CFP: Celebrating Belle da Costa Greene: An Examination of Medievalists of Color within the Field (Saint Louis University)

We are very pleased to share this timely CFP (on behalf of Dr. Tarrell Campbell at Saint Louis University). Please circulate widely!

CALL FOR PAPERS

“Celebrating Belle da Costa Greene: An Examination of Medievalists of Color within the Field” (November 30-December 2, 2018,  Saint Louis University)

The African American Studies Program at Saint Louis University invites paper and panel proposals for “Celebrating Belle da Costa Greene: An Examination of Medievalists of Color within the Field,” a conference to be held at the Center for Global Citizenship on the campus of Saint Louis University in the heart of Midtown Saint Louis, Missouri.

The contemporary state of Medieval Studies is at a crossroads. Will the field remain an open, safe, and inclusive environment--reflective of its always, already integrated history--or will the present atmosphere of isolated thinking, white supremacy, and delimited academic freedom continue to reign? In accordance with those who seek the light, this conference will celebrate the life and accomplishments of Belle da Costa Greene and will contribute to the developing field of scholarship centered on the meaning of the “medieval” and “Middle Ages” as relates increasingly interdisciplinary and cross-regional conceptions of the premodern world. More specifically, the conference represents an opportunity to focus on those aspects of the “medieval” and “Middle Ages” specifically of interest to Medievalists of Color and in alignment with the life of Greene. Greene was a black woman who had to pass as white in order to gain entrance and acceptance into the racially fraught professional landscape of early twentieth-century New York. She was a prominent art historian and the first manuscript librarian of the Pierpont Morgan collection. She was also the first known person of color and second woman to be elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1939). According to the Morgan Library & Museum website, "Greene was barely twenty when Morgan hired her, yet her intelligence, passion, and self-confidence eclipsed her relative inexperience, [and] she managed to help build one of America's greatest private libraries." Her legacy highlights the professional difficulties faced by Medievalists of Color, the personal sacrifices they make in order to belong to the field, and their extraordinary contributions to Medieval Studies.

This conference invites researchers to consider any aspect of the field as regards the life of Belle da Costa Greene; moreover, this conference invites scholarly perspectives of the “Other Middle Ages” by presenting research and resources that address the connectivity and mobility of the globe c. 500-1600 CE, particularly as relates the movements of racialized and othered bodies. Even more, the conference invites researchers who focus on new and novel ways of employing medieval historiographical, bibliographical, cosmological, etc. conceptions for contemporary analyses and explorations of human endeavors. What work (and violence) does the idea of “the Middle Ages” do in our scholarship, and what do we gain from a shared or comparative notion of the medieval? What do we lose when the field acts in a parochial manner, closing itself off and ostracizing scholars of color as Others. Papers and presentations will aim to contribute to a more inclusive view of the premodern world that de-centers European interpretations of the Middle Ages and recognizes dynamic globalisms and transient contemporary times.

Please include the title of proposed paper or panel and an abstract of about 500 words outlining how the paper or panel will fit with the conference theme. Be sure to include five keywords associated with the paper or the panel, name, title, position, affiliated institution, and a short biographical statement (40-50 words each) for all authors involved.

Faculty and graduate students are also welcome to apply to deliver a lightning talk + complementary paper and/or a primary source-based research presentation. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words.

Lightning Talks

The conference will hold two panels of lightning talks (8 minutes each) based on short, pre-circulated papers (approx. 4 pages) summarizing current work on globalized conceptions of and connections within the medieval world. Lightning talks will engage field- or region-specific conceptualizations of “the medieval/Middle Ages.”

Roundtable discussions with respondents will follow. 

Primary Source-based Research Presentations

Submissions will also be accepted for 15- to 18-minute research presentations, each focused on a particular medieval primary source (text, image, object, etc.) that is useful for thinking in comparative or global perspectives. The source (an image or a selection from the source) should be pre-circulated to attendees.

Each talk will be followed by a moderated discussion.

All presenters are asked to submit a brief bibliography (5-10 entries) on resources related to their lightning talks or research presentations. After the symposium, these bibliographies will be curated and will contribute to the development of a canon of literatures on the global Middle Ages made always available to conference participants and attendees.*

Nota bene : The submission of a paper and/or panel proposal must be on the understanding that if the proposal is accepted, then the author (or authors) will register for and attend the conference.

