What we can do is point students to work by Medievalists of Color, and point them to discussions of race in medieval literature. We also have to concretely support colleagues who are being attacked as POC whose work challenges the racist foundations of medieval studies.
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It's more than a name-change debate w/ISAS. To paraphrase Laverne Cox, it's about the name in the same way that anti-trans bathroom bills are "about" bathrooms. It's really about whether POC--both teachers and students--get to see themselves in the medieval world. They must.
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What we need to tell students is: you have a past and a future. You existed in the middle ages, and you will survive to see a more equitable future. We hold who you were in the past and will support you through this violent present, where white supremacy is on the attack.
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We can split hairs forever about what "Englisc" meant, but the real question is--do you want your discipline identified with 19thc nationalist imagery that's actively being used by racists? Probably not. England was and is diverse. The casts of medievalist shows reflect this.
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This isn't projecting "values" onto a medieval palimpsest. It's acknowledging 1) the field is too white & straight; 2) POC existed in the middle ages; 3) England from 500-900CE was diverse; and 4) students should know that they fit within the medieval European past.
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& that's just England. Medieval Iberia: huge cultural/linguistic diversity. Medieval Byzantium: same thing. Carolingian society: lots of border-crossing. Vikings: wildly colonialist & spreading everywhere. People *moved*. Language was "polyglot," to quote
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To white medievalists who aren't comfortable talking about race: you *have* to. You aren't going to get comfortable. All you can do is keep talking about it while supporting the scholarship of POC & showing your students that the European Middle Ages weren't just white.
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Reading/assigning work of POC is just one step--white scholars can't just consume this scholarship without offering material support. Push for more diverse hires. Cite precarious scholars. Sign petitions to help scholars who are under attack. Cite, but also incite.
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We should also remember that "decolonizing"--as defined by admin--is often a series of performances that results in the appearance of mending relations. The actual work is day-to-day, uncomfortable, and involves community-building, not just assigning the right readings.
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In "NDN Coping Mechanisms," Billy-Ray Belcourt imagines "a poem in which a government of NDN women legislates away the / non-event of reconciliation." Academia often stages non-events. But students deserve better. They need to see active resistance to white supremacy.
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