peace love & the middle ages
by Cord J. Whitaker I am trying to order my thoughts today. They have been disordered by the specter of global war in a world where democracy is dying in the face of fascism, where a pandemic continues to bring humanity to its knees, and where my beloved cat has died. To carry on with everyday normalcy is a bit of a struggle. In the past, during times difficult for the world and for myself, I have…
By the Issue Editors: François-Xavier Fauvelle, Collège de France Nahir Otaño Gracia, University of New Mexico Cord J. Whitaker, Wellesley College For far too long, scholarly consensus held that race and racism were mainly Enlightenment innovations, datable to no earlier than the seventeenth century. As long ago as the early twentieth century, some scholars pushed race’s origins to the sixteenth…
by Geraldine Heng The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being…. There will always be one more thing [to explain]. — Toni Morrison, in her tribute to Chinua Achebe, 2008 An extraordinary thing happened in the field of critical race studies this fall. A 46-page book review of…
by the ITM team As members of ITM, we stand in unshakable support of the Black Lives Matter movement and the urgent demands for social justice in our present. In that spirit, we ask all of our readers to read and share this statement by Medievalists of Color in support of the uprisings that have followed the murders of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and other victims of police…
Over the past month, the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en Nation have opposed the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on their unceded lands. Protectors have organized mass demonstrations and have blockaded ports and railways in an effort to ensure that government officials respect their rig ht to dictate whether or not the pipeline can be built on their lands. They have faced severe…
A Guest Post by Abby Ang Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE The author buying bao at the Farmers' Market Every Saturday morning in summer 2019, from 8 AM-12:30 PM, I sat twenty feet away from white supremacists selling vegetables. As the founder and lead organizer of No Space for Hate (NSFH) , an organization that seeks to counter white supremacist recruitment and organizing in the…
A Guest Post by Nahir I. Otaño Gracia Last time I wrote a public piece, I wrote about borders : the borders of my new home state, how I see borders in my research, and how we can dismantle borders. Now I would like to talk about other borders, the borders of our field. On September 19, 2017, when we felt the first winds of Hurricane Maria, I was a day shy of turning 37 weeks pregnant. My daughter…
by J J Cohen The following is the draft from a short piece Ayanna Thompson and I composed for an upcoming issue of postmedieval on Confessions. Her section of the short essay explores her nontraditional training as an early modernist and you'll have to wait for publication day to read it. My section relays the genesis of #RaceB4Race (tm) and appears below. (Notice that we had to trademark it:…
Please take a moment to read "B lacKKKShakespearean: A Call to Action for Medieval and Early Modern Studies " by Kimberly Anne Coles, Kim F. Hall, and Ayanna Thompson in the latest issue of MLA Profession. A key excerpt: Currently, overwhelmingly: White teachers teach the works of pre- and early modern periods. White scholars cite each other’s work. White directors direct the works. White…
by Helen Young and Kevin Caliendo Normal 0 false false false EN-AU X-NONE X-NONE In the past few weeks, a blog post by Professor Howard M.R. Williams has been described as reasonable in many social media feeds. The post is in many ways unoriginal and uninteresting – the internet (including the medieval studies corner of it) is already littered with examples of white liberal racism masquerading as…
If you have been following the hashtags #ASS #ISAS #medievaltwitter #Shakerace and more on social media you know the disheartening struggles that continue to unfold in the field ... as well as some of the profoundly good interventions well underway. The latter center around the foregrounding and amplification of the voices of scholars of color, especially early career. In the aftermath of the…
(From the ongoing project Noah's Arkive: Towards an Ecology of Refuge, by Jeffrey Cohen and Julian Yates) This story is about waywardness, about being peripheral to the story and making the best of it, finding yourself unable or unwilling to participate in expected conclusions. A satisfying ending is built upon the casting away as jetsam the alternatives, the tales full of challenge that cannot…
Peasants are the Real Victims of Game of Thrones’ final episodes, and in the real world, so are we . By Cord J. Whitaker In Game of Thrones , as the Mother of Dragons soars above and burns everything in sight, the huddled, pleading peasantry sets the scene for a showdown between Jon Snow’s ethics and Daenerys’ desire for vengeance. But the battle is really between a convenient plot device and…