The costs of attending the conference, including registration fees, travel, accommodation and other expenses, are the responsibility of the presenter(s) or their institutions.

Deadline: September 28, 2018

How to Apply:

Applications should be submitted in PDF form to conference organizer Tarrell R. Campbell (tarrell.campbell@slu.edu) by September 28, 2018. Those submitting paper, panel, lightning talks, and primary source presentations should prepare separate abstracts, respectively. Please include the following information:

Name:
Affiliation:
Faculty/Graduate Student/Independent Scholar:
Field:
Regional Specialization:
Proposed Format (Paper/Panel/Lightning Talk/Primary Source Presentation):

Abstracts of no longer than 500 words.


Notifications of acceptance will be made by no later than October 15, 2018.

***Interested in helping to organize the conference or conducting a workshop?***

Contact tarrell.campbell@slu.edu for more information.

On Race and Medieval Studies

by Medievalists of Color [cross-posted from the Medievalists of Color website]

Medieval studies is increasingly acknowledging realities of race and racism in the profession—reflected in everything from the call to recognize that racism is inherent in the very use of the term “Anglo-Saxon”; to Richard Spencer and the so-called alt-right’s cooptation of Western European medieval studies to buttress their white supremacist ideology; to concerns about the exploitation of Hawaiian culture in the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists’ conference currently underway in Honolulu. These issues have arisen most visibly since the International Medieval Congress at Leeds in July 2017 with individual and collective calls for structural change in the profession and its culture.

Caspar of the Three Kings, Germany, 15th c., The Cloisters Collection, 1952

Medievalists of Color is a fellowship of scholars who study the early, high, and late Middle Ages across the disciplines and who identify as persons of color from a variety of national and cultural backgrounds. We, the Medievalists of Color, find it necessary to offer a collective response that advocates for a more inclusive, productive, and world-improving medieval studies.

If the recent controversies in medieval studies have seemed shocking, that shock derives simply from the truth of how uneven and disparate our realities are within the field. A tasteless joke about skin color that inaugurated the 2017 Leeds keynote plenary on “Otherness” illustrated this disparity all too well. Those who object to the attention given to a single joke about race fail to understand that for medievalists of color, this joke is not an isolated event. It is a symptom of a culture, both in medieval studies and in the wider world, in which we regularly hear jokes about our appearances, accents, names, and experiences. Indeed, such jokes frequently escalate into mockery, threats, and even physical violence. Opening the plenary session on the problematic thematic strand “Otherness,” the joke established an unwelcoming environment from the outset. Likewise, the open acceptance of such racist jokes has proliferated in various social media, listservs, and other spaces in which medievalists congregate. This then is not merely a sensationalized incident, but rather a normalized speech act that indicates a pervasive and deeply problematic professional and social climate.

Creating and maintaining a climate that is welcoming to all requires intention and deliberation. Drawing from extensive administrative experience in higher education in the UK and Australia as well as several traditions of philosophical inquiry, Sara Ahmed attests to how professional environments and intellectual cultures engage in a “politics of stranger making” that reveals “how some and not others become strangers” and “how some bodies become understood as the rightful inhabitants of certain spaces” (On Being Included, 2012). The moderator’s joke—that a suntan would make him appear as an “other”—would have been inappropriate in any professional setting, but in the particular context of an introduction to the opening keynotes at one of the major medievalist conferences in the world, this act of “stranger making” reveals an underlying assumption that the physical presence of nonwhite medievalists—and our collective years of expertise in the field on topics of “otherness”—is ignorable and extraneous to primary conversations in the field.

We emphasize that our letter is not just about any one person’s alienating comments, nor even about the conception of one problematic thread. What is at stake here is the very possibility that such a statement, like countless similar statements every day, could be made and condoned while its real harm to nonwhite medievalists was left unacknowledged and unchecked. Though such statements are sometimes made without malice or intent to harm, the harm they cause is nonetheless real—from stigmatizing individuals to foreclosing lines of scholarly inquiry. When our scholarly spaces are not welcoming to all who would practice in the field, the field loses the capacity for intellectual risk and no longer serves its primary objective: to seek a comprehensive understanding of the past in order to analyze the present and help shape the future.

