Tag: #Commit2Change

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The Massachusetts Medievalist on Dating Beowulf and dating Beowulf

For the past three weeks #MedievalTwitter has largely criticized the new Dating Beowulf volume, released 26 December on the open-access portal of Manchester University Press and edited by Erica Weaver and Dan Remein. I’m a contributor to this volume, so obviously cannot be anything like an impartial part of this conversation; that said, I’d like to try to add my own thoughts and suggest some ways for the field to continue to develop.

One point reiterated on Twitter was that the editors did not respond to the social media critiques for almost two weeks; I suggest that ire should be redirected towards the press itself. Erica and Dan were obviously instructed not to make any statement at all until after the press’s legal team had looked at the allegations of plagiarism and lack of citation. Because of the calendar and the odd release date of the volume, the press was not at full staff until Monday 6 January, and the press’s eventual statement on Wednesday 8 January did not take responsibility for the delay. Manchester’s lack of support here should be termed “throwing the junior colleagues under the bus.”

Other parts of the criticism have focused on two related points: the absence of scholars of color in the contributors’ list and lack of citation/reference to Adam Miyashiro’s work in two essays focused on ethnicity and indigeneity.

In a statement issued by the Press, the editors “apologize for not creating a more inclusive contributorship and for not citing Adam Miyashiro’s blog post.” I would like to add to the first part of that apology – I’m sorry for not asking about diversity in the contributors’ list back when the volume was conceived, and as one of the more senior contributors I perhaps could have spurred Erica and Dan to prioritize diversity at that early point in the process. However, in 2015/2016, when they were commissioning the essays, it wasn’t on my radar to ask that question. Should it have been? Absolutely yes. But it wasn’t, and I regret that.

The monumental and necessary changes in medieval studies around racism and exclusion are happening much faster than the glacial pace of traditional academic publishing. In 2015, the conversation about inclusion tended to focus on gender, largely in pushback against “manels” and all-male essay collections, and of course we all know that the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women. In the past year or so, I have asked editors about diversity in contributors’ lists twice, and been assured that scholars of color are included in those forthcoming collections — baby steps, to be sure, but at least moving in the right direction.

The second focus of the social media critique – the lack of citation of Adam Miyashiro’s blog post– refers specifically to two essays by other colleagues; I trust they will respond to that allegation in some venue at some point in the near future.

Much of this critique has elided the important point that the Dating Beowulf volume (Manchester, 2019) is meant to be a riposte to the traditional medieval studies methodologies that produced The Dating of Beowulf (Toronto, 1981) and The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment (Brewer, 2014), the latter frequently reprimanded in reviews and in conversations at conferences for its combative and insulting tone. Dating Beowulf seems (ironically) somewhat dated already, in its clumsy but well-intentioned acknowledgement of the whiteness of the essayists. Yet it also makes many thoughtful and interesting contributions to the critical conversation around this most iconic of Old English poems. As the internet often tells us, two things can be true.

I don’t want to date Beowulf — he’s definitely not my type. I’m not all that interested in dating Beowulf beyond the date of the manuscript. In Dating Beowulf, Erica Weaver and Dan Remein have provided a variety of new ways to think about the poem, ways that integrate discussion of emotional intimacy and personal relationship into understanding of this hyper-canonical text. I hope the twitter conversation about the book in the last few weeks has ensured that academic publishers will secure inclusive lists of contributors going forward.  I urge my colleagues throughout medieval studies to be both generous and productive: to accept Erica and Dan’s public apology as we continue to try to work together towards a more inclusive and more vibrant medieval studies for ourselves, for our students, and for our communities.

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The Massachusetts Medievalist thinks about the power dynamics of “Anglo-Saxon”

Like all medievalists who work in English studies, the Massachusetts Medievalist has been thinking a lot about the term “Anglo-Saxon” and its current usages in academic medieval studies and in culture more broadly defined. Two Medium columns chronologically bookend the current discussion:  Mary Rambaran-Olm‘s in June 2018 and Catherine Karkov‘s on 10 Dec 2019. Between the two, much has happened politically, culturally, and academically: other scholars have weighed in on various blogs and one group of largely UK medievalists has issued a public statement about the “responsible use of the term Anglo-Saxon.”  White supremacists on both sides of the Atlantic have continued their love affairs with medievalist imagery and a supposedly pure, white, patriarchal European past (a situation well summarized by Michael Wood). Throughout, I’ve been contributing to the online debate via email and twitter when I thought I could make a constructive point, and trying to support my colleagues.

I’ve also been musing about the linguistic power dynamics embedded in this call to move away from usage of “Anglo-Saxon” as a term for the language and cultures of England before the Norman Conquest of 1066 (no, it’s not a “ban,” as some UK scholars have called it – who would enforce it? how?).

