On Context: AIA-SCS 2019

Seeta Chaganti, Department of English, University of California, Davis

I present the following remarks in solidarity with Dan-el Padilla Peralta’s response to the racist aggression that Mary Frances Williams leveled at him at this year’s AIA-SCS meeting. I am not a classicist; however, both independently and through my work with the Medievalists of Color, I have responded to racism as it exists within a discipline exploring premodernity: I offer my perspective in that capacity. In the several days following Williams’ comment, I noticed calls for additional “context” and evidence for Williams’ comment despite the evidence that existed in social media testimonies and an account in IHEJosephine Crawley Quinn’s analysis further observes the expression of “coldly familiar academic skepticism,” what she calls the “comforting rigor and caution” of deferring certainty about “exactly what happened.” In the service of that comfort, some wished for video or other means to ascertain the full content of the presentation or the panel. I’d like to use this event in the Classics community as an opportunity to argue that making substantive change – to this academic field, to others, or elsewhere in the world – requires broadening our understanding of what constitutes explanatory or probative context for harmful events.

I didn’t know, until the news about Padilla appeared, that Mary Beard gave a featured lecture at this conference, but once I learned that fact, it seemed to me crucial context for understanding Williams’ comment. The SCS’s choice of Beard makes clear their inability to understand what they would need to do to achieve their goal of allowing “no place for racism.” Deplatforming racism means not only ejecting individuals who say racist things but also deploying relevant critical and political knowledge to uproot racism systemically. Let me be clear: I am utterly uninterested in categorizing Beard herself – or Williams, for that matter – as racist or not racist. My point is that Beard’s online presence indicates her unwillingness to discuss racial politics in an informed way. In that capacity, her prominent speaking position at the meeting necessarily impedes the SCS’s goal to stamp out racist behavior. As Priyamvada Gopal states, Beard’s denigration of Haiti fails to mention that country’s world-historically significant uprising against slavery and colonialism. Beard calls out what she terms “structural complicity” as part of a critique of US prison sentencing. Yet she declines to acknowledge decades of analysis considering those very issues of sentencing and social complicity through their deadliest manifestations: the wrongful conviction and unequal sentencing of black people. It’s Beard’s right not to learn or speak about racial politics in a critically engaged manner, but a conference aiming to combat systemic racism cannot amplify such a voice. In amplifying it, the conference produces a context allowing – I might even say ensuring – not only Williams’ comment but also, and significantly, the Sportula scholars’ racial profiling and harassment.

While I find it relevant context, I can see how concentrating on one much-discussed individual like Beard might appear to some to excuse accountability for what is in fact a systemic problem. I’d therefore like to get closer to Williams’ comment to think about how one of its more immediate contexts – the context, that is, of demanding context for it – can illuminate the event’s relationship to pervasive systems of bias. Williams’ words would seem confusing and shocking, to the point of beggaring belief, only to those who do not live inside a tapestry woven with the treacherous millefleur of just such statements. I’m not saying that no one should ask for any more information about Williams’ presentation. I am saying that those seeking further data might find themselves formulating more productive, precise, and thoughtful questions if they inflect their inquiry with an awareness of how the comment – and reports of it – sounded to people of color. That is also a context, one that speaks back to what has been called the “culture of disbelief,” a culture that risks harming many – people of color, women, poor people, and others.

In further understanding the dynamic of demanding context in the instance of the SCS, I suggest that we recognize that no act of seeking evidence or probative context is ever racially neutral. The racialized nature of our historical relationship to evidence-gathering provides an important context within which to understand the present example. Once again, in making that point, I’m interrogating the assumption that the construct of statement-plus-transcript-of-whole-conversation is the only determinative contextualizing model. Requests for context and evidence surrounding Williams’ statement might reflect a fair-minded, intellectually curious, and rational aim to seek the most information possible. At the same time, we must attend to the possibility that – for all of us – such requests arise from a deep-seated investment in white intentionality and particularly in what Koritha Mitchell and others identify as the special innocence of white women. In contrast to this cherishing of perceived innocence, the US’s record of not only the wrongful convictions and unequal sentencing I mentioned above but also extrajudicial punishment emphatically illustrates how, when it comes to black people, we cherish the ascription of guilt, and we tolerate and encourage the lack of evidentiary requirement to do so. In that context, I cannot accept that calls for additional evidence and context for Williams’ statement simply intend to ensure that misunderstanding or unfairness does not correspondingly occur in this instance. The evidentiary requirements for Williams and for the history of black condemnation are not parallel examples to set beside each other, nor a slippery slope on which one careens into the other. Desiring information to reward our expectations of a white woman’s innocent intentions, despite what many affirmed to be her virulent words, offers a telling contrast to the larger context of race and evidentiary demand. That contrast elucidates the white supremacist structure enabling the aggression in the first place. If we don’t actively target that white supremacy, we will always find ourselves sinking into the comfortable cushions of its historical precedent. We will always find ourselves in structures that suspect – with neither hesitation nor justification – and then police and exclude community members of color, while from within such structures we demand further proof upon proof that “crystal clear” racist words are in fact racist.