The current controversy offers an opportunity for medievalists who identify as white to understand the perspectives and experiences of medievalists and other people of color. On blog posts and comments, on listservs and on Facebook, the reactions of many of our fellow scholars have been deeply disturbing, with remarks that range from dismissing such jokes as “harmless social lubricant” to accusing those who legitimately express dismay at such jokes as “policing,” “silencing,” or “blacklisting” conference speakers to violent and profanity-laden abuse directed at medievalists of color. Some comments and conversations suggest that our white medievalist colleagues experience dismay at assumptions about them based on their race: their intentions seem not to matter; they are objects of suspicion; their positions are assumed to be wrong. We ask white medievalists feeling this way to recognize that this is what is it is like to be a person of color every day, in the world and all too often in the profession. We make this point not to perpetuate a loop of mutual resentment but rather to offer an inroad to understanding our perspective. This is a watershed moment that, if used productively, will make medieval studies home to an intellectual environment that is sustainable and innovative, promotes risk-taking, and leverages an ever greater number of experiences and scholarly lenses in order to build the most comprehensive body of knowledge about the Middle Ages possible.

We, the Medievalists of Color, need our colleagues to understand the systemic racism of which we speak and the role it has continued to play in our field’s constitution and practices; to educate themselves in the critical discourses that address systemic racism both explicit and implicit; and in doing so to move past preoccupations with individual intentions. Chafing at the accusation of racism is illogical: systemic racism dictates that we are all entangled in its articulations and practices. The most damaging consequence of systemic racism is not that one might stand accused of racism; it is the harm—historically manifested on a continuum from rhetorical to psychological to physical violence—done to persons of color. Were more constituents of medieval studies to educate themselves in the critical theory of race, we could all actively address these harmful impacts in ways hitherto not possible in the field of medieval studies.

Indeed, the intellectual and ethical protocols of our discipline require us to immerse ourselves in relevant scholarly discourses. No medievalist working on Western Europe would dare discuss the term “nation” without consulting Patrick Geary’s Before France and Germany. No medievalist working on medieval memory would ignore the work of Mary Carruthers in the Book of Memory. We affirm that the same ethic of scholarly rigor applies to critical race studies and to the discussion of race, ethnicity, nationhood, and “otherness” because these topics are crucial to both the content and the professional conduct of medieval studies. Even, and especially, if we find that the scholarly paradigms of critical race and ethnic studies, postcolonialism, and decolonization do not speak fully to the historical moments we study, we are obligated to enter, and even expand, the conversations they engender. If we wish medieval studies to engage meaningfully in the modern world of which it is a product, and in which it is an agent, then medievalists must also rigorously engage with the fields that examine the ideologies and distributions of power that define the modern world. When medievalists endeavor to understand systemic racism, medieval studies becomes a stronger field whose constituents together have far greater resources for analyzing the past and present while shaping the future.  

We aim our attention toward the survival and future of the study of the Middle Ages, which we must continuously work to separate from its links to nationalist and white supremacist impulses. At a time when such impulses have increased the rates of violence—rhetorical, psychological, and physical—in the US, UK, Europe, and elsewhere, we must ensure that the conditions for violence are not fostered within medieval studies. Indeed, medieval studies must form a bulwark against such conditions. We wish to foster a medieval studies whose members respond to one another, even in disagreement, with the responsibility to be ethical, compassionate, and well informed about the systems in which we operate in order that medieval studies will be a space for free intellectual inquiry—for all medievalists. Race has always mattered to medieval studies, and scholars of color play key roles in the field’s past, present, and future.

We intervene, putting ourselves at professional risk and in the path of potential aggression and hostility, because of the meaning this field holds for us, the stakes we have in it, and our commitment to contributing productively to its continued viability. We intervene for the sake of the innovative space medieval studies has at times been, and can increasingly be. We intervene to protect the powerful lessons that the Middle Ages holds for the modern world, and because we believe that deep and considered knowledge of the Middle Ages, with rigorous scholarly practices, can help realize a future in which the world is a better place—for medievalists and non-medievalists alike.

