The Medieval Academy Blog

MAA Centennial Grants

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Chris

In celebration of its upcoming 2025 Centennial, the Medieval Academy of America has earmarked funding for a series of Centennial Grants of up to $5,000 each supporting the planning and implementation of local events and projects celebrating and promoting medieval studies in education and the arts in North America. We are very pleased to announce the winners of the first round of MAA Centennial Grants:

The Bayeux Tapestry from Scratch (PI: Elizabeth K. Hebbard, Indiana University):
The Bayeux Tapestry from Scratch (BTFS) Project will mobilize experimental and experiential methods in humanities learning and research in Medieval Studies. BTFS celebrates traditional skills and artistry as an introduction to medieval culture more broadly, with a focus on the 70-meter-long textile depicting the background and events of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, likely produced for Odo of Bayeux shortly after the Norman Conquest and, it is believed, designed for display in the Bayeux cathedral. Likely called a tapestry because of its display context, the Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery featuring the work of many anonymous and probably women needlecraft artists using an embroidery technique of laid and couched work, as well as some other stitches identified through intensive study of the object during its careful restoration. The project will consist of a series of workshops walking participants through the many knowledge- and labor-intensive steps behind the creation of the textile, beginning with the planting of flax in the Book Lab’s academic garden at the IU Hilltop Garden and Nature Center. The workshops do not aim to recreate the Bayeux Tapestry, but instead to build knowledge and understanding around premodern agricultural and craft practices.

The Interconnected Middle Ages (PI: Michael A. Ryan, University of New Mexico):
This grant will support the 39th annual Helen Damico Memorial Lecture Series, sponsored by the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico in 2025. For the 39th annual Helen Damico Memorial Lecture Series, the proposed theme would be “The Interconnected Middle Ages.” This proposed theme centers the interconnectivity of the medieval past within much larger networks that operate on three levels. First, speakers could potentially share research on how medieval societies were interconnected on individual levels. How, for instance, did people within specific and local medieval societies connect with (or conversely turn from) each other on multiple levels? Second, speakers might choose to focus their remarks on the interconnectivity of medieval societies with other contemporary societies around the world, part of a growing movement on scholarship focusing on the “Global Middle Ages.” Finally, invited scholars might investigate how the Middle Ages interconnected temporally, located specifically between antiquity and early modernity and, more generally, as a crucial component that fashioned a premodern past linked with today.

Medievalists of Northern Louisiana (PI: Edward Holt, Grambling State University):
Grambling State University’s History Department will create a lecture series which highlights and promotes the vibrancy of medieval studies in Northern Louisiana. Held in Spring 2025, this series of six (6) lectures will showcase research by local medievalists through providing a venue to share their work with public audiences (student, faculty, and community). This series will culminate in a lecture by Dr. Monica Green, who will demonstrate possible futures for the field through her work at the intersection of digital, public, scientific, and (of course) medieval.

The Middle Ages for Educators Open Access Resource (OAR) Sweet Sixteen Playoffs (PI: Laura Morreale, Independent Scholar/Princeton University):
MAFE is always looking to expand both its content and user base and bring engaging materials about the medieval past to educators and the general public. Together with the stated support of the MAA’s K-12 committee, MAFE proposes a good-natured competition among medievalist colleagues to encourage contributions to the site, make educators aware of these OARs, and solicit K-12 educator expertise in creating and disseminating these same materials. The competition will be structured as a bracketed tournament featuring sixteen initial competitors in a single elimination competition. Initial submissions will be judged by a panel of K-12 educators and feedback offered, then the final decisions made by public viewing and voting. All semi-finalists’ projects will be featured at the MAA 2025 centennial meeting in Boston. Semi-finalists will receive a cash prize for their contributions and a stipend to attend a lunch-time roundtable at the Centennial Meeting on creating effective OARs for medieval studies.

Public Medieval: A Workshop for Graduate Students, ECRs, and Underemployed Medievalists (PI: Matthew Gabriele, Virginia Tech):
Virginia Tech (with partnership from UVA) proposes to host a 2 day workshop to mentor graduate students, early career researchers, and underemployed MedievALLists doing public-facing work. The symposium will be held in Fall 2024 (so that the training can be put into practice and events planned for the following year) and will be modeled on a “Public Classics” workshop held at Northwestern in October 2019. We will bring in several prominent public medievalists as mentors, who, over the course of our workshop, will staff roundtables touching including pitching to magazines/ newspapers, trade publishing, social media presence (and safety), working with local stakeholders and the community, the logistics of organizing in-person (and online) events, etc. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, each mentor will pair with a small group of participants as mentees, with significant time devoted to building relationships by discussing and adapting the participants’ own interests to their specific situations. Ideally, these will be the beginnings of long-term mentoring relationships, following the model that the MAA’s graduate students have used so successfully at conferences.