I have no doubt that some classicists will find what I’ve said presumptuous as well as uninformed about the nuances or history of the field. To the latter charge, I’d say that I am not the only non-classicist watching the field and interpreting the information available. What the SCS and Classics do next will matter more to many than the reasons or intentions underlying what they’ve done so far. To the former charge, I agree – no one asked for my outsider’s opinion. But as a medievalist, I hope to reach out to my fellow travelers in premodernity so that we can think together about what to do next. I and others have suggested to medieval studies the possibility of dismantling our field’s major institutions; I admire and support Padilla’s proposal that Classics keep “demolition…on the table” as well as his more recent elaboration on the possibility that his discipline will not get better without significant structural “overhaul.” As an academic with the privilege of a stable job at a stable university, I think it’s my duty – and the duty of all in such positions, as well as the duty of our scholarly organizations – to figure out how to topple the harmful edifices of these early-period fields while protecting from harm those most vulnerable residing in them. I’d love to see Classics and medieval studies think together about this question, which forms another context essential to consider.

Lost in Our Field: Racism and the International Congress on Medieval Studies

Nahir I. Otaño Gracia, Assistant Professor of Early British Literature, Beloit College

My first time at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), Kalamazoo, was bittersweet. I had been told about the book exhibits and what to do to reserve the books I wanted. I had been told about the dance and how fun it would be. I was told about the singing and drinking and of ducklings walking around campus, but I was not prepared for the racism. I was not prepared to be constantly asked why I was at the conference, why I studied Icelandic literature when I was Puerto Rican. I was not prepared to tell a stranger that there was no need to congratulate me for being the first Puerto Rican medievalist because I was 100% sure I was not. I was not prepared to be the only person of color in every single panel I attended. I remember recounting my experience to one of my professors and wondering out loud if I was meant to be a medievalist. It seemed to me that the attendees at ICMS were not convinced that I should. My professor gave me the best answer for me at that moment. “Fuck them and do what you want, you don’t owe them anything.”

It’s been over a decade since my first Kzoo, but the congress continues to be a hostile environment for marginalized academics. I would like to ask what many medievalists of color have been asking our colleagues and the institutions that represent us. What has academia lost? What have we lost by allowing racism to hurt people of color? How many talented professionals in various fields have we lost because of racism, sexism, xenophobia, ableism, etc.? For one, we lose the scholarship of those who never return, as Dr. Mary Rambaran-Olm’s essay “Anglo-Saxon Studies, Academia and White Supremacy” demonstrates. Imagine how many gifted but marginalized scholars have fallen to the wayside.

ICMS in particular has now lost a valuable scholar, Dr. Seeta Chaganti, who will not return to the conference and has written a strong statement about her experience. Her account offers some examples of how ICMS has chosen to support whiteness and white supremacy. She argues that choosing panels proposed by white scholars over similar panels proposed by medievalists of color reinforces our societal bias in favor of white candidates over a minority.And while ICMS has recently offered to revisit the issue of panel selection process, I believe a deeper problem persists in what Dr. Chaganti calls their “miscomprehension of academic freedom,” which “has enabled white supremacy.” Dr. Chaganti’s statement and Dr. Rambaran-Olm’s essay compel me to share my own experiences at the congress and why I stopped attending as a grad student. I share my experiences to add another voice to the conversation.

