ENGL 6145 - Race and Gender in the Middle Ages

(crosslisted) MEDVL 6145

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Co-meets with ENGL 4145/MEDVL 4145.

M. Raskolnikov.

If “the past is a foreign country,” is it a country full of oppressed women? We can, with some smugness, agree that it may have been dreadful to be a woman or sexual minority in the Middle Ages, but it’s nowhere near that simple. Also un-simple are medieval notions of race. Scholars long assumed that the European Middle Ages were entirely white and/or that since “race” as a concept hadn’t been invented yet, it wasn’t an issue. But both racial and gender difference matter tremendously, then as now. Together, we will think about race and gender as imagined at a time before the world we now know came into being, asking what the pre-history of difference might have to do with us and our future.