coming on the back of "what do you wish people knew about medieval world" ask, what are some resources/books that explore elements that you wish people knew more of?
An interesting question that may not have a totally clear answer, because I feel that these days, "what was the medieval world like" comes down to questions that conveniently align with modern-day culture wars, mostly re: the roles and identities of women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color (especially in a pseudo-medieval European context). As has been repeatedly remarked, the people shouting that they want "historically accurate" media don't give a hoot about visual/physical culture or actual medieval law or customs or the specific context of any referenced event or conflict. They just don't want to see women in positions of power, and they don't want to see people of color or queer relationships at all. Even if (as is often the case) the presence of those things would be accurate to the story or the setting in question, because so many people have made up their mind, on a complete lack of information, that they already know "what it was like."
As such, while I can certainly recommend some resources that deal with these particular issues, I also feel a bit... tired that basically the only thing medievalists have to do these days is to explain (over and over and over...) that no, it actually was not a nonstop MAGA Culture War Medieval Boogaloo. I also don't want to fall into the trap (as some medievalists have done as a response to the prevailing "Everything was Awful" stereotype) of rewriting the Middle Ages as some kind of undiscovered pristine utopia, where things were actually great and people were perfectly enlightened and etc etc. There were of course many kinds of medieval culture wars and identity conflicts; they just weren't our culture wars or identity conflicts, and there is always a tendency to read the attestations of a single source (or biased author) as indicative of totality across all times and places, which is bad scholarly practice no matter which historical period we're dealing with. This goes double for medieval history. Because we have to do very careful work with difficult and incomplete sources, because there are so many caveats we have to make, because we ARE dealing with a base assumption that "everything was terrible and there was no nuance to anything at all," it's just... difficult to think where to start, y'know? Obviously medieval people thought about identity, personhood, culture, and society in different ways than we do, but the assumption that it was all simplistic and backward is what really grinds my gears (for various reasons).
For my part, I can attest that the field of queer medieval history is growing by leaps and bounds, and my queer history tag contains the various asks I have answered and posts I have reblogged on the subject (not just medieval). I myself have various publications on the topic that can be requested directly (go ahead and DM me and I can tell you what I have). Likewise my medieval history tag. Other books that touch on a mainly social history and provide an introduction to the complexity of these debates include:
Alvestad, Karl C., and Robert Houghton, eds. The Middle Ages in Modern Culture: History and Authenticity in Contemporary Medievalism. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
Andrews, Tarren, and Wallace Cleaves. “Indigenous Futures and Medieval Pasts: A Conversation.” English Language Notes 58 (2020): 167–79.
Bartlett, Robert. The Middle Ages and the Movies: Eight Key Films. London: Reaktion Books, 2022.
Betancourt, Roland. Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.
Hahn, Thomas. A Cultural History of Race in the Middle Ages. London: Bloomsbury, 2021.
Harwood, Sophie. Medieval Women and War: Female Roles in the Old French Tradition. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.
Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Rogers, Will, and Christopher Michael Roman. Medieval Futurity: Essays for the Future of a Queer Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2020.
Spencer-Hall, Alicia, and Blake Gutt. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021.
Sturtevant, Paul. The Middle Ages in Popular Imagination: Memory, Film and Medievalism. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2018.
Tanner, Heather J. Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100-1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Cham: Springer Nature, 2019.
Obviously, your ability to get your hands on any or all of these books may depend on whether you have a university library at your disposal, and you may find some of them easier to grasp than others. But if you're interested in learning more and getting into the substance/complexity beyond the usual set of boring stereotypes, the above is definitely a good place to start.
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