Suchergebnisse

AbstractAntiracist commitments—in medieval studies and elsewhere—are incomplete without a commitment to abolitionist principles. These principles involve the dismantling of police, prisons, and many other institutions fostering the interests of carcerality, property protection, and racial capitalism. This essay encourages scholars of medieval dance to explore abolitionist horizons because, it argues, the study of medieval dance requires the development of three capacities also integral to the abolitionist project: 1) an ability to envision what we cannot know; 2) an understanding of how to act collectively even through our estrangement from each other (as medieval dancers did); 3) a willingness to take risks. These characteristics could help scholars of dance confront medieval studies and mobilize it to make not just the field but also the world a place of freedom, thriving, and mutual care.

"From Kehinde Wiley to W.E.B. Du Bois, from Nubia to Cuba, Willie Doherty's terror in ancient landscapes to the violence of institutional Neo-Gothic, Reagan's AIDS policies to Beowulf fanfiction, this richly diverse volume brings together art historians and literature scholars to articulate a more inclusive, intersectional medieval studies. It will be of interest to students working on the diaspora and migration, white settler colonialism and pogroms, Indigenous studies and decolonial methodology, slavery, genocide, and culturecide. The authors confront the often disturbing legacies of medieval studies and its current failures to own up to those, and also analyze fascist, nationalist, colonialist, anti-Semitic, and other ideologies to which the medieval has been and is yoked, collectively formulating concrete ethical choices and aims for future research and teaching.

In the face of rising global fascism and related ideological mobilizations, contemporary and past, and of cultural heritage and history as weapons of symbolic and physical oppression, this volume's chapters on Byzantium, Medieval Nubia, Old English, Hebrew, Old French, Occitan, and American and European medievalisms examine how educational institutions, museums, universities, and individuals are shaped by ethics and various ideologies in research, collecting, and teaching."