In The Washington Post, Donna Zuckerberg writes about the alt-right’s interest in Greek and Roman antiquity. Gods help us. All I’ll say here is that given our American history of ethnicity and immigration, it’s remarkable that anyone would turn to the ancient Mediterranean in the cause of celebrating “whiteness.”
Some of my thinking about the ancient world and our world may be found in this post.
[Medieval studies has its own alt-right problem.]
Monday, November 12, 2018
Gods help us
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The other day, I went googling for blog posts about Medieval Mystics meditating on Christ's wounds, to link to in a non-academic discussion. I found several posts by actual medievalists, often anonymous, al of them sexist and racist either in that post or across their blogs. I was actually shocked.
I guess academic blogs aren't really a thing anymore, so nobody would do it unless they wanted to say something they feared to attach their names to. I quit doing it very much when I felt like my ideas were getting nicked. It was a tradeoff, as blogging really helped me clarify what I was thinking about.
Medieval writings have notions about gender and embodiment that seem so foreign and I'd read good books on them, so I'd made assumptions that the field must be mostly composed of people who wanted to explore the implications of these things. Alas to be disabused.
That’s depressing. I don’t know much about the shape of medieval studies. In classical lit though there’s abundant forward-thinking scholarship about gender and sexuality.
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