A Field Of Questions

University of Chicago Department of English Language and Literature, Fall 2017 Open Letter

Navajo Relief Fund: http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=nrf_index

Navajo Water Project: https://www.navajowaterproject.org/

In light of the recent events in the United States, most recently the racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, the undersigned community of medievalists condemns the appropriation of any item or idea or material in the service of white supremacy. In addition, we condemn the abuse of colleagues, particularly colleagues of color, who have spoken publicly against this misuse of history.

As scholars of the medieval world we are disturbed by the use of a nostalgic but inaccurate myth of the Middle Ages by racist movements in the United States. By using imagined medieval symbols, or names drawn from medieval terminology, they create a fantasy of a pure, white Europe that bears no relationship to reality. This fantasy not only hurts people in the present, it also distorts the past. Medieval Europe was diverse religiously, culturally, and ethnically, and medieval Europe was not the entire medieval world. Scholars disagree about the motivations of the Crusades—or, indeed, whether the idea of “crusade” is a medieval one or came later—but it is clear that racial purity was not primary among them.

Contemporary white nationalists are not the first Americans to have turned nostalgic views of the medieval period to racist purposes. It is, in fact, deeply ironic that the Klan’s ideas of medieval knighthood were used to harass immigrants who practiced the forms of Christianity most directly connected with the medieval church. Institutions of scholarship must acknowledge their own participation in the creation of interpretations of the Middle Ages (and other periods) that served these narratives. Where we do find bigotry, intolerance, hate, and fear of “the other” in the past—and the Middle Ages certainly had their share—we must recognize it for what it is and read it in its context, rather than replicating it.

The medieval Christian culture of Europe is indeed a worthy object of study, in fact a necessary one. Medieval Studies must be broader than just Europe and just Christianity, however, because to limit our object of study in such a way gives an arbitrary and false picture of the past. We see a medieval world that was as varied as the modern one. It included horrific violence, some of it committed in the name of religion; it included feats of bravery, justice, harmony, and love, some of them also in the name of religion. It included movement of people, goods, and ideas over long distances and across geographical, linguistic, and religious boundaries. There is much to be learned from studying the period, whether we choose to focus on one community and text or on wider interactions. What we will not find is the origin of a pure and supreme white race.

Every generation of scholars creates its own interpretations of the past. Such interpretations must be judged by how well they explain the writings, art, and artifacts that have come down to us. As a field we are dedicated to scholarly inquiry. As the new semester approaches at many institutions, we invite those of you who have the opportunity to join us. Take a class or attend a public lecture on medieval history, literature, art, music. Learn about this vibrant and varied world, instead of simply being appalled by some racist caricature of it. See for yourself what lessons it holds for the modern world.

The Medieval Academy of America BABEL Working Group International Center for Medieval Art International Congress on Medieval Studies Sewanee Medieval Colloquium Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages TEAMS: Teaching Association for Medieval Studies The Fellowship of Medievalists of Color The Gender and Medieval Studies Group The International Arthurian Society-North American Branch The International Association for Robin Hood Studies The International Piers Plowman Society The International Society of Anglo-Saxonists The International Society for the Study of Medievalism The John Gower Society The New Chaucer Society The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship

This is one of my favorite x-rays of an animal mummy in our collection. You’ll get to see this ibis mummy and many others in our upcoming exhibition Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt. In anticipation of this exhibition, conservators have been reviewing our animal mummies for stability. We’ve also been reviewing our past x-rays, CT scans and other analysis with colleagues from other institutions to compile as much information as possible. 

This x-ray and additional CT scans suggest that this is a male Sacred Ibis, and that all of the internal organs were removed. Radiocarbon dating of the linens suggests this mummy is from 410-200 B.C.E.

I am a citizen of Charlottesville, Virginia. Today (August 12th, 2017) and yesterday (August 11th, 2017) our city saw violent and chaotic rallies by Nazis and white supremacists. Counter-protesters, many of them students of the University of Virginia, which is here in this city, met the Nazi rallies bravely. People have been injured and arressted. People threw bottles filled with cement or urine, and mace and tear gas filled the air. A state of emergency was declared, and store owners nearby cited having police in riot gear blocking the doors of their buildings.

If you wish to donate to directly support protesters, citizens, and minority students at the University of Virginia, here are four links for you.