FURTHER INFORMATION AND RESOURCES

For additional professional responses to the “Otherness” thread at the International Medieval Congress, see the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the open letter and petition by the President-Elect of the Shakespeare Association of America (SAA), and two letters from the President of the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS).

For resources pertaining to the intellectual and professional significance of race in medieval studies, see this bibliography of scholarship on race and medieval studies, the special issue of the journal postmedieval on “Making Race Matter in the Middle Ages,” the plenary session on “The Color of Membership” held at the SAA Meeting in April 2017, the workshop on Whiteness in Medieval Studies (held at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, May 2017), as well as its participants’ reflections and an organizer’s reflection.

Decolonizing Anglo-Saxon Studies: A Response to ISAS in Honolulu

by ADAM MIYASHIRO

[Please read this timely guest posting by Adam Miyashiro originally published as a Facebook status update on July 28, 2017. We are proud to republish his work on this site.]

Image description: Excerpt from Nupepa Puka La Kuokoa, February 23, 1893, showing various ways to count to 10, including Old English, Welsh, Gothic, Greek, and Latin.

In late July and August, the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS) will meet in Honolulu, Hawai‘i for a four day conference on Anglo-Saxon studies that has as its main theme, “Global Perspectives.” The conference website states that

The Pacific venue is ideal for gaining a broader understanding of our field precisely because Hawaiʻi is not Anglo-Saxon England: viewing our research from halfway around the world puts Anglo-Saxon studies in perspective, looking from the outside in—and potentially inside out. In particular, a global and comparative view suggests new ways of thinking about the relationship between past and present and the role that English language, history, and culture play on a world stage.

The program boasts that there are over seventy presentations, some of which focus on “applying global and comparative perspectives to the study of Anglo-Saxon England,” as well as more field-specific approaches. The conference program is adorned with what looks like a photo of the Hokule‘a, the contemporary reconstruction of a wa‘a kaulua, the Polynesian voyaging canoe associated with the disappearance of the kanaka maoli big wave surfer, Eddie Aikau. It liberally uses ‘olelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language) in phrases such as “Aloha e kakou,” and boasts tours of Hawaiian kingdom sites in Honolulu, a tour of Bishop Museum, and a touristy luau. I also imagine that the conference attendees will also muse about Hawaiian food, especially poi, which they will all be obliged to “try” to get a sense of “authentic” Hawaiian food, which, of course, must taste bad.

The thing that strikes one the most is absolutely how white this conference is. With the exception of a couple of East Asian scholars, virtually the entire roster of papers is from white scholars. Of course, there are many scholars involved who I absolutely admire, including one of the keynote speakers. And a brief overview of the topics is unimaginably predictable: “Patristic Number Symbolism in Anglo-Saxon England,” “Repton Revisited: The significance of 873 A.D.,” “The Old English Prefix Ge- and the Structure of the Dictionary of Old English.” This is pretty much standard fare for any K’zoo panel, or Old English special session at the MLA. There is no need to go to the most militarized, colonial space in the US to present on the finer points of problems in Old English lexicography.

In full disclosure, I applied to present a paper at this conference, but my paper was rejected. I’d also like to disclose that I’m from Hawai‘i, and I am a medievalist who is a product of the multiethnic mix of Asian and Polynesian peoples and cultures of the islands. The paper I proposed was called “Beowulf and its Others: Sovereignty, Race, and Medieval Settler-Colonialism,” which considered Grendel as an indigenous person with a specific biopolitics, and linked a non-European reading of Beowulf to the contemporary issues of white supremacy that plague Anglo-Saxon studies, and medieval studies more broadly. Allen Frantzen’s anti-feminist and misogynist blog has shaken Old English studies; Rachel Fulton Brown’s defense of Milo Yiannopoulos and her blog and columns for Breitbart has brought awareness to white supremacy in medieval studies; Richard Spencer’s white supremacist “alt-right” fascism trades on settler-colonial ideologies rooted in modern understandings of the Middle Ages and specifically about modern “Anglo-Saxon” identity. In all of these discussions about right-wing political thought inside of our own field of medieval studies, not a single paper in this conference explicitly addresses these developments. And the only paper to actually deal with anything Polynesian in relation to Anglo-Saxon studies is a paper from a white man from New Jersey, replicating the worst possible legacy of colonial representation of kanaka maoli from America’s colonial history. We thought we were past that; but then again, we live in the age of Disney’s Moana and Aulani Resort in Ko ‘Olina, where Hawaiian culture can be commodified and repackaged in a less threatening and fully domesticated manner.