Space City Medievalism (PI: Daniel Davies, University of Houston):
Space City Medievalism is a series of events that stage encounters between contemporary poets and medieval literature in Houston, TX. During the 2024-25 academic year, we will organize a series of workshops between scholars of medieval literature and creative writers that explore different aspects of medieval poetics. Creative writers will then create their own responses to medieval literature, ranging from translations and adaptations to pastiches and confrontations, to create original compositions that intertwine contemporary and medieval poetics. The program will culminate with a public poetry reading in April 2025 in which program participants perform their original medievalist poetry. The reading will also feature a leading poet whose practice is informed by medieval literature.

Virtual Medieval Books in the Schools (PI: Michelle Hamilton, University of Minnesota):
We (Center for Premodern Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities) are creating online resources to complement our in-person K-12 classroom presentations on the history of the book in the Middle Ages. The Medieval Book in the Schools classroom program has been running successfully for almost twenty years (initiated by Professor Susan Noakes in 2005). Primarily a program for elementary school students, we have recently created a second
presentation aimed at high school and undergraduate students.

York Plays 2025 (PI: Matthew Sergi, University of Toronto):

On Saturday, June 7, 2025 (rain date Sunday, June 8, 2025), starting at 6:30am — and likely continuing past midnight — eighteen performance groups from across North America, organized by the Poculi ludique societas, will participate in staging all of the York Corpus Christi plays in medieval style, using Christina M. Fitzgerald’s new editions of the fifteenth-century York Register manuscript, repeating each play across four performance stations, outdoors on the University of Toronto campus (at Victoria College’s Burwash Quad).

We are very pleased to support these exciting projects. These lectures, workshops, exhibits, demonstrations, online resources, and performances will promote Medieval Studies across North America (Ontario, Massachusetts, Virginia, Indiana, Minnesota, Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico) to audiences including K-12 students and educators, graduate students and ECRs, senior scholars, and the general public. A second round of applications will open soon.

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Red Sun, Golden Rose: The Heraldic Identity of The Medieval Academy of America

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Chris

Red Sun, Golden Rose: The Heraldic Identity of The Medieval Academy of America

Dr. Chad M. Krouse

The Medieval Academy of America was formally incorporated on December 25, 1925 with a stated mission to, “conduct, encourage, promote and support research, publication and instruction in Mediaeval records, literature, languages, arts, archaeology, history, philosophy, science, life, and all other aspects of Mediaeval civilization, by publications, by research, and by such other means as may be desirable, and to hold property for such purpose.” [1] While the purpose and mission of the new scholarly enterprise was now clear, its visual identity would need to be addressed.

The Committee on Insignia, chaired by Ralph Adams Cram (1863-1942), presented its report to the Academy’s president and council on April 29, 1927 with a recommendation to adopt a newly designed coat of arms for the insignia. [2] Cram enlisted his friend and colleague Pierre de Chaignon la Rose (1872-1941) from Harvard for the design, as the pair collaborated on numerous heraldic commissions early in their careers. [3] Once referred as the “Herald from Harvard,” la Rose became the nation’s leading authority on heraldry and singularly credited for its revival in the US during the early 20th century. [4] Given the Academy’s short-lived history, la Rose would need to draw from multiple sources in order to construct an identity visually matching the Academy’s bold mission.

La Rose readily cautioned new clients regarding the purpose of heraldry, attempting to combat what he called, “heralditis,” or an overly romanticized view of heraldry pervasive in the American mindset. [5] The primary purpose of heraldry is to provide identification of an individual, an essential need as knights clad in heavy armor on the battlefield required unhesitating assurance of their opponent’s identity. Citing the foundational canon whenever he could, la Rose stated, “arma sunt cognoscendi causa, writes the mediaeval jurist, Bartholus de Saxoferrato, or as the much later Guillim puts it: arma sunt distinguendi causa.” [6] Armorial bearings, in other words, served as an early form of medieval branding by creating a permanent connection between the shield’s design and its owner–the forerunner to the modern-day concept.

