{"id":7374,"date":"2017-09-20T08:33:50","date_gmt":"2017-09-20T14:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=7374"},"modified":"2017-09-20T08:33:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T14:33:50","slug":"update-academia-medieval-studies-feud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/09\/update-academia-medieval-studies-feud.html","title":{"rendered":"Update on Academia: a Medieval Studies feud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"V0050236<\/p>\n

From Inside Higher Ed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

No one \u2014 besides fellow racists, perhaps \u2014 is pleased that white supremacists have been using imagery from the Middle Ages to further their cause. However, as two professors disagreed about what was to be done about that trend, the dispute was laid out for the public to see, resulting in calls for civility from medieval studies organizations, and Facebook posts tagging far-right personality Milo Yiannopoulos.<\/p>\n

Dorothy Kim, an assistant professor of English at Vassar College, called on fellow professors who teach about the medieval period to overtly condemn white supremacy in their classrooms. Kim, who is Asian, wrote in a blog post for medieval studies blog In the Middle that unless white supremacy was explicitly condemned by the overwhelmingly white population of professors who teach on the subject, it would continue to be used by white supremacists, especially those who are young and college aged.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms?\u201d she wrote. \u201cBecause you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in fact, ideological arms dealers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNeutrality is not optional.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n

Rachel Fulton Brown, an associate professor at the University of Chicago, doesn\u2019t deny that white supremacists use medieval imagery in their protests or in attempts to invoke a mythical, purely white medieval Europe. However, she disagreed with Kim\u2019s assertion that white professors needed to do more to call out white supremacy in the classroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cRichard Spencer and company that are making arguments bringing back a particular vision of Europe, they\u2019re bringing back a fantasy that is their own making, and [that is] instantly punctured if you actually study the history of the Middle Ages,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are creating a fear that is unnecessary.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article continues by describing a feud between the two scholars and their defenders. \u00a0Fulton Brown is labelled as \u201cracially insensitive\u201d; Fulton Brown claims, in a blog post of her own<\/a>, that Kim has called her a \u201cwhite supremacist.\u201d \u00a0In Kim\u2019s own article<\/a>, on the progressive Medievalists site In the Middle, she writes,<\/p>\n

You really have no excuse to address whether your medieval studies is a white supremacist medieval studies or not. You also do not have a choice in whether you are part of this debate because the debate is already prevalent and public. Our students are watching and will make judgements and calls on what side you are really on. I suggest overt signaling of how you are not a white supremacist and how your medieval studies is one that does not uphold white supremacy. Neutrality is not optional.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this all pretty much sounds like a mess.<\/p>\n

Yes, if\u00a0white supremacists look back longingly at the Middle Ages as a time when Europeans were \u201cpure white\u201d, well, that\u2019s a bad thing \u2014 though a bit odd, too; it\u2019s not as if Medieval culture hit great heights due to its whiteness, so I\u2019m not sure exactly what they\u2019re taking pride in. \u00a0Frankly, though, I don\u2019t see that it does a lot of good to structure one\u2019s medieval history class as one that emphasizes \u00a0(and prioritizes class instructional time) on interactions (trade, scholarly connections, diplomacy) between the \u201cwhite\u201d ethnic groups of Europe and nonwhites, e.g., Arabs from the Islamic Empire, the Chinese of the Silk Route, and so on; it certainly seems to emphasize and reinforce the modern color-lens which differentiates between white people and \u201cof color\u201d people (or, apparently, BIPOC, the new acronym, for \u201cblack, indigenous, and people of color\u201d, which the In the Middle blog uses); even if your objective is to promote the notion that the BIPOCs are part of the \u201cmedieval story.\u201d \u00a0In fact, in Fulton Brown\u2019s own blog post<\/a>, she emphasizes that Christians of the time were perfectly comfortable with the idea that Mary was dark-skinned, pointing to examples in writing and in art, and that the main organizing element of their worldview was not skin color but religion:<\/p>\n

Medieval European Christianity was focused not on Europe, but on Christendom \u2013 and the center of Christendom was not in Europe, but in Asia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But this is where I get helicoptery. \u00a0After all, we are, in the end, not just talking about scholarly debates, but about students in classrooms, students who, for all that they are, strictly speaking, adults, really don\u2019t have enough experience with the wider world to just roll their eyes, and take things with a grain of salt. \u00a0I am, in fact, the mother of a child who will be in a college classroom next year, a child who is more likely than the average kid to struggle to brush off teachers who bring politics into the classroom, and this concerns me considerably \u2014 politicized classrooms, a quad full of protesters, mandatory sessions on anti-racism (\u201cwhite men are all racists\u201d) and anti-sexism (\u201cwhite men are all rapists\u201d) are a recipe for wasted tuition, if he can\u2019t cope with all of this.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0V0050236 A fist-fight between Lord Brougham and Lord Melbourne as Pea
\nCredit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
\nimages@wellcome.ac.uk
\nhttp:\/\/wellcomeimages.org
\nA fist-fight between Lord Brougham and Lord Melbourne as Peachum and Lockit. Coloured lithograph by H.B. (John Doyle), 1837.
\n1837 By: John DoylePublished: 22 October 1836
\nCopyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Inside Higher Ed: No one \u2014 besides fellow racists, perhaps \u2014 is pleased that white supremacists have been using imagery from the Middle Ages to further their cause. 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