This conference practices what is known in indigenous studies as “erasure of the native.” In the conference materials, we are given the image of the “presence” of native identities – from the Hokule‘a picture to the liberal use of ‘olelo Hawai‘i as welcoming phrases. Yet, native voices are noticeably absent from the conference program, except for Uluwehi Hopkins, who will present on Hawaiian sea navigation.

Given the recent turmoil in medieval studies, and especially with Anglo-Saxon England and Old English, one might think that this conference – with its purported interest in globalizing the study of Old English – would address the racism that has generated so much controversy. Old English’s race problem was featured in a recent JSTOR blog post by Mary Dockray-Miller, who lays out some of the problematic features of the term “Anglo-Saxon”:

Outside the university, however, the phrase “Anglo-Saxon” did not refer to early medieval English. Instead, it was racial and racist, freighted with assumptions of privilege and superiority. The cultural rhetoric of Manifest Destiny specifically defined “Anglo-Saxons” as superior to enslaved and free Africans, Native American Indians, Mexicans, and numerous other groups defined as non-white, including Irish and Italian immigrants. The titles of college courses in Anglo-Saxon also carried these racial connotations and cultural associations.

This racist understanding of the term “Anglo-Saxon” as defining white Anglo-Americans has a long history in the South Pacific as part of the settler colonial landscape in places such as Hawai‘i, Aotearoa (New Zealand), and Australia. Of course, French settler colonialism in Tahiti is not far from this mark.

When I was finishing my Ph.D., a friend of mine in Nebraska, an early modernist, asked me about the best books to use to teach Old English. She had been participating in a prison literacy program and said that several of her incarcerated students wanted to learn Old English. Surprised, I asked her for the background of why they wanted to learn Old English. Saying that there was an unsavory reason, she related that these inmates were part of an Aryan Nation prison gang who had built up a religion around the heroic poem Beowulf called “Theodism.” Old English, as one blog post notes, has an “image problem.” But it goes beyond simply an “image problem.” It goes right to the core of settler-colonial, white supremacist ideology.

As I said earlier, the colonialist Anglo-Saxon conference taking place in Hawai‘i will have no understanding about how the term “Anglo-Saxon” is understood in the south Pacific. Recently, in a post in the Facebook group Aha Aloha ‘Aina, an image of a Hawaiian phrasebook from 1906 illustrates the power of colonialism in the islands (reproduced below). The image is of derogatory and inflammatory insults to Hawaiian people in both olelo Hawai’i and English, including “Lazy people cannot be trusted;” “They lie in wait to pilfer while folks are asleep or at church;” and “When he thinks, it is of evil.” After the overthrow of the last legitimate government of Hawai‘i, the US took policy of cultural and linguistic genocide, since the actual genocide had already been underway from the late 18th and early 19th century. ‘Olelo Hawai‘i (Hawaiian language) was banned; students in schools were beaten for speaking Hawaiian. The reason Hawaiian creole English (pidgin) even exists is because of the compulsory language policies of the newly formed territorial American state led by white wealthy sugar barons.

Image description: 1906 phrasebook showing how Hawaiians can insult themselves in English.

Until medievalists, and the wider academic world, can decolonize their fields, they will be (unwittingly or not) part of the problem of white supremacy and settler colonialism. In Hawai‘i, this is also true of the sciences, where just yesterday [i.e., July 27, 2017], a judge has allowed the continuation of the building of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea (Mauna a Wakea) on the big island of Hawai‘i. The leaseholder of this land is the University of Hawai‘i, which is itself an institution that participates in the military-industrial complex on the islands – land, sea, and air – and that contribute to the furthering of settler colonial spaces and the continued dispossession of indigenous peoples, the kanaka Maoli.

