From the Editor

One of my greatest pleasures as La corónica's editor-in-chief is notifying the winners of our two prizes: the John K. Walsh Award for the outstanding article published each year, and the La corónica International Book Award, which recognizes excellence in a major study on any aspect of medieval Hispanic languages, literatures and cultures. The list of winners for both prizes can be found in our Web site; the list of John K. Walsh recipients also appears in each Spring issue of La corónica, and the list of International Book Award winners in the Fall issue. These lists are meant to further recognize our colleagues' accomplishments, but they also reflect the vitality of the profession and act as a roadmap of the debates that shape our discipline.

At every MLA convention in January, La corónica announces the John K. Walsh Award at a cash-bar reception where we applaud the winner's accomplishments while meeting old and new colleagues in a festive atmosphere. I hope you can join us there.

The jurors for the La corónica International Book Award are now hard at work reading this year's entries; the 2012 winner will be announced at the 47th International Congress of Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo (May 10-13, 2012). Recognition with the International Book Award extends over two years, with the announcement of the honor one year and a special session at the Congress of Medieval Studies the next, sponsored by La corónica, to which the winner is invited as Respondent of Honor. In May 2012, the special session will pay tribute to 2011 winner Folke Gernert's Parodia y "contrafacta" en la literatura románica medieval y renacentista: Historia, teoría y textos, a superb study on the parodic rewriting of religious discourse in the Spanish, French and Italian tradition with a second volume devoted to the corpus of text, with many works that have never been edited. I invite you to join us at the Saturday morning's plenary lecture and later that evening at the IMANA (Ibero-Medieval Association of North America) banquet to meet both the 2012 and 2011 winners, and honor two scholars who have contributed so much to the profession.

It is not too early to start thinking about the 2013 Book Award competition. We now invite submission of entries and remind you that authors, their publishers, their academic institutions, or their colleagues may nominate a work by sending three copies of the book and a cover letter requesting consideration to Mark Johnston, Book Review Editor. Consult the La corónica Web site for rules and deadlines.

Another enjoyable task for this editor is celebrating in these pages our colleagues' distinctions received all over the world. Last November, the eminent professor of medieval studies John Dagenais received the Premi J. M. Batista i Roca 2011 awarded by the Institut de Projecció Exterior de la Cultura Catalana in Barcelona to "personalitats de l'ambit dels països catalans residents a Europa i Amèrica, que s'han distingit per la seva tasca de projecció exterior de la llengua, cultura i identitat nacional catalana". On behalf of the senior editorial board of La corónica, I extend our warmest congratulations to Prof. Dagenais.

La corónica continues to adapt to new technologies and social media. The blog on our Web site (<http://www.lacoronica.org>) offers members of the Hispanomedievalist community a way of continuing discussions begun in professional meetings and engaging in additional discussions concerning current events relevant to our field (click on the blog tab on our Web site). We have a presence on Facebook, and our Twitter account offers updates on conferences, seminars and diverse topics of interest to the profession. We welcome your contributions and encourage you to take advantage of these online services to share your interests and concerns.

The senior editorial team joins me in expressing our gratitude to Dean Jacqueline Fetrow and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages Byron Wells at Wake Forest University. We also thank Dean Danny Anderson, Associate Dean Ann Cudd of the College of Liberal Arts...