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E-book Disturbing Times : Medieval Pasts, Reimagined Futures
These are disturbing times. Scholars in medieval and premod-ern studies are tired of explaining why, yet this labor continues to be performed by those who often have the least personal and professional security.1 A case in point here is Mary Rambaran-Olm, who consistently advocated, and with considerable risk for her own scholarly career and personal well-being, for the re-tirement of the racist term “Anglo-Saxon” in academic scholarly contexts.2 One would think that medieval scholars would be lin-ing up around the block to discontinue such a label, given that white supremacists engrave it on their weapons of choice.3 Yet the academics who protest the protest against “Anglo-Saxon” and other racist terms claim to be the ones oppressed! This is a classic situation that Sara Ahmed calls out so well: “When you expose a problem you pose a problem.”4 And: “When people give accounts of sexist and racist harassment they are often dis-missed as having a wrong or faulty perception, as not receiving the intentions or actions of others fairly or properly.” Also, those who protest against the protest see “Anglo-Saxon” and racist uses of the medieval past as an image problem, a problem of perception or perspective — “a us problem” — and that, too, is classic: as Ahmed explains, for the prejudiced, the prejudice “is ‘in the image’ rather than ‘in the organization’ as an effect of what it does.
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