Once again, ya girl can be found on a podcast. This time I’m with the good people of Trashfuture – the UK’s finest leftist comedy podcast – talking about medieval myths, medievalism in fantasy, and snatching medieval history back from the fascists.
Enjoy!
Continue reading “Yet another podcast”I can’t believe I have to write this down right now, but my dear friends, medieval people bathed regularly.
Yes. I assure you. I am very serious. It is true.
In fact, medieval people loved a bath and can in many ways be considered a bathing culture, much in the way that say, Japan is now. Medieval people also very much valued being clean generally in an almost religious way.
This is not to say that getting clean was as easy for medieval people as it is for us now. But medieval people were very clever and had ways of getting around that.
Continue reading “I assure you, medieval people bathed.”Pals! Did you know that when I am not writing you swear filled screeds over here, I also work with Placecloud, where I make site-specific podcasts and videos about London?
Well I do! I’ve got several placecasts about the sites of medieval and early modern sex work there, including some videos, but most excitingly I also have a new virtual tour online there – Eleanor Janega’s London.
If you want to take a virtual walk around some of my favourite medieval London locations, this is the way to do it.
Enjoy!
We have a lot of fun, don’t we, when we talk about how people argue that the medieval period was the Dark Ages based on the fact that the feel some type of way about it? Now, can I call people who think this ridiculously incredulous and basic? Yes. And I do. Thanks for asking. Having said that, the general ignorance of the medieval period is not from nothing.
On the one hand, you could argue that the idea that the middle ages was a bad time where people were generally stupid, unwashed, and rolling about in the muck on medieval people’s own conceptions of knowledge. As Sara has pointed out to us before, medieval people considered themselves to be attempting to access a perfect knowledge which had been deteriorating since the fall of man. As a result, they attempted to emulate the knowledge of the people who came before them – i.e. Roman and Hellenic thinkers. They thought that past systems of knowledge were inherently better than their own, and, well, it’s hard not to take people at their word, you know?
Continue reading “On colonialism, imperialism, and ignoring medieval history”This week class is outside at the Barbican, where we talk about the London city wall. Enjoy!
Continue reading “On city walls, symbolism, and being behind the residents’ gates at the Barbican”Friends, we are as ever living in a society that spends a lot of time and energy attempting to uphold what it sees as “normal”. Normality, after all, doesn’t police itself, or even hold up as a concept without strenuous effort from the people invested in it. What we’re thinking about today is that in our society over time if something isn’t “normal” it is probably also sexual. Because sexual stuff is bad and therefore Not Normal and what we in the overthinking stuff game tend to refer to as “other”.
The other can vary from society and society and place to place, but here in Europe and in the areas that Europeans subjugated there is an underlying default, and that is a white straight dude. This was certainly true in medieval Europe, where, as you may have noticed men bossed everyone the fuck around and decided that they were defo the norm.
Continue reading “On sexualising the “other””Friends, today is a great day, for it was with deep pleasure that I found a spicy medieval take on women on the twitter TL. Check out Denise with the big medieval vibes:
Today at Going Medieval HQ we are excited to have a guest blog by kick-ass art historian working on medieval medical visual culture, and the other half of Medieval Dick Twitter, Dr Sara Öberg Strådal. Follow her on Twitter for excellent meme action, updates about growing your own medieval pigment garden, and generally correct opinions.
If you’re blessed enough to not have heard about QAnon. Congratulations. You should leave this post right now and go and do something nice for yourself.
Continue reading “On QAnon and Systems of Knowledge”Another week, another chance for the world to be a misogynist hellscape. (Just, endless sighing. Amiright?) One of this week’s horrors has been brought to you by right wing rag extraordinaire and Suzanne Venker, a self-described “feminist fixer” who claims to “Free Women From Feminist Lies So They Can Find Lasting Love With Men” [sic]. Our intrepid anti-feminist in question has a particular mark this week – the millennial woman (Hey boo!), drowning in debt from “piling up” degrees (relatable!) which are “supposed to help them get established for marriage” (less relatable!) and are now sad.
Continue reading “On Women and Work”Ugh, Game of Thrones. Am I right? No. Collectively we are now all wrong about it.
As we draw a once great television series, that now has all the gravitas and world building of an eighties hair fantasy on fast forward to a close, there was one little thing that made me laugh and then laugh again.
Continue reading “Let’s Talk About Game of Thrones part 3: Holy Roman Imperial Edition”
Going Medieval 