Medieval Scholars Call for Transparency and Anti-Racism at Conference

When Asa S. Mittman, a professor of medieval art history at California State University at Chico, wants to know how significant a given topic is in medieval studies, he counts the number of sessions about it at the International Congress on Medieval Studies.

Mittman studies monsters, and for a long time there were few sessions except for an occasional talk about Grendel, a character in the epic poem Beowulf. But in recent years, that’s changed.

“You can chart a real rise,” Mittman said. “There was a moment when they started to be discussed. Now there are papers throughout the conference. That’s a way of saying this is now a standard component of the field.”

In the last few years, many scholars of medieval studies have discussed another topic: the far right’s fascination with their discipline. Deeply concerned, they have called on their colleagues to push back against white supremacists’ use of imagery, rhetoric, and symbols from the Middle Ages, and to diversify a field that they say is predominantly white and male. They also seek to expand the discipline’s scope beyond Western Europe.

Some want to make sure that their biggest conference reflects the complexity of that conversation.

Mittman is among a large and growing group of medieval scholars who are calling on the organizers of the conference, which is hosted every year by the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, to include more sessions that challenge what they say are racist and inaccurate interpretations of their field. He and other members of the Babel Working Group, medieval scholars who seek to address contemporary issues, are circulating a letter asking why certain proposed sessions were rejected for the conference, and requesting more transparency in how sessions are approved. On Thursday the letter had more than 200 signatures.

“There seems to be a bias against, or lack of interest in, sessions that are self-critical of medieval studies, or focused on the politics of the field in the present, especially relative to issues of decoloniality, globalization, and anti-racism,” the letter says. It also says there is little clarity on who makes programming decisions for the conference.

“The field of medieval studies has long been a haven for people who are invested in the idea of a very white, very Eurocentric, and very Christian” understanding of that time period, said Eileen Joy, a member of the Babel steering committee and co-director of the publisher Punctum Books. “What we’ve been trying to do for roughly 20 years now is unsettle this.”

Minimizing Outside Voices

Joy said that as medieval-studies scholars learned which proposals had been rejected, they became concerned that many were for sessions that would have been run by people of color and would have prompted critical discussion of the discipline. For example, all four sessions co-sponsored by the professional organization Medievalists of Color were rejected, Joy said, though a workshop on whiteness held by the group was accepted.

The rejection of those sessions “minimizes the intellectual guidance that scholars of color would provide at the conference,” the letter says. The congress typically hosts more than 550 sessions, according to its website.

“Some (though not all) of the topics of these rejected sessions are represented among accepted sessions,” the letter continues. “But this hardly implies that the topics will be exhausted.”

Mittman emphasized that he wants to work with the conference’s organizers to make it as good as it can be.

“Given where we are in this current historical moment, and the tensions people feel, and the real concerns that people have about the academy and their place in it, we’re at a time when transparency and clarity are even more important than they have been in the past,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Western Michigan, Paula M. Davis, said that the congress uses “an anonymous review panel” to consider proposed sessions, a practice she said is common for academic conferences.

“It helps us provide a candid and forthright review while also ensuring collegiality among all scholars involved,” she said by email. When the Medieval Institute receives the letter, she said, it will give the concerns “due and thorough consideration and then respond.”

The institute “encourages an inclusive and intellectually safe environment that welcomes diverse perspectives,” she said. The criteria for choosing proposals include “the intellectual justifications offered for individual sessions, the balance of topics addressed, the balance of sessions of various formats,” and “apparent redundancies among proposed sessions.”

The letter, still open for signatures, will be sent to the Medieval Institute’s congress committee next week, Joy said. She added that Babel is also collecting data from scholars on which organizations have sponsored sessions that have been accepted during the past 20 years. A spreadsheet of the data will be submitted to the congress committee with the letter. (Joy said that members of the congress committee have contributed to the collection of data.)

The Babel letter follows another statement that raised concerns about the conference and the rejection of sessions co-sponsored by Medievalists of Color. That statement, written by Seeta Chaganti, an associate professor of English at the University of California at Davis, says that more than one organization that’s committed to “politically progressive critical theory along with social and racial justice has found its voice minimized in the planning for next year’s conference.”

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.