2. like, whatever the term has sometimes meant technically among the very tiny group of specialists who use it academically, it has been ALL OVER American newspapers, magazines, political speeches since the mid-1830s as an overtly racist term.
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3. The key study here is Reginald Horsman, *Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism,* published by Harvard University Press in 1981:https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674948051 …
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4. these internalist accounts of the historical uses of the term "Anglo-Saxon" don't seem to consider the ways in which the broad popular use outside academe has conditioned/colored its use within academe.
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5. If you want to understand the history of some aspect of your sub-discipline, you need to look at some externalist account, rather than an internalist narrative. at the very least, talking about "historic uses" without reference to broad social context ain't great.
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6. and even *if* the professional study of medieval English writing/culture had NEVER been affected in the slightest by widely held notions of "Anglo-Saxon" as a racial identity, defending the continued use of Anglo-Saxon is a little bit like...
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7. ...defending the continued use of swastikas on flags because they are an ancient symbol that antedated Hitler and Nazis. whatever connotations the symbol once had, or whatever connotations you're trying to foreground, are lost. Anglo-Saxon is a ruined sign; let it go.
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So what term should or could replace it in academia?
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Old English (which is already in use anyway & has been for ages); for more on this topic, I refer you to the last several months’ writing by medievalist scholars on
#MedievalTwitter & the anti-racist medievalist work of@ISASaxonists, & more via her (for plenty further reading). - Show replies
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