Many of the generally acceptable terms used in professional discourse to describe race and ethnicity have changed dramatically over the last 100 or so years.  “Colored” (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, established 1909) gave way to “Negro” (United Negro College Fund, established 1944), which was superseded by “Black” (the Black Studies department at San Francisco State, founded in 1968), and then by “African-American” (National Museum of African-American History and Culture, established 2003). “Oriental” and “Asian” demonstrate a similar trajectory. There are multiple examples of this sort of linguistic change from other fields as well: disability studies, gender studies, etc.

Unlike these sorts of gradual and widely accepted linguistic changes, the debate about “Anglo-Saxon” centers on a term used to refer to a dominant rather than a marginalized group.  A change from “Anglo-Saxon” to “early English medieval” entails radical, linguistic de-centering of a form of whiteness constructed during British Imperialism and American Manifest Destiny in the second half of the nineteenth century.  A major and unacknowledged part of the resistance to retirement of the term “Anglo-Saxon” is opposition to a change advocated by the marginalized (scholars of color, early career researchers, graduate students) not just TO but also ABOUT the controlling group (who overwhelmingly are “Anglo-Saxon” in the way the term is used outside of medieval studies: i.e. white). Rather than seeking for change in the way a marginalized group is described in normative discourse (that’s “women,” not “girls”), this change challenges the self-identification and position of white scholars in the implicit linguistic hierarchy of the field.

Enactment of this change by white academics would then confirm momentum away from an entrenched, traditional academic power axis towards an expansive diversity of colleagues and of research interests. I’m urging my white colleagues to edit “Anglo-Saxon” out of course descriptions, course titles, lecture slides, research drafts, social media, and general conversation: those seemingly small, individual changes will accrue to move “Anglo-Saxon” firmly onto the list of outdated racial and ethnic terms as we move towards a more inclusive and global medieval studies  – and that, after all, is the ostensible goal of all parties in the debate over “Anglo-Saxon.”

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The Massachusetts Medievalist aspires to decolonize the curriculum

The Massachusetts Medievalist has had a tumultuous couple of weeks. Not only did the primary organization in my field, the society formerly known as the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, completely implode in what I hope is a productive and ultimately healthy way, but I ended up in the OR having major emergency surgery right as fall term classes were starting. (Personal side note: no cancer; multi-week, but manageable recovery; my dept.head amazing lining up substitute faculty for all classes).

My planned blog about decolonizing the curriculum seems ever more crucial now, in the wake of last week’s discussions about racism in pre-Conquest English studies (the members of no-longer-ISAS did indeed vote to change the name of the organization, but it’s not entirely clear what will happen next). As American universities as a whole grapple with the structural racism behind our bronzed gates and within our ivory towers, I want to think a bit about how Lesley’s new English major may help to make some changes to make the field of English overall more welcoming to students of color, at least at my own regional university.

Two years ago, Lesley’s Cultural Literacy and Curriculum institute got me thinking about the ways that our English major – a very standard set of requirements for surveys, seminars, and “electives in the major” — was set up to reinforce coverage and periodization, inadvertently making many students feel excluded and unwelcome. The sequence of coursework basically made students work chronologically through literary history, with a substantial majority of texts by white men, despite well-intentioned attempts throughout to diversify represented authors in classes like English Lit I or American Lit survey. Depending on the order she selected the core courses, a student could theoretically be a second semester junior before taking a class with even 50% of authors who were not white and male. It didn’t take rocket science to figure out why English is one of the least diverse undergraduate majors at Lesley, despite our quite good numbers of students of color overall (ranging around 40%).

The new major attempts to address these and other issues to provide a robust curriculum that will include and welcome all students from the first core course to senior seminar. Two guiding principles:

1. “Coverage” is impossible: while we use the phrase “expanded literary canon” in some descriptive materials, that canon is now so large that any attempt to “cover” it is doomed to failure. It’s more important – and more feasible – to study a variety of voices, cultures, genres, and time periods than to try to make sure that students have read a laundry list of “core texts” (mostly from the traditional western canon of white, male authors) previously defined as essential. Such “coverage” has often “included” authors of color as seeming add-ons at the end of a semester of chronologically presented texts (the Massachusetts Medievalist herself is a guilty party here).

2. Skills are more important than content: even more importantly, we are trying to teach students how to be strong critical readers and writers, to help them build a toolbox that they can use when engaging with ANY texts in any situation, formal or informal. Students will be ready to think and talk and write about literary structure, about character development, about symbol and theme and literary figures. They can hone those skills without Beowulf and Chaucer – but if they decide that they want to read Beowulf and Chaucer, in a class or on their own, they will have the skills to do so. We hope.

We are devising some assessment processes that will help us to gauge the success of the new requirements in the major. For me, one of the crucial metrics will be growth in the number of English majors overall, but especially in the numbers of students of color choosing to major in English. Stay tuned.