About the Author

Image of Adam Miyashiro.

Adam Miyashiro teaches comparative medieval literature at Stockton University in New Jersey. He is a native of Kahalu'u, O'ahu, Hawai'i. He has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Penn State University, and has also taught at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is currently working on a book about race in Mediterranean and European medieval literature.

Informal Events at IMC Leeds 2017: Public Medievalism and Disability Mentorship

by JONATHAN HSY

Are you heading to the International Medieval Congress in Leeds tomorrow? Note these INFORMAL EVENTS not listed on the official program: on Monday, an informal discussion on public medievalism and countering the alt-right; on Wednesday, an informal mentorship gathering for medievalists with disabilities (and allies).

Full information below! [Click image to enlarge; equivalent text also provided in this blog post.]

#PublicMedievalism event at #IMC2017; original tweet here

#PublicMedievalism: Developing Methods to Counter the Alt-Right

An informal discussion for delegates at #imc2017

Wilson Room, Emmanuel Centre, 13:00-14:00, 03/07/2017

For enquiries please contact Shihong Lin (on twitter @shlin28) and James Harland (on twitter @djmharland)

The rapid growth of social media usage and the emergence of social media subcultures such as #medievaltwitter have led to historical scholarship arguably never being more open, vibrant, or accessible. Alongside this development, however, has been an alarming growth of appropriation of the past by resurgent far-right and white supremacist movements to promote their goals, as charted by authors such as Dorothy Kim at In the Medieval Middle and The Public Medievalist’s special series, Race and Racism in the Middle Ages.

The battle for the past is fought across the twittersphere. Alongside a regular output of memes promoting distorted, far-right interpretations of a purely white, Christian past, events such as #femfog and Rebecca Rideal’s withdrawal from the Chalke Valley History Festival have also attracted backlash online, and most medievalists with a presence on twitter will have experienced the reception and misinterpretation of their output—either by open members of the alt-right or members of a wider public informed by nationalistic and racialist ideas.

We invite delegates, especially those who make frequent use of Twitter, to an open, informal discussion on the development of methods to effectively counter this trend, while ensuring that our twitter output remains no less lively, engaging, and publicly accessible.

Informal disability mentorship event #disIMC at #IMC2017; original tweet here

Medievalists with Disabilities

An informal gathering for disabled students, ECRs, academics, researchers and allies. All welcome!

12:45-14:15 on Wednesday 5th July, St George Room, University House

Accessible via lift from either Refectory Foyer or via University House

Bring your lunch and come and meet other medievalists with disabilities, or support your disabled colleagues. This gathering is completely informal, and we hope it will be the start of a supportive community.

[event hashtag for twitter is] #disIMC

If you have any queries, especially about accessibility requirements, please contact Alicia Spencer-Hall by email via aspencerhall [at] gmail [dot] com or on twitter @aspencerhall or contact Alex Lee by email via alexralee12 [at] gmail [dot] com or on twitter @AlexRALee.

If you're not attending IMC in Leeds this year, you can follow the official hashtag on twitter #IMC2017. The hashtags for these two informal events are #PublicMedievalism and #disIMC respectively.

P.S. Online PDF and mobile-accessible version of the official #IMC2017 programme is available through this link on the Congress website.

Medieval Studies: Rallying Cry and Affirmation

by JONATHAN HSY

My #MLA17 "hot take" for medievalists: we all have to STEP UP.

Look at what the professional organizations and most prestigious journals in earlier historical periods are doing. The Society for Classical Studies has a leadership statement against racism and its major conference featured a politically urgent plenary (had to be delivered by proxy) by a prominent scholar who is also an undocumented immigrant; the most recent issue of Shakespeare Quarterly addresses early modern race and Shakespeare reception with essays by ethnic minority academics; the Shakespeare Association of America has an annual social for Scholars of Color (and allies).* We as a discipline and a community need to unambiguously stand up against white nationalism and the abuse of the past -- especially in a field that fuels racist fantasies. Medieval studies is not just about the past; it must build a better future.