ICMS’s choices have not only affected the field from an institutional level; they have also affected countless individuals who experience harm at ICMS. I have experienced racist incidents every single time I have attended (2007, 2008, 2015 and 2017). Although ICMS is not the only medieval studies conference in which I have experienced racism, it is the site of the most egregious examples of it. It was the conference most in my mind when I wrote briefly about my negative experiences at medieval conferences in a post on why I wanted to open up medieval studies to be more inclusive. The post had the unexpected outcome that young colleagues of color – and not just medievalists – reached out to me with their own stories, expressing that they feel similarly. These young scholars are not interested in leaving the field, they are not going anywhere, but they too want change and accountability from the institutions that represent us as academics. I have heard so many stories from colleagues of color who have been betrayed by academia in general and medieval studies in particular; my story is just one of many. This is what I want to emphasize: my story is just one drop in a sea of racist experiences at ICMS. And my story is not just about experiencing racism but also about being rendered invisible.

I began my essay with my first experiences at ICMS; I would like to continue that story. I did not attend ICMS from 2009 to 2015; during that time, I did try to return. In 2011, I had several e-mail conversations asking ICMS to consider an abstract for the general sessions. In those conversations I was misgendered multiple times by two different medievalists associated with the conference. The exchange ended with my not being officially informed of my rejection. In our correspondence, I was misgendered even after I had mentioned I was a woman and even after I had alerted the Director of the Medieval Institute of the way ICMS representatives had treated me by email. In my communications to the Director, I connected the misgendering to my previous experiences of racism at the conference. My correspondence emphasized the harassment I received as a medievalist of color, and their responses simply ignored my comments — not once did they ask about my well-being or for further details. It seems that for them, the various forms of bias I experienced did not constitute evidence of a problematic conference climate in need of examination by its leadership. ICMS failed to acknowledge my concerns. When I tell most white medievalists about these incidents, I find them dismissed once again. I am assured by them that it was all a big misunderstanding, and that I should give ICMS a chance and go back to the conference.

I am not sure that white medievalists understand what they ask of me and other medievalists of color in making this suggestion. ICMS and other medieval conferences are usually so emotionally and psychologically draining for many of us people of color that we figure out ways to navigate them that will limit the prejudicial experiences we may encounter. Like others, I am an infrequent conference attendee and limit the panels I attend to minimize the racist encounters I experience. Regarding ICMS, I attend the conference only with trusted colleagues. Medievalists of color should not have to go through all this just to keep ourselves emotionally healthy, especially at a congress claiming to “encourag[e] an inclusive and intellectually safe environment that welcomes diverse perspectives.”

Although limiting conference participation can protect medievalists of color emotionally, it can also be detrimental to us professionally. Like other marginalized academics in medieval studies, I closed myself off from the field; I failed to make connections with senior medievalists in my area of expertise and to meet allies who would make medieval studies more welcoming. I lost valuable feedback that would improve my work, and the opportunities to enhance my standing in the field, lowering my chances to succeed in a hostile academic environment. I continued to be a medievalist, but I left medieval studies. Academics of color are vastly underrepresented in tenured and tenure track faculty positions. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) points out that “in fall 2015, of all full-time faculty at degree-granting postsecondary institutions, 42 percent were White males, 35 percent were White females, 6 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander males, 4 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander females, 3 percent each were Black females and Black males, and 2 percent each were Hispanic males and Hispanic females.”Native Americans made up less than one percent. The numbers are even more dismal for full time professors. For me, it took a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the University of Pennsylvania, my involvement with the Fellowship of Medievalists of Color, and the mentorship of senior medievalists of color to get me back on track. Furthermore, without the Postdoctoral Fellowship, which enhanced my standing within academia and afforded me time to publish, it would have been impossible even to try to integrate, let alone succeed (I begin a tenure track position this August). The reality is that most young scholars of color will not have the opportunities I was afforded. The very real need to protect ourselves from racism by withdrawing from spaces where the potential for harm is high hinders our chances for success. Because of this, in Medieval Studies, ICMS has been at the forefront of limiting the odds of medievalists of color to succeed.

Dr. Chaganti’s bravery as well as the mentorship of many colleagues of color have given me the courage to be part of the field and therefore I can no longer stay silent. I hope that other medievalists of color speak out about their experiences at ICMS so that the Medieval Institute cannot deny the ways that their actions and their inaction have made it harder for medievalists of color to thrive as medievalists. ICMS’s response to BABEL’s letter of concern proposes a working group that “represents the full breadth of the international community of medievalists” in order to make changes to the congress’ selection process. I also hope that ICMS’s leadership will use this working group to help them describe the concrete steps they are planning to take to ensure medievalists in marginalized positions are not harmed by that very community that ICMS represents. I will ask again, what have ICMS and medieval studies lost because of racism? They have lost an immeasurable amount of research that would have made the field better. They have lost scholars of color who will not return to the field. They have also lost the confidence of countless medievalists such as myself who cannot trust ICMS to hold to their own stated commitments to inclusivity, intellectual freedom, and a safe environment for all their attendees.