Rendering clear and perspicuous designs for arms, while adhering to the rigid customs and rules of heraldry, is no easy task. Yet, la Rose’s artful creation for the Academy demonstrated his mastery of the subject; by weaving together historical themes intertwined with aims and aspirational goals, la Rose layered meaning, purpose, and depth in a straightforward manner. Cram’s report detailed la Rose’s rationale for the design:

“The arms I have prepared for the Mediaeval Academy are based upon the following considerations. Perhaps the two greatest figures of the Middle Ages, from the point of view of lasting influence, are St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante. In Christian iconography the ‘attribute’ of Aquinas is a flaming sun and the culmination of Dante’s vision is the mystical rose. Combining the two symbols in a simple heraldic ‘coat’—and all good Mediaeval heraldry is exceedingly simple—we have an emblem that may well stand as a cognizance for the Academy.” [7]

La Rose added that the sun not only dispelled the darkness caused by the former “Dark Ages,” but illustrated the powerful enlightenment that would spread as a result of the Academy’s work. As for the rose itself, la Rose wrote, “is expressive of sheer beauty as achieved through poetry and the fine arts—the fine flower of the aforementioned enlightenment.” [8]

The red sun and metallic gold are two distinctive elements drawn from the attributed arms of St. Thomas Aquinas, and la Rose would employ the pair again in his design for the Institutum Divi Thomae in Cincinnati. [9] Even more curious, la Rose proposed a nearly identical coat to the Academy’s arms in 1939 for St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island. La Rose’s proposal showed a red sun—albeit with the tips of the rays pointing dexter (left) rather than towards sinister (right) as in the Academy’s arms—charged with a gold book opened and inscribed with the motto veritas, all set upon a silver field. [10] If the sun is attributed to Aquinas, the proposal ignored the splendor of the red cross ascribed to the school’s dedication of St. George while confusing corporate identity altogether. [11] In the end, St. George’s School adopted la Rose’s second proposal incorporating the red cross and eliminated any possible confusion with the Academy’s arms.

The blazon, or written description of the shield’s composition, for the arms of the Medieval Academy of America given by la Rose is: “Gold, on a sun gules a rose of the field.” [12] La Rose’s design for the Academy represents the best in American heraldry–both in form and aesthetic. Through the abstract imagery of heraldry, the Academy’s arms have provided more than mere visual identification, they have become a cherished symbol of excellence in medieval scholarship the world over.

The genius of la Rose’s design philosophy, exemplified through the Academy’s arms, has ultimately produced timeless identities for hundreds of organizations bearing his work, and many of his armorial designs are still used today. [13] In April 2027, the Academy’s arms will celebrate a highly respectable 100th birthday, a testament to the visual power of identification which heraldry continues to enjoy well into the 21st century.

[1] Coffman, George. “The Medieval Academy of America: Historical Background and Prospect.” Speculum 1, no. 1 (January 1926): 17.

[2] “The Report of the Committee on Insignia” (29 April 1927), Archives of the Medieval Academy of America, Boston, MA.

[3] Following his highly criticized article on the subject, Cram would bow to la Rose as the expert on all matters of heraldry. See Cram, Ralph Adams. “The Heraldry of the American Church.” The Churchman 83, no. 26 (29 June 1901): 813-818.

[4] Galles, Duane. “The Reform of Ecclesiastical History Revisited.” The American Benedictine Review 43, no. 4 (December 1992): 414-428. La Rose never referred to himself as a herald, but rather an archeologist.

[5] La Rose, Pierre de Chaignon. “Ecclesiastical Heraldry-And Architects.” Liturgical Arts 2, no. 4 (Fourth Quarter, 1933): 190.

[6] La Rose, “Ecclesiastical Heraldry-And Architects,” 187.

[7] “Report Committee on Insignia”

[8] “Report Committee on Insignia”

[9] Painting of arms for the Institutum Divi Thomae (1936), CUA 116, Box 1, Archives of Catholic University, Washington, DC. The institute’s arms are blazoned: Or, on a cross Gules an open book edged with two clasps Or inscribed Religio Scientia between four bezants and in dexter chief a sun Gules.

[10] Preliminary sketch (1939), La Rose Box 5, Archives of St. George’s School, Middletown, RI. The blazon for the preliminary sketch: Argent, on a sun Gules an open book edged with two claps Or inscribed Veritas. The school rejected the preliminary proposal and adopted la Rose’s second design which was a heraldic cant, or pun, on the founder’s surname and blazoned: Lozengy Sable and Argent, overall a cross Gules.