Solidarity Cville Anti-Racist Legal Fund

#A12 General Fund

The Charlottesville Chapter of the NAACP’s PayPal

UVA’s Donation Page for their Black Student Alliance

These are all links in which the money is guaranteed to directly go towards helping Charlottesville citizens specifically, whether through legal fees, or through raising support and awareness for the minority members of our community. I especially recommend choosing either the Solidarity Cville Fund or the Black Student Alliance’s donation page.

Dialogue: Exposing the Rhetoric of Exclusion through Medieval Manuscripts

By Kristen Collins and Bryan Keene, originally published on the Getty Iris

We invite your thoughts on an exhibition-in-progress at the Getty that addresses the persistence of prejudice as seen through lingering stereotypes from the Middle Ages.

As curators in the Getty Museum’s department of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, we are interested in how books, and museum collections more broadly, can spark dialogues about inclusivity and diversity. Our manuscripts collection at the Getty consists primarily of objects from Western Europe, which can present challenges when trying to connect with a multicultural and increasingly international audience. 

We are striving to make connections between the Middle Ages and the contemporary world—connections that may not be immediately evident, but are powerful nonetheless. Museums are inherently political organizations, in terms of the ways that collections are assembled, displayed, and interpreted. This year’s meeting of the Association of Art Museum Curators addressed how institutional narratives and implicit bias can skew ideas of history and culture in ways that exclude minorities and gloss over the shameful aspects of our past. Groups such as the Medievalists of Color, the Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages, the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, and the Society for the Study of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages, among others, are applying similar lines of inquiry, seeking to decolonize and diversify the field of medieval studies. We stand with these groups.

We were also inspired by Holland Cotter’s call to arms, as he exhorted museums to tell the truth about art, “about who made objects, and how they work in the world, and how they got to the museum, and what they mean, what values they advertise, good and bad. Go for truth (which, like the telling of history, is always changing), and connect art to life.”

Here is our description of the exhibition, still in draft form:

Medieval manuscripts preserve stories of romance, faith, and knowledge, but their luxurious illuminations can reveal more sinister narratives as well. Typically created for the privileged classes, such books nevertheless provide glimpses of the marginalized and powerless and reflect their tenuous places in society. Attitudes toward Jews and Muslims, the poor, those perceived as sexual or gender deviants, and the foreign peoples beyond European borders can be discerned through caricature and polemical imagery, as well as through marks of erasure and censorship.

As repositories of history and memory, museums reveal much about our shared past, but all too often the stories told from luxury art objects focus on the elite. Through case studies of objects in the Getty’s collection, this exhibition examines the “out groups” living within western Europe. Medieval society was far more diverse than is commonly understood, but diversity did not necessarily engender tolerance. Life contained significant obstacles for those who were not fully abled, wealthy, Caucasian, Christian, heterosexual, cisgendered males. For today’s viewer, the vivid images and pervasive narratives in illuminated manuscripts can serve as a stark reminder of the power of rhetoric and the danger of prejudice.

We begin the exhibition with a masterpiece of Romanesque painting, shown above. This manuscript, with its gilded pages and geometric symmetry, reveals the institutionalized antisemitism that formed the basis of Christian rhetoric about the triumph of the Church.

Ecclesia, the personification of the Christian Church, is seen above and to Christ’s right, while the Jewish Synagoga appears on Christ’s left. Often represented as a blindfolded figure, here Synagoga (in red robes) points at Christ, glaring. She holds a banderole representing Old Testament law that proclaims “cursed be he who hangs on the tree.” Below, two additional personifications echo and intensify the antithetical positions of these two figures. In a roundel below Ecclesia, the fair-skinned figure of Life (at far left) gazes calmly across the composition at Death, whose dark complexion and hook nose are seen in caricatures of Jews in other twelfth-century images.

We’d Like Your Comments

We are in the early stages of writing this exhibition, which is scheduled to be presented in the Getty’s manuscripts gallery in January 2018. As we create both the thematic content and the individual object texts—which we will be posting periodically on the Getty Tumblr—we are curious to receive community input. Specifically, we are curious to know any or all of the following:

Your level of interest in an exhibition of medieval and Renaissance art exploring these themes

Comments on the wording of the exhibition description we’ve shared above (as a whole or in any part)

Suggestions for perspectives and points of view we should consider in developing the exhibition

Any and all other suggestions or criticisms

I was asked to post more photographs of the B Type Mosque in Islamabad by Anwar Said [built 1981/ photographed 1987]. So here you go!