The data on discrimination against people of color within a working environment is staggering. Here are but a few articles, including academic studies, on the topic: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/11/1706255114.full, http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html, http://www.nber.org/papers/w21612, https://hbr.org/2014/06/does-race-or-gender-matter-more-to-your-paycheck, https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2017/05/17/minorities-who-whiten-resumes-get-more-job-interviews/#1bd5f65f7b74,

I think it is important to point out that the data cited above includes “professors, associate professors, assistant professors, instructors, lecturers, assisting professors, adjunct professors, and interim professors” in full time positions not just academics in tenure track positions.

Statement Regarding ICMS Kalamazoo

The following is an open statement written by Seeta Chaganti, Professor of English at UC Davis. Please take a moment to read this important statement on academic freedom and racial justice.

* * *

I can no longer participate in nor support the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo. While performing a seemingly virtuous commitment to academic freedom, the actions of this organization’s leadership not only silence marginalized voices but also enable racially-based harassment. More than one organization whose intellectual profile reflects a commitment to politically progressive critical theory along with social and racial justice has found its voice minimized in the planning for next year’s conference. In what follows, I address this issue regarding one such organization. But I additionally point out that an environment permitting such minimization also facilitates harassment and potential harm. It is an environment entirely inimical to genuine academic freedom.

“Academic freedom” is a complicated term, in part for its ambiguous relationship to free speech. We have become increasingly willing to acknowledge that the white nationalist right exploits free speech principles to shield their destructive and murderous ideology. In other words, we are a long way from unequivocally admiring the ACLU’s defense of Nazi marchers in Skokie, IL, 1978 – as is the ACLU itself. Invoking the work of Jelani Cobb, Alex Blasdel describes an emerging recognition that “the abstract discussion of first-amendment principles can itself seem like a tactic to shift the conversation away from pervasive injustice.” The very principles underlying free speech guarantee that right more effectively to some people than to others. In academic and public spheres, there exists alongside this conversation one concerning academic freedom. As Farhana Sultana observes, their deliberate conflation has precipitated “a crisis currently facing universities and academia…where all opinions are seen as equivalent when they are evidently not.” Academic freedom is vulnerable to the misguided perceptions not only that all ideas have equal legitimacy but also that all ideas have equal access to freedom in the first place.

In May 2018, I organized a session at ICMS, entitled “Whiteness in Medieval Studies 2.0,” which included Dr. Dorothy Kim. Attending the conference was a scholar who had, in 2017, drawn Dr. Kim to the attention of Milo Yiannopoulos, an act that perpetuated the racially-based harassment of Dr. Kim. Concerned for Dr. Kim’s ability to speak her opinions with freedom in the possible presence of this colleague, I asked the conference leadership to communicate to the latter that her presence was not welcome at the session. I deemed this request necessary due in large measure to the imbalance of power implicit in a dynamic of harasser and harassed. The latter’s sense that they might express themselves unfettered rarely equals the former’s. ICMS leadership refused my request to exclude a conference registrant from a session on the grounds of “academic and intellectual freedom.”

This decision allowed a false conception of academic freedom to undermine true academic freedom. The conference leadership displayed an inaccurately absolutist understanding of academic freedom, and that inaccuracy created a space to accommodate the harm and silencing of scholars of color. The space of conferences has come to include not only the physical setting of the gathering but also the social media sites that house ancillary activity (hence ICMS’ extensive social media guidelines). In this larger space, specifically on the scholar’s Facebook page, racist harassment of the panelists and me occurred. One might argue that ICMS’ inaction regarding the conference site itself bears no relationship to the scholar’s online activities. I would submit, however, that the conference’s indifference to this scholar’s history of enabling and stoking harassment encouraged the continuation of such behavior without fear of consequence. After the conference, pictures of the session appeared online inadvertently (later removed, with apologies, by the original photographers). The scholar in question reposted these images knowing, I would contend, their power to incite certain followers to make disparaging remarks. Even if one finds the comments themselves trivial, this scholar’s use of her online space to make us vulnerable to that attention is not. Her connection to Yiannopoulos (in addition to her tagging him, he thanks her in his unpublished book acknowledgments) suggests that the images and rhetoric appearing on this Facebook page could have become available to an online community not merely derisive but angry and violent in its racism. She and her followers freely expressed themselves while the panelists and I read racialized reactions to images of our faces and bodies with mounting apprehension. After this experience, I do not consider the conference sufficiently free of the threat of harm to speak at it. True academic freedom cannot exist where such threat lies.

