It has been a heavy week as we in the global north struggle with our collective legacies of racism and heavy handed policing. Some of my colleagues of colour are working on a piece for the blog about race and racism in the medieval period and in medievalist circles now, which will be published ASAP. Until then, for an overview I have compiled some academic reading lists for you. I have tired, where possible, to supply online materials.
Happy reading, and solidarity.
Articles on policing:
- William M. Bowsky, “The Medieval Commune and Internal Violence: Police Power and Public Safety in Siena, 1287- 1355”, The American Historical Review, 73, no. 1 (1967), 1-17.
- Celia Chazelle, “Crime and punishment: Penalizing without prisons”, in, Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice, ed. Celia Chazelle, Simon Doubleday, Felice Lifshitz, and Amy G. Remensnyder, (London: Routeledge, 2012).
- Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Articles and books on race and the medieval period:
- Suzanne Akbari, ‘The Diversity of Mankind in The Book of Sir John Maneville‘, in, Eastward Bound: Travel and Travellers, 1050–1550, ed. Rosamund Allen (Manchester: Manchester Univeristy Press, 2004).
- Benjamin Braude , “The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods”, The William and Mary Quarterly, 54, no. 1 (1997), 103-142.
- Nahir Otano Gracia, and Daniel Armenti, “Constructing Prejudice in the Middle Ages and the Repercussions of Racism Today“, Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 53, no. 1 (2017), 176-201.
- Geraldine Heng, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
- Alison Killilea, “‘Die, defenceless, primitive natives!’: Colonialism, Gender, and Militarism in The Legacy of Heorot“, in, Disturbing Times: Medieval Pasts, Reimagined Futures, ed. Catherine E. Karkov, Anna Kłosowska, Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, (Goleta, CA: Punctum Books, 2020).
- David Nirenberg, “Was There Race Before Modernity? The Example of ‘Jewish’ Blood in Late Medieval Spain,” in, The Origins of Racism in the West, ed. Miriam Eliav Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
- Mary Rambaran-Olm, ‘”Black Death” Matters: A Modern Take on a Medieval Pandemic’, Medium.
- Diane Speed, ‘The Saracens in King Horn‘, Speculum, 65, no. 3 (1990), 564–95.
- Sylvia Tomasch, ‘Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew’, in, The Poscolonial Middle Ages, ed. JJ Cohen, (London: Palgrave, 2000).
If you enjoyed this, please consider contributing to my patreon. If not, that is chill too!
For more on policing, see:
On a world without police
For more reading lists, see:
A Black Death reading list
For more on politics, see:
On martyrdom and nationalism
On a world without police
Religious iconography has always been a prop
On Odious debt
On the King’s two bodies and modern myth making
Emergency Post: That is not what the “good” in Good Friday means
On defeats, small people, and the UK election
On colonialism, imperialism, and ignoring medieval history
On Q Anon and systems of knowledge
On the medieval separation of Church and state, or, putting the ‘holy’ in Holy Roman Empire
History is a discipline, not a virtue
On medieval healthcare and American barbarism
On chronicles versus journalism and ruling versus governing
On the American election, teaching history, and why it matters
Such a nasty woman – on Eleanor of Aquitaine, femininity, reputation, and power
On power and entitlement to the bodies of lower-status women
Islam was the party religion, or, why it is lazy and essentialist to say that Islam oppresses women
The medieval case for remain, or, fuck Brexit
Going Medieval 