Congratulations to Dr. Elina Gertsman, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, who has been appointed to the Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan Professorship in Catholic Studies II! Professor Gertsman’s work on medieval religious culture has been widely recognized for its excellence; her work on the Dance of Death won the John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America for the best first book in medieval studies, and her second monograph on medieval Shrine Madonnas, shortlisted for the CAA’s Charles Rufus Morey Prize, was the winner of the Medieval Academy’s Karen Gould Prize, awarded for an outstanding monograph in art history. Among her many current projects is the joint venture with Vincent Debiais on theological underpinnings of medieval abstraction.