In the wake of the 2018 conference, developments pertaining to ICMS 2019 increased my concern regarding the conference’s occlusion of marginalized voices through an inaction construed as neutrality. The organization Medievalists of Color (MOC) sponsored one proposed session – a continuation of the whiteness workshop – and co-sponsored four others. The workshop, a service to the medieval studies community as a whole, was accepted. The four co-sponsored sessions, on specialized topics concerning the interests and expertise of medievalists of color and their organizational collaborators, were rejected. Sessions on similar topics proposed by majority white organizations were accepted, and individual scholars of color might surely participate in those organizations’ panels and have their viewpoints represented that way: the organization MOC does not monopolize critical conversations about race. But MOC co-sponsorship formalizes the intellectual guidance provided by scholars of color in a field where we remain extremely underrepresented. The rejection pattern minimizes that intellectual guidance at ICMS.

I worry that ICMS’ misprision of academic freedom overlaps with an unexamined understanding of “fairness” (a term appearing in the online account of the congress committee’s role). Presumably, according to this stance, no organization should dominate a conversation that others also wish to join. I suggest, however, that as with the academic freedom argument above, we are not dealing with a neutral situation where all voices have always received equal privilege and protection. ICMS’ choices trouble me not only for their impact but also for the possibility that they were made without critical thought to what a space of real academic and intellectual freedom would look like. Such a space would acknowledge the necessity of actively seeking out and dismantling those structures by which “tradition” (also invoked in their account and potentially applicable to both content and selection process) camouflages white supremacy’s particular forms of repression. The formula that their account describes – “a balance between respecting tradition and encouraging innovation” – cannot suffice to ensure academic freedom because it does not aggressively interrogate the meanings of either “tradition” or “innovation.”

In more than one way, ICMS’ miscomprehension of academic freedom has enabled white supremacy. I shall not return to ICMS because its understanding of academic freedom cannot accommodate appropriate response to white supremacist actions and structures. I make my statement individually for two reasons. First, I aim to draw attention specifically to the academic freedom issue at stake. Second, while other letters might express demands that could be met within the current structure, I do not make such demands. I stand in solidarity with those other letters and actions: we all represent different points along a spectrum of agitation for change. But when I say “dismantle,” I advocate a radically different alternative to ICMS that would fulfill this conference’s important functions while also committing to antiracist practices and values.

IONA: SEAFARING CONFERENCE 2019 (April 11-13, 2019)

Medievalists of Color is sponsoring some exciting panels at IONA: SEAFARING CONFERENCE 2019 and we’re looking for participants. The conference will be held April 11-13, 2019 at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver BC, Canada. Please spread the word and join us!

Organizers: Dr. Mary Rambaran-Olm, Dr. Nahir Otaño-Gracia, and Dr. Valerie M. Wilhite

Please send approx. 250 word proposals to maryrr@btinternet.com by July 15, 2018.

WORKSHOP: DECENTERING WHITENESS IN MEDIEVAL TEXTS, IN THE FIELD, AND THE CLASSROOM
The purpose of this two-part workshop is to encourage participants to seek out texts, themes and branches of medieval studies beyond white, Christian, Anglo-centric methodologies in research, the classroom, and within our understanding of the field. We encourage scholars from various fields and disciplines to participate in this workshop. The major feature of the workshop is ‘how to be a better ally’ which will allow participants to engage in discussion on what ally-ship means and how one can strengthen ally-ship in the workplace and classroom.

SEMINAR: MOVING THE NORTH ATLANTIC BEYOND IONA
This is a three-panel seminar. When we think of the medieval North Atlantic we tend to think within Anglo- or Euro-centric parameters, much to the detriment of our understanding of the entire region, its history and development. So much is lost in our discussions of the medieval past by excluding regions within or beyond the north. This session seeks 15-20 minute papers on medieval subjects that expand our understanding of the early medieval North Atlantic. Discussions may include papers on topics dealing with medieval Iberia, Africa, and as far north as the Canadian archipelagos to the far reaches of the Canary Islands. Further to this, themes might range from the inclusion of Iberian and African material in North Atlantic Studies to racism and Digital Humanities/academia, and ‘others’ in Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scandinavian, and Welsh studies, history, archaeology, art history and other fields. These sessions will challenge our understanding of the medieval North Atlantic and encourage thinking beyond the norm.

