Solidarity and the Medieval Invention of Race

Abstract

As I wrote this piece, University of Leicester administrators proposed to excise Chaucer and other medieval authors from the English Department’s curriculum, choosing instead “modules” pertaining to “race, ethnicity, sexuality, and diversity” to achieve a “decolonised curriculum.”1 Responses ranged from advocacy of inclusive access to Chaucer to interrogation of the neoliberal agenda underlying the cuts to debate over medieval studies’ ability to incorporate those other modules.2 The Leicester Students’ Union noted the “co-opting” of “decolonisation rhetoric.”3 This last point raises two related questions. First, what did scholars in modern and contemporary fields engaging in liberatory work on decoloniality and self-determination think about this iteration of the administrative weaponization of left-leaning language given the many ways that ethnic and gender studies have historically dealt with administrators’ similar co-optive demobilizations? Second, how are we creating solidarity beyond medieval studies with these and other fields? A medievalist response to administrative threat could be to fight for a radical curriculum across many fields; to take action against the zero-sum, divide-and-conquer terms that administrations set; to amplify labor union actions, such as strikes and boycotts; to insist that no one, including but not limited to medievalists, be fired.4 Medievalists have always