For your calendar, an event sponsored by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Folger Shakespeare Library . Following upon the inaugural Race Before Race [ # RaceB4Race ] event, a collaboration of medievalists and early modernists held at Arizona State University in January 2019, this conference will foreground the relationship between race and historical periodization.…
a guest post by Sierra Lomuto Along with mainstream white America, Medieval Studies has undergone a racial awakening over the last few years, as the Trump presidency has emboldened and even sanctioned a rise in openly avowed white nationalism. The recent massacre against a Muslim community in Christchurch, New Zealand— Ōtautahi, Aotearoa —is the latest devastating example of white terrorism, where…
by the ITM bloggers Today seems a good day to remind our readers of the In the Middle statement of values, which we re-publish in various forms as the times demand. ITM is a feminist, anti-racist, queer affirmative, refuge making space. We repudiate white supremacist dreams of both the Middle Ages and contemporary nations. We foster visions of the past and future that privilege diversity,…
by LeVostre GC Goode Friendes and Readers of Yn The Middel and readeres and scolers and teacheres and studentes arounde the globe of the Erthe, this is Galfridus ‘Le Vostre GC’ Chaucer of twytter (@LeVostreGC): Yt doth fill my litel herte wyth gret happinesse to invyte yow to the sixthe (VIthe) yeare of a moost blisful and plesinge celebracioun. On the first daye of Aprille, 2019, lat us make tyme…
by J J Cohen and Julian Yates Feb 3-4 2019 Because we are building an ark, we traveled to Arizona for the the third of our site visits, Biosphere 2 and Arcosanti (for parts 1 and 2 follow the links) . One of us was already on the ground, in the neighborhood, if you like, the other arrived to join him. Biosphere 2 (AZ) If there were a governing topos for Biosphere 2 it might be “hold it.” This was…
by J J Cohen “Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before. Indeed, cleverness is shunned at home and abroad. What does reading offer to pupils except tears?” “They attend classes but make no effort to learn anything….The expense money which they have from their parents or churches they spend in taverns, conviviality, games and other superfluities.” These quotations are not, as you…
by J J Cohen and Julian Yates Hello friends. For your in between the holidays entertainment, here's an excerpt from the "Stowaways" chapter of the Noah's ark book that we are writing. Let us know if you have any thoughts. The section below is a brief piece of the theoretical apparatus followed by a reading of Kim Stanley Robinson's wonderful and disturbing novel Aurora . Uninvited We have…
Guest Post by Kate Koppelman Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, September 27 th . The day before her testimony was the first day of my Fall quarter class on Chaucer. I hadn’t taught this class for 4 years and the world had drastically changed since. I had spent the summer reading through what seemed like miles and miles of incredible scholarship both…
Please join ACMRS and #ASUHumanities for the relaunch of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies , a symposium on Race Before Race . Bringing together medieval and early modern race scholars who are seeking to push their fields in new archival, theoretical and practical directions. Featured panelists: Patricia Akhimie , Rutgers University - Newark David Sterling Brown , Binghamton…
by Julian Yates and Jeffrey J Cohen Because we are building an ark, we traveled to Williamstown, Kentucky, to visit Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter, the second of our site visits. We began this project, just after Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States, with a visit to God’s Ark of Safety in Frostburg, Maryland . There we chanced to meet Pastor Spence, caretaker of an ark paused in the…
We are very pleased to share this timely CFP (on behalf of Dr. Tarrell Campbell at Saint Louis University). Please circulate widely! CALL FOR PAPERS “Celebrating Belle da Costa Greene: An Examination of Medievalists of Color within the Field” ( November 30-December 2, 2018, Saint Louis University) The African American Studies Program at Saint Louis University invites paper and panel proposals for…
by J J Cohen So who would *not* want to submit an inventive panel for a convivial conference that features four amazing women speakers as its plenarists, three of whom are scholar/artists of color? Add to that a timely topic and a welcoming atmosphere and you have "Paradise on Fire" at UC Davis in June 2019, the Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment…