How do we decide who we are in relationship to our past? If you are interested in thinking more about the relationship between culture and identity try the 2016 Reith lectures by Kwame Anthony Appiah.
Please become familiar with the new Medievalists of Color website, which has posts, resources, bibliographies, etc. Specific readings from MoC are posted below.
Recent Discussions in Medieval Studies on Difference & Diversity:
For more reading, start with Sarah Bond’s bibliography in her blog post “Hold My Mead: A Bibliography for Historians Hitting Back at White Supremacy”
Medievalists of Color, “On Race and Medieval Studies”
Public Medievalist Series: “Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages”
- A Brief History of a Terrible Idea: the “Dark Enlightenment”
- Resisting the Anti-Semitic Crusade
- Games of Thrones’ Racism Problem
- “Anti-Semitism” Before “Semites”: The Risks and Rewards of Anachronism
- “Bad Hombres”: How to Hate Someone You’ve Never Met
- The Importance of Being Absent
The Past Couple of Months in Medieval Studies
- JJ Cohen, On Pushback, Progress, and Promise
- J. Clara Chan, Medievalists, Recoiling From White Supremacy Try to Diversify the Field
- Brandon Hawk, Diversifying SASLC
- Otávio Luiz Vieira Pinto, Peripheries of the Middle Ages
- @drdarkage: Thread on Medieval Studies & White Supremacy
- Daniel Remein, ISAS Should Probably Change Its Name
- Adam Miyashiro, Decolonizing Anglo-Saxon Studies: A Response to ISAS in Honolulu
- Mateusz Fafinski, The Obama Moment of Anglo-Saxon Studies
- Tom Bredehoft, “Anglo-Saxonists”
Classicists Condemn Use of Images By Racists
Chris Quintana, For One Scholar, an Online Stoning Tests the Limits of Public Scholarship
Colleen Flaherty, Threats for What She Didn’t Say
On The Appropriation of the Middle Ages:
David Perry, “White Supremacists Love Vikings: But They’ve Got History All Wrong”
- Suspect In Portland Double Murder Posted White Supremacist Material Online
- Crusader Costumes in Europe At Islamophobic Hate Rally
- White Supremacist Running Odinist Network From Maximum-Security Prison
- The Wolves of Vinland: A Fascist Countercultural “Tribe” in the Pacific Northwest
- “Our History Is Not a Hoax. Hail Vinland!”
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Heritage is the Stories We Tell
Mary Dockray-Miller, Old English Has A Serious Image Problem
Maggie Williams, “Celtic” Crosses and White Supremacism
Clare Downham, “Vikings Were Never the Pure-Bred Master Race White Supremacists Like to Portray”
Vikings, Myths, and the Use of History
E.R. Truitt, Fantasy North
Race in Iceland: Can A Woman of Color Wear The Traditional Fjallkonan Garb?
The Role of Odinism in Contemporary White Supremacist Movements
New Religion of Choice For White Supremacists
The Far Right’s New Fascination with the Middle Ages
SPLC: Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy
Historical Amnesia About Slavery is a Tool of White Supremacy
Rebranding White Nationalism: Inside the Alt-Right
Racism, Medievalism, and the White Supremacists of Charlottesville
White Supremacist Statement on Diamondback Ironworks Website
These Are The New Symbols of Hate
Why The Charlottesville Marchers Were Obsessed With Jews
Twitter Thread on White Supremacist Peter Cvjetanovic as Undergrad in Medieval Courses
Game of Thrones Shows Us How America Treats White Supremacy
National Awakening of Bulgaria
Teaching Medieval Difference & Diversity:
Medievalists of Color: Pedagogy & Bibliographies
Teaching Medieval Art History in a Time of White Supremacy
Black Central Europe, c.1000-1500
Note: If you have any recommendations for our resource page, please send us an email.