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yurinullification · 4 months

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getting cancelled on medievalblr for saying nuh uh and wagging my finger at the executioner when he tries to chop my head off and ruining the day of everyone who had just come to see a fun execution with their kids

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ad-cn · 1 year

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I can't believe George Lucas had these brilliant sets and location shots and Italian architecture as the backdrop of what would be the most romantic lovely-dovely litblr medievalblr shit and it's wasted on conversations like "I don't like sand"

#ifrit: 'i underestimated beyonce'

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margridarnauds · 2 years

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The Review That The Medievalists Don't Want You To See

Well. I never thought that THAT was a title that I'd be putting on a review, given that, as a medievalist, a lot of my public outreach work involves, specifically, disproving the notion that we're all a bunch of old, straight, rich, white men, but...every once in a while...academia proves me wrong.

Some people on medievalbr might be aware of the works of Dr. Mary Rambaran-Olm, a black medievalist who is well known for calling out racism in the academy, especially for her work leading the discussion on the racist use of the term "Anglo Saxon" to describe the inhabitants and period of time in early medieval English history. She has faced a lot of harassment, both from white supremacists outside the field and racists in the field, who get uncomfortable whenever someone comes along to upset a status quo that benefits them

Dr. Rambaran-Olm was recently asked to write a review for an upcoming book, The Bright Ages, by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele, which purports to "refute common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself." She did as requested and wrote a lengthy review that criticized aspects of how the book dealt with its subject matter, a review that was then shut down, first for "word count", then for "lack of generosity". (Aka "It was balanced and presented critiques as opposed to being uniformly positive"...which is supposed to be the purpose of a professional academic review, we aren't exactly working according to the kudos system here.)

(The full email correspondence is available on Dr. Rambaran-Olm's twitter, here.)

Dr. Rambaran-Olm has published a review on medium, and, in the final few paragraphs, has this to say, as a measure of exactly what the editors of the publication were concerned about:

The Bright Ages may not exclusively be for white readers, but it certainly is for neoliberal readers who want to believe they are progressive and demand superficial fixes to complex problems and issues. For what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s any illusion that the book aims to convert white supremacists with this material, nor would any book really be able to achieve that. Still, it’s a safe book for a receptive liberal audience. It’s not a radical book, but that must be accepted at this moment, because the field is not ready for anything particularly radical.

Terrifying.

It should be noted that "read this with a critical eye" should be part and parcel of reading any book on the middle ages. If they wanted their book to get a shred of the respect they seem to believe it merits, they would understand this. This is intended to be a textbook for a general audience, but it doesn't include footnotes, citations, or, apparently, any room for critical thinking, especially from the people of color that it claims to support. She deserves better, and so does the public.

Since coming forward about her experiences, she has faced a lot of harassment from inside the field. Everyone involved on the other end of this has been very mature about the entire thing, blocking reviews from anyone pointing out what's happened. There have been allegations that she is not really a medievalist, that she's not even really black. (If she isn't a medievalist, neither are any of us, and...as someone who's seen her speak in person, I can say that she is most definitely black, as her various photos suggest. It shows how low they're willing to go.)

For years, a goal of academics has been to say "this isn't who we are as a field." But the system's rotten, right down to the foundation. I can't say that academia as an institution isn't racist and colonialist, it is. However, in that same vein, acting like all academics are a hivemind ultimately only benefits the worst of the batch. Instead, I would urge people to follow Dr. Rambaran-Olm and scholars like her that are trying to tear down the field from the inside.

#mary rambaran-olm #the bright ages #medievalblr #the middle ages #medieval

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medieval-tales · 4 years

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