go to her family, friends and colleagues. They wholeheartedly hope that it will be possible to publish her ultimate scientific work in the proceedings of the conference, as a memorial tribute.

Paul Bertrand, Xavier Hermand, Jean-François Nieus and Étienne Renard

From Jutta Sperling

I'm incredibly sad to loose such a good friend. Shona has been a warm presence in my life from the day we met -- I still remember how she walked up to me at the American Academy of Rome one day to introduce herself to me, showing me pictures of her children. We stayed in touch over conferences, house visits, and, last not least, through a collection of essays we edited together. Our work relationship was always also a very personal one; she helped me a lot when I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, taking over most of the copy-editing on our book, and offering time to talk. I now wonder whether I ever supported her enough when she went through hard times ... I wish I could have had the chance to tell her how much our friendship meant to me.

Jutta

From Katherine Park

I never met Shona, but I greatly admire her work. I read her book on plague in Bologna with great profit, and I assigned her article, "Boccaccio and the Doctors," in a graduate proseminar on the history of medieval health and medicine that I taught this fall. It was received with great enthusiasm as engaging and original, and I plan to include it in the syllabus of my undergraduate survey the next time I teach it. As one of the members of the Villa I Tatti selection committee, I also had the pleasure of reading the proposal for her new project, on faculty wives and families in 14th-century Bologna. Writing women and families back into the history of the medieval and Renaissance university and of medieval scholarship is extremely very challenging, and only a handful of historians have attempted it, among them Alix Cooper and Gadi Algazi. Shona's work in this area would have been pathbreaking. Intellectually as well as personally, this is a great loss to the field.