[11] Based on the author’s collected data, by 1938 la Rose began his final journey, as illness forced him to ignore multiple requests for heraldic commissions.

[12] Ralph Adams Cram to John Marshall, April 29, 1927, Archives of the Medieval Academy of America, Boston, MA. A modern blazon for these arms would read: Or, on a sun Gules a rose of the field.

[13] Through the author’s ongoing research, more than 250 designs for corporate arms have been identified and attributed to la Rose.

About the Author:

Dr. Chad Krouse is a member of the Board of Governors of the American Heraldry Society and actively researching the life and heraldic work of Pierre de Chaignon la Rose (1872-1941) in anticipation of a book. Krouse’s research on la Rose was recently accepted for the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences to be held in Boston, September 2024, and will later be published in Genealogica & Heraldica.

Krouse earned a Bachelor of Arts from Hampden-Sydney College, a Master of Divinity degree from Sewanee: The University of the South, and his Doctor of Education degree from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).

With 16 years of service in higher education philanthropy, Krouse is the assistant vice president for university development at VCU. Krouse has presented nationally and served as an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary’s School of Education and the VCU L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. He lives in Richmond, Virginia.

About the MAA Archives:

As we head towards our Centennial in 2025, we are digitizing the MAA Archive and will make much of our historic material available in an open-access repository in the coming months. The MAA Archive is a treasure-trove of material pertaining to the history of Medieval Studies in the twentieth century. If you are working on the historiography of Medieval Studies in North America, you may find this material to be a rich resource. To learn more, please contact Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis (LFD@TheMedievalAcademy.org).

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MAA News – 2024 Baldwin Fellowship

Posted on February 2, 2024 by Chris

We are very pleased to announce that the 2024-2025 Birgit Baldwin Fellowship has been awarded to Gabriela Chitwood (University of Oregon) to support her dissertation project, “Toulouse Cathedral: Understanding Life in and Around a Cathedral under Construction.” In her words:

My dissertation interrogates how three audiences—the clergy, laity, and civic institutions—engaged with the Saint-Étienne Cathedral of Toulouse during the protracted construction of its gothic choir (1272-1614). Those three hundred years of erratic construction have left Toulouse Cathedral in two discrete sections—the choir and the nave—which are poorly integrated and of drastically different scales. For 342 years, clergy, laity, and the city at large relied on an incomplete structure—a building form that is ephemeral by nature.

The preserved disparity between Toulouse Cathedral’s early thirteenth-century nave and its monumental choir, in conjunction with extant archival records, supplies an opportunity to explore the social life of a church during construction. Cathedral construction campaigns were often protracted—stretching over many decades—impacting generations living in the shadow of a cathedral in progress. While we know master masons continuously redesigned buildings throughout these lengthy projects, my dissertation considers how cathedral users adapted to their local cathedral’s ever-changing form and continuous construction.

My project analyzes archival records documenting events and rituals at the cathedral and maps them onto the church space. My first chapter, “Toulouse Cathedral: A Construction History,” articulates the cathedral’s construction chronology and traces changes in generational sentiments towards the church through a close analysis of the extant structure. The subsequent four chapters illustrate the experience and perspective of distinct types of users within the cathedral’s iterative structure. Chapter Two, “The Cathedral and its Canons in the 14th Century,” focuses on the clergy, who, as those who perform liturgy, have the most intimate relationship with the space. I map cleric burials and liturgical performances found in the cathedral’s manuscripts onto the cathedral’s fragmented fourteenth-century space. Using the British Library’s Egerton MS 1897, I demonstrate in Chapter Three, “Toulouse, the Inquisition, and its Cathedral,” how Bernard Gui, chief inquisitor in the early fourteenth century, used sermons amidst the cathedral construction to bolster civic opinion of ecclesiastic power in Toulouse. Chapter Four, “Toulouse Cathedral and Saint-Étienne Parish,” turns to the cathedral parish to consider the laity’s reactions and adaptations to the cathedral’s shifting architecture. In my final chapter, “The Race Skywards: The Cathedral Belltower and Toulouse’s Towers,” I weave together a close architectural analysis of Toulouse’s extant towers, sixteenth-century illustrations, and archival material to trace the impact of Toulouse’s early modern economic boom and the rise of its merchant class on the cathedral’s construction, namely the building of its tower.

