In her book Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern, Carolyn Dinshaw describes doing medieval history as “touching across time” (36). The study of medievalism is in many ways about touching the lived experiences of past bodies and recognizing your similarities (and differences) from these bodies. When we consider “medievalism,” the most frequent examples are pieces of modern media that feel medieval in some way, whether explicitly (like Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail) or aesthetically (like Dungeons & Dragons). However, it is not only pseudo-medieval media that touches across time - our lived experience can also intersect with medieval anxieties and concerns.
In 2020, living through a global pandemic, mass unemployment, and civil unrest, it’s hard not to think of all the ways our bodies touch across time with the lived experience of medieval bodies. As medievalists, it is easy to make connections between the history we study and the history we see unfolding around us. Whether we see mass unemployment and unrest and think “ah yes, I feel like Chaucer looking down watching the Peasants Revolt!” or we look at anti-maskers and remember the etymology of the phrase “rat-licker,” we cannot help but touch across time with the medieval people who we meet in our scholarship. Scholars are not the only ones doing this, however; these connections to the past are being observed and acknowledged in non-academic spaces as well, particularly online. Communities have sprung up online surrounding the concept of plague doctors, with people cosplaying as the pseudo-medieval medical authorities while advocating for wearing masks. Plague memes have populated tumblr and reddit threads, as the internet has attempted to utilize historic iconography to process current tragedy through humor. This conference will be an exploration of the ways we still touch the medieval today.
Our keynote speaker will be Jonathan Hsy from George Washington University, and he will be speaking to us about his new book Antiracist Medievalisms: From “Yellow Peril” to Black Lives Matter (https://arc-humanities.org/products/a-65110-101114-66-7412/). How do marginalized communities across the globe use the medieval past to combat racism, educate the public, and create a just world? Jonathan Hsy advances urgent academic and public conversations about race and appropriations of the medieval past in popular culture and the arts. Examining poetry, fiction, journalism, and performances, Hsy shows how cultural icons such as Frederick Douglass, Wong Chin Foo, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Sui Sin Far reinvented medieval traditions to promote social change. Contemporary Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and multiracial artists embrace diverse pasts to build better futures.