Welcome to a New Reality! Reflections on the Medieval Academy of America’s Panel: “Inclusivity and Diversity: Challenges, Solutions, and Responses”

By Nahir Otaño Gracia, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Pennsylvania; and Assistant Professor of Early British Literature, Beloit College, beginning Fall 2018.

With ample help from Medievalists of Color, I organized the “Inclusivity and Diversity: Challenges, Solutions, and Responses” panel at the annual meeting of the 2018 Medieval Academy of America (MAA), and I wrote proposals for new initiatives to enhance diversity at the MAA.

As I reflect on the 2018 MAA annual meeting and the “Inclusivity and Diversity” panel, I can’t help but think of the conference through the Old Irish term ingnáth, which we often translate as “strange” and “unfamiliar,” but also as “wonderful,” “remarkable,” “unusual.”[1] In Serglige Con Culainn, Lóeg (Cú Chulaind’s charioteer) uses ingnáth to describe the Irish Otherworld.[2] He describes it as “bale ingnad cíar bo gnád”: “wonderful though not unknown” (eDIL).[3] But the range of meaning of that sentence is extensive: why not translate as “unfamiliar but familiar,” “wondrous but well-known,” “strange but customary,” and so on? The conference and the panel were moments of familiarity, innovation, and estrangement. Just like your standard trip to the Otherworld.

The Otherworld seems a wondrous place to those invited and welcomed in, but when heroes such as Lóeg, Cú Chulaind, and Arthur enter uninvited, it can be monstrous (and so can the heroes).[4] And, in many instances, this is how conferences in medieval studies feel to me. I never know if I am welcomed and whether the experience will be a wondrous positive adventure in which I meet colleagues and enhance my own learning, or if I am seen as an intruder and will experience monstrous racist encounters in which I will be treated like a Beserkr that needs to be avoided or appeased at a moment’s notice; and then the conference will feel like I am trapped, surrounded by formidable enemies. I am happy to say that the MAA was very welcoming, I was given funds to be able to go, and I felt that my contributions to the MAA where acknowledged and desired.

But ingnáth is not just about estrangement and unfamiliarity; it also about seeing things you know become transformed into something else entirely. I have been living in Puerto Rico since July of 2017 and Hurricane Maria changed my life in 48 wintry hours (my husband talks about it here). The day before the storm, I sent Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis drafts of the proposals for the initiatives mentioned above (the Inclusivity and Diversity Committee, Belle Da Costa Greene Award, and the Diversity and Inclusivity Travel Grant) because I imagined that the communication systems were going to be unreliable for a while. I was not prepared for zero contact for the first few weeks, four and a half months without electricity, and the constant loss of phone and internet signal that continues to impact us.

Nevertheless, going to Atlanta, to a hotel full of medievalists, seemed so much stranger than the changed landscape of my Puerto Rico. Going to a medieval conference where the CARA plenary talk was titled “Medieval Responses to Natural Disasters” was more like the Otherworld than experiencing a natural disaster, even if listening to the paper about medieval floods caused me to flash back to trying to stop water from pouring into my home while 37 weeks pregnant. I felt a sense of kinship with one particular description, from a medieval source, of the destruction that flooded rivers can cause. In Atlanta, I felt myself to be in the Otherworld—a place strange and familiar but not real, an illusion. I felt strange and unfamiliar: the MAA was an Otherworld, but friends and colleagues everywhere were asking about my wellbeing and were worried about my family.

Strangely enough, the framing of the MAA Diversity and Inclusivity panel itself exemplifies this duality. Throughout the panel, I introduced my colleagues who would then stand and give their papers. The panelists and I were sitting down on a long table, and on the background an image was displayed on a screen. The image portrays a woman running at the beach; it is the exact same one in my own computer screen at home. I have never been front and center of such a well-attended event, and yet it was framed by an image I look at every day, as if the attendants of the panel could see what I see every day. Wonderful though not unknown, indeed!

(Picture of me introducing the Inclusivity and Diversity Panel at the 2018 MAA with image of women running at the beach.)

