Rita Copeland Wins 2025 Haskins Medal

Rita Copeland, Sheli Z. and Burton X. Rosenberg Professor, has won the 2025 Haskins Medal for her book Emotion and the History of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. The medal is the most prestigious distinction offered by the Medieval Academy of America (MAA) and is awarded on an annual basis.
 
MAA praised Copeland’s book as “a deeply learned and exquisitely comprehensive account of the history and uses of rhetoric” during the Middle Ages. The academy further applauded her “nuanced sophisticated thesis” and mastery of her subject.
 
Copeland has expertise across numerous fields and periods, including Medieval literature and both the history of rhetoric and literacy from ancient to early modern. She has been with Penn’s Classical Studies department for more than 20 years, later with a joint appointment in the English department.
 
The Haskins Medal is typically awarded to scholars well-established in their careers and respected for their scholarship. First given out in 1940, it is named for Medieval historian Charles Homer Haskins, who served as an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson in addition to founding—and later leading—MAA. His son, George Lee Haskins, eventually served as the Algernon Sydney Biddle Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.