My dissertation makes three primary contributions to studies of late medieval architecture. First, it pushes beyond the traditional canon of French gothic architecture and refocuses academic studies on a monument of Southern France. Second, my considerations of Toulouse Cathedral reveal how users adapted to the ever-changing form of their cathedral’s space, shedding light on the complex relationship between people and architecture during construction. Third, it expands the audiences considered in relationship to cathedral construction from masons and clergy to include laity and understudied populations. This project builds a greater understanding of the social impacts of the common phenomenon of glacial church construction.

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MAA News – Call for Papers: The Medieval Academy at 100

Posted on February 2, 2024 by Chris

The 2025 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America
Harvard University, Cambridge MA
20-22 March 2025

The Centennial Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will take place on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hosted by Harvard University, Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis University, Fitchburg State University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stonehill College, Tufts University, and Wellesley College. While the conference will take place in person, the plenary lectures and some other events also will be live streamed. Plenary addresses will be delivered by Kristina Richardson (Professor of History and Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Virginia), Sara Lipton (Incoming President of the Medieval Academy of America and Professor of History, Stony Brook University), and Wendy Belcher (Professor of Comparative Literature and African American Studies, Princeton University). The Annual Meeting will be followed by the Sunday annual meeting of the Medieval Academy’s Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA).

The conference sessions, receptions, and pre-conference programs will take place at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Harvard campus is accessible by taxi and public transit from Boston’s Logan Airport as well as from the South and Back Bay Amtrak stations. In addition to Harvard’s own museums and libraries, visitors can take advantage of greater Boston’s rich dining, entertainment, and cultural resources, including the Museum of Fine Arts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Boston Public Library, all easily reached by the MBTA subway from Harvard Square.

Click here for additional information and the full Call for Papers

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MAA News – Upcoming Grant Deadlines

Posted on February 2, 2024 by Chris

The Medieval Academy of America invites applications for the following grants. Please note that applicants must be members in good standing in order to be eligible for Medieval Academy awards.

Belle Da Costa Greene Award

The Belle Da Costa Greene Award of $2,000 will be granted annually to a medievalist of color for research and travel. The award may be used to visit archives, attend conferences, or to facilitate writing and research. The award will be granted on the basis of the quality of the proposed project, the applicant’s budgetary needs (as expressed by a submitted budget and in the project narrative), and the estimation of the ways in which the award will facilitate the applicant’s research and contribute to the field. Special consideration will be given to graduate students, emerging junior scholars, adjunct, and unaffiliated scholars. Click here for more information. Click here to make a donation in support of the Greene Award. (Deadline 15 February 2024)

Olivia Remie Constable Award

Four Olivia Remie Constable Awards of $1,500 each will be granted to emerging junior faculty, adjunct or unaffiliated scholars (broadly understood: post-doctoral, pre-tenure) for research and travel. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2024)

MAA Dissertation Grants:

The nine annual Medieval Academy Dissertation Grants support advanced graduate students who are writing Ph.D. dissertations on medieval topics. The $2,000 grants help defray research expenses. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2024)

Schallek Awards

The five annual Schallek awards support graduate students conducting doctoral research in any relevant discipline dealing with late-medieval Britain (ca. 1350-1500). The $2,000 awards help defray research expenses. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2024)

MAA/GSC Grant for Innovation in Community-Building and Professionalization

The MAA/GSC Grant(s) will be awarded to an individual or graduate student group from one or more universities. The purpose of this grant is to stimulate new and innovative efforts that support pre-professionalization, encourage communication and collaboration across diverse groups of graduate students, and build communities amongst graduate student medievalists. Click here for more information. (Deadline 15 February 2024)

Please contact the Executive Director for more information about these and other MAA programs.

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MAA News – Working Group on Race & Gender Spring Programming

Posted on February 2, 2024 by Chris

RACE & GENDER IN THE GLOBAL MIDDLE AGES
https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/raceandgenderglobalmiddleages/
Spring 2024 Schedule

Friday, February 9, 2024 at 12pm-1:30pm EST
Dr. Elizabeth (Holley) Ledbetter, Department of Art History
Oberlin College

“The Racialized Scentscape of Fatimid Automata”

This paper explores the eight life-size mechanical sculptures stationed in the majlis of the early twelfth-century Fatimid vizier al-Afḍal Shāhanshāh (r. 1094-1121) as technological embodiments of enslavement. Performing for viewers, the jewel-bedecked female figurines purportedly bowed their heads when al-Afḍal entered the hall and returned to their upright position when he found his seat. The detailed textual description of these female mannequins also notes that four were white and made of camphor and four were black and made of ambergris, indicating that these automata would have likely released an aroma into the spaces they shared. Through their mechanical performances and material properties, the robotic replicas performed the enslaved, racialized female body in order to undergird the supremacy of the Fatimid caliphate. Using al-Jāḥiẓ’s concept of synesthesia and the theoretical framework of mediality, I consider how olfaction might have been used to aesthetically define racialized subjects and their representations in the Fatimid world.

