CONGRESS CANCELED Historiographical Examination of Misogyny, Non-Heteronormativity, and Racism in Medieval Scholarship

Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University

Description

While recent attention has been drawn to the explicitly white supremacist foundations of medieval studies as a discipline, the widespread belief that the medieval past was a monochromatic one, and the contemporary weaponization of medieval iconography by the alt-right, less attention has been explicitly paid to the way that bias, conscious and unconscious, makes its way into medieval studies scholarship. From Tolkien's claim that Ethiopians were like the inhabitants of hell and were a "diabolic folk" in 1932, to Norman Cantor's claim in 1963 that homosexuality was a "wasting spiritual disease in the individual" that led to the end of civilizations, to Nicholas Reynolds' 1988 description of rape as "rough justice to naughty ladies," to the description of Bella Millett as "young and mini-skirted" in the preface to her fetschrift in 2009, clearly no period in the discipline is exempt or innocent. This session seeks submissions that explicitly engage with scholarly writing in the discipline that reflect misogyny, non-heteronormativity, racism/white supremacy, and other forms of exclusion. We do so in order to discuss the unexamined and pervasive biases that both shape the foundations and current contours of our field; to understand how the culture of the field systematically excludes students and scholars by creating a hostile environment; and to envision alternative vocabularies and paths forward to a more inclusive, rather than a simply diverse, medieval studies that is ethically committed to a more just past and present. Shyama Rajendran

 
May 7th, 1:30 PM

CONGRESS CANCELED Historiographical Examination of Misogyny, Non-Heteronormativity, and Racism in Medieval Scholarship

Fetzer 2016

While recent attention has been drawn to the explicitly white supremacist foundations of medieval studies as a discipline, the widespread belief that the medieval past was a monochromatic one, and the contemporary weaponization of medieval iconography by the alt-right, less attention has been explicitly paid to the way that bias, conscious and unconscious, makes its way into medieval studies scholarship. From Tolkien's claim that Ethiopians were like the inhabitants of hell and were a "diabolic folk" in 1932, to Norman Cantor's claim in 1963 that homosexuality was a "wasting spiritual disease in the individual" that led to the end of civilizations, to Nicholas Reynolds' 1988 description of rape as "rough justice to naughty ladies," to the description of Bella Millett as "young and mini-skirted" in the preface to her fetschrift in 2009, clearly no period in the discipline is exempt or innocent. This session seeks submissions that explicitly engage with scholarly writing in the discipline that reflect misogyny, non-heteronormativity, racism/white supremacy, and other forms of exclusion. We do so in order to discuss the unexamined and pervasive biases that both shape the foundations and current contours of our field; to understand how the culture of the field systematically excludes students and scholars by creating a hostile environment; and to envision alternative vocabularies and paths forward to a more inclusive, rather than a simply diverse, medieval studies that is ethically committed to a more just past and present. Shyama Rajendran