Momentum in Global Medieval Studies from 2020 Movements: Confronting Biases in Scholarship and Public Discourse
Speaker: Dr. Bryan C. Keene, Assistant Professor at Riverside City College, Riverside, CA
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Live-Stream at 6:00 PM ET
Please note this is a live streamed event. A link to view the event will be sent out via email the morning of the lecture to those who RSVP in advance.
Scholarship on a global Middle Ages has centered on comparisons or connections across regions and time. This academic and museological turn has contended with problematic terminology, outdated chronologies, and insufficient evidence, and still has a long way to go in working toward equity for traditionally marginalized peoples and places. In 2020, the combined global pandemics of Covid-19 and systemic racism require that all who research, teach, and curate within these fields confront disciplinary biases and actively engage in public or social media discourse. In this lecture, Dr. Bryan C. Keene reflects upon endeavors to expand the remit of global medieval studies and also looks at how queer contemporary artists have drawn inspiration from the Middle Ages in order to disrupt oppressive hierarchical systems in the present.
Bryan C. Keene is an educator and curator dedicated to promoting equity in the study and display of the visual arts. He teaches art history at Riverside City College, where he is an advocate for LGBTQIA2+ communities. Prior to that, he organized over a dozen exhibitions as curator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum. His 2019 edited volume "Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Illuminated Manuscripts"; (Getty Publications) features contributions by twenty-six specialists on book arts from Afro-Eurasia, the Americas, and Austronesia. He holds a PhD from The Courtauld Institute of Art with a dissertation on Italian choir book illumination, and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Center of Medieval Art.