Respondent: Dr. Denva Gallant, Rice University

Friday, March 8, 2024 at 12pm-1:30pm EST
Jonathan Correa-Reyes, Assistant Professor of English Clemson University

“Towards a Christian Genre of Man: Revisiting The Siege of Jerusalem”

In this chapter, I look at the rhetorical strategies through which subjects are reduced to objects in the Middle English romance The Siege of Jerusalem. For a long time, scholars neglected the Siege because of the undeniably violent treatment exercised against Jewish bodies over the course of the narrative. Recent readings of the text, however, seek to rehabilitate the narrative, arguing that the poet is sympathetic towards the Jewish victims of Roman violence. My approach to the Siege revises some of these more recent interpretations, ultimately arguing that if the poem extends sympathy or pity to the Jewish victims, these emotions still contribute to the upholding of a power structure that benefits from the oppression and exploitation of non-Christian bodies. Through my discussion of the text, I evince how the language and narrative structure of the Siege discursively lengthen the distance of non-Christian bodies, especially Jewish ones (but also those of pre-Christian Romans), from a Human ideal imagined to be coterminous with Christian subjectivity. This ontological distance allows the Christian actors of the story to claim that they are God’s chosen, a position reserved for the people of Israel in the Old Testament. The chapter first accounts for how The Siege advances notions of a Roman race that remains flawed, but closer to the ideal than the Jewish race. Next, the mass criminalization of the Jewish people is addressed, showing how throughout the story, this discourse facilitates their progressive dehumanization. The romance ends in a stark insistence that Jewish bodies are proper objects of systemic violence, ultimately sanctioning their eradication and enslavement.

Friday, April 5, 2024 at 12pm-1:30pm EST
Matthew Vernon, Associate Professor of English University of California, Davis

“Slumbering Legacies”

I will be sharing what I hope to be a chapter of my latest work. It explores the understudied legacies of W. E. B. Du Bois as a writer of “silly romances.” While this term is capacious in the time Du Bois uses it, I am particularly interested how he mobilizes the term as it relates to medieval romance. Throughout his work he returns to medieval romance as a form and a rhetorical maneuver that is meant to evoke a sharp contrast between accepted notions of Black and white subjectivities as well as historical trajectories. I will be positing that Du Bois is strategic in this deployment of romance to break down such clear binaries; at the same time he offers a model for a type of Black fiction that escapes the representational trap of political writing that was expected of him. Read in this way, we can see Du Bois as an antecedent to a contemporary move in African American literature away from the formative Civil Rights-era politics into a more opaque version of constructing Blackness.

Friday, May 17, 2024 at 12pm-1:30pm EST
Kristina Richardson, University of Virginia
John L. Nau III Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy Professor of History and Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures

Title: Abuse of Black Slaves: Reading Sufi Literature Against the Grain

Abstract: Both Sufism and Ibadism focus on the spiritual equality of all Muslims, and they also arose in Basra, Iraq, sometime between 650 and 680. Strikingly, from the mid-seventh century onward, Basra was also a primary disembarkation point for Indian Ocean slaves. Eighth- and ninth-century Sufi literature, especially in Basra, tended to equate the lowest social status (enslaved eastern African common laborers) with the highest spirituality. Reading the rise of Sufism in its historical context, I argue that extreme Sufi devotional behaviors, namely excessive weeping, fearfulness, fasting, and sleeplessness, were pious reenactments of, respectively, enslaved people’s grief, terror in hostile environments, undernourishment, and forced labor day and night.

This paper draws on early hadith, Ibadi legal opinions, poetry, literary prose, agricultural manuals, and chronicles in support of this allegorical reading. The argument also challenges the presumed benignity of Middle Eastern slavery and explores the consequences of disciplinary silences around non-elite agricultural enslavement.

**You only need to register once to be added to the working group and to have access to the shared Google folder with the Zoom link. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/raceandgenderglobalmiddleages/