 

The conference organizers described the panel as innovative, the first of its kind in MAA history, and suggested that part of the innovation of the panel is that it reminds the MAA membership, especially the old guard, that medievalists are human. That we are not just scholars; we are human. The pronouncement was meant to encompass all of the membership, including me and Medievalists of Color, but I think it was especially meant to encompass those that are still learning to cope with the rapidly changing landscape of medieval studies. Suddenly, medievalists are being held accountable to push against the appropriation of the Middle Ages by white supremacists, and many well-meaning medievalists are afraid to make mistakes because they have never had to think about their jobs as potentially harmful. But to a woman of color whose humanity has been questioned in different contexts, who writes from Puerto Rico where our right to dignity has been questioned by a government that refuses to see Puerto Ricans as human, the proclamation that the panel was about reminding everyone of our humanity had very different connotations.

Dr. Cord Whitaker’s talk was poignant for me in this regard. He asked that we imagine ourselves in a tropical paradise lounging on a chair reading Chaucer. The image resulted in laughter, seemingly too bizarre to imagine the possibility as something other than a joke. And I laughed because I understand the conventions and I knew that it was time to laugh. But what happens when a room full of your peers, colleagues, and mentors laugh at your reality? I am Puerto Rican, I grew up in the mountains of a tropical island, and I would read by the beach. I read Chaucer for the first time by the beach (and in Spanish). I read Arthur by the beach. I live in complete certainty that most medieval Irish people would have loved to lounge by the beach with me. The oceans of my island would have been a welcomed Otherworld to them even as it is a certain reality to me.

It seemed that my lived experience was unimaginable to a room full of medievalists. But Dr. Whitaker knew that laughter would come and he used that laughter to point out that we should search for the Middle Ages in those places that we imagine empty of the Middle Ages. That just because we cannot imagine Chaucer inhabiting the tropics, does not mean that he doesn’t already live there. And just like that—in a new defining moment, a moment of shared humanity—Cord turned the unimaginable into reality and gave value to my lived experiences without even realizing it. And suddenly the MAA was not the Otherworld, medieval studies was real, and I was real in medieval studies.

Each speaker created such a moment for me. Their discussions were wholly theirs and yet I recognized myself in them. This is why I went to the MAA and I worked on starting the Inclusivity and Diversity Committee, the Belle Da Costa Greene Award, and the Diversity and Inclusivity Travel Grant; and this is why I plan to be a fixture in the Medieval Academy of America: because I am real, I refuse to be trapped in the Otherworld, and this is how I know to open up the doors.

I will end by noting that I am very proud of these initiatives, especially the new Belle Da Costa Greene Award, which will be granted to a medievalist of color for research and travel. I urge everyone to donate to the fund if they can and help open up more doors.


[1] See the electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language (eDIL) for a more nuanced definition of ingnáth.

[2] I will openly admit that Lóeg is my favorite character. He is the getaway driver of Cú Chulainn, the most famous warrior of the Irish Ulstermen. More importantly, in Serglige Con Culainn, Lóeg closely resembles the fili or “poet” of the Irish stories. He is the first character to access the Otherworld, he tells the other Ulstermen about what he sees, and convinces Cú Chulainn to go there by reciting some masterful poetry. Once Lóeg and Cú Chulainn are in the Otherworld, Lóeg is the only one who can help calm Cú Chulainn’s warp-spasm, a transformation similar to that of a berserkr, before he kills everyone. Much as the fili is a poet, historian, and druid, Lóeg is commanded to fulfill these obligations.

[3] Serglige Con Culainn, edited by Myles Dillon, xviii, 93. Ingnáth is often contrasted with gnáth, meaning “customary, usual, familiar, well-known” (see the eDIL).

[4] Proinsias Mac Cana describes the Otherworld in the following manner: “Being, as it is ultimately, an imaginative reflex of human attitudes and aspirations, this other kingdom assumes different forms according to the occasion and circumstance, but these forms are not sharply or consistently distinguished. When a mortal visits the otherworld by invitation, it is usually pictured as a land of contentment and joy. But when it is invaded by human heroes—a favorite theme in storytelling and one which is related to Cú Chulainn, Fionn and Arthur among others—then it wears a very different image. It may still be a country of riches and of wonders—and frequently the declared object of such heroic expeditions is to seize its treasures and its magic talismans—but inevitably its status relative to mankind has been transformed: its rulers and its welcoming hosts are now formidable and even monstrous enemies, fit to test the mettle of the greatest hero” (Celtic Mythology, 126).