*Note also a AIA-SCS session on immigration (organized by the Committee on the Status of Women and Minority Groups) and Affiliated group for Classics and Social Justice with a CFP for 2018; the linked SAA program schedule features among other things a plenary on the "Color of Membership" but the SOC social is not yet listed.

For an AFFIRMING thread broadcasting the many things we ARE doing in medieval studies (rather than just calling out what we "oppose"), check out this public thread at BABEL Futures.

Any other efforts, schemes, affirmations, hortatory speeches, or news you'd like to share? Add to the comment thread below (it's moderated, so please be patient!)

Pre NCS London 2016: Things To Do + Events

by JONATHAN HSY

Bedside reading: guide to Pride in London (festivities just ended in June).
Patience Agbabi's Telling Tales, Lavinia Greenlaw's A Double Sorrow.

The International Medieval Congress in Leeds has just concluded, and the New Chaucer Society Congress in London is approaching!

Here's a quick post with a few items of note ahead of NCS (ITM readers will surely notice that many of these items are responding directly to current events and geopolitics).

The #femfog roundtable at the IMC in Leeds was an animated and productive venue that explored strategies for building a more inclusive and ethical medieval studies. Such conversations are sure to continue at NCS, whether through official sessions or informal venues. Fore more on the Leeds session:

• Check out this archive of tweets compiled by Shyama Rajendran.
• The Mittelalter bloggers have provided timely summaries of many IMC sessions (some in German, some in English), with a femfog session summary (in English) at the end of this post.

Topical reading list for medievalists. See Jeffrey's list of "reading for sustenance" (compiled on 2 July) including Brexit- and femfog-related items by medievalists. See also my posting on refuge and welcome (20 June), and two new items published yesterday (7 July):

• Simon Gaunt (King's College London) on “Europe” as an idea in the Middle Ages, on the Values of French project blog.

• Howard Hotson (Oxford) on medieval universities as institutions beyond nation-states, at the Times Higher Education.

Things to do in London before NCS:

• Chaucer's London Today. A guide to site of interest to Chaucerians around London (document posted by Lawrence Warner).

• The Refugee Tales. Walk and events conclude today (Friday).

• Protest march in Brixton. For people following ongoing developments in the US, consider this rally to be held in solidarity with victims of police brutality (Saturday).

Events associated with NCS:

• Queers & Allies. Informal social gathering for queer (LGBTQ+) medievalists and allies. Tuesday (12 July) starting 9pm at the Royal Oak (at 73 Columbia Road; this is about a 30 minute walk or 2 minutes by taxi from Queen Mary). [h/t to Anthony Bale and to the #QueerMSS crowd especially Diane Watt and Roberta Magnani]

• Safe(r) Spaces Conversation (moderated by Helen Young). “A Pilgrimage to Safe(r) Spaces: Classroom Crossroads of Identity,” Thursday (14 July) at 9-10:30am, Bancroft 1.13a. This event was created to center crip/queer experiences (e.g., issues relating to disability and sexuality), but will no doubt expand to incorporate many other identities.

Some events of note on the NCS program(me):

• The “Corporealities” thread explores facets of identity and experience in the medieval past and the present; note the highly topical "Pale Faces" session interrogating whiteness and medieval studies (Monday 11 July, 2pm, Arts 2 Lecture Theatre).

• Global Chaucers roundtable exploring translation, adaptation, and comparative literary approaches: "Translating Global Chaucers" (Wednesday 13 July at 9-10:30pm in PP1).

• Readings by neo-Chaucerian poets Lavinia Greenlaw (Tuesday 12 July at 5:30pm, People's Place Theatre) and Patience Agbabi (Wednesday 13 July at 8pm, Arts 2 Lecture Theatre).* [note also Jeffrey's post on other events that night]

*A brief blurb for the Patience Agbabi reading (not in the online version of NCS program):

Patience Agbabi is former Poet Laureate of Canterbury. Telling Tales (Canongate, 2014), in which she disperses Chaucerian narratives in present-day multiethnic London, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Her work appears also in the anthology The Refugee Tales (Comma Press, 2016). She will  deliver an interactive reading “Herkne and Rede” that explores poetry performance as dynamic adaptation.