medievalpoc reblogged
The Big Questions: Is there more truth in Shakespeare than the Bible?
Akala, Rapper, Writer, Academic and founder of the Hip-hop Shakespeare Company.
Prof Stanley Wells, the world’s leading Shakespeare scholar.
nemesispawn
Oh my god, this is interesting.
Bartles, Emily C. “Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and Renaissance Refashionings of Race”. Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Winter, 1990), pp. 433-454. Folger Shakespeare Library, in association with George Washington University.
medievalpoc reblogged
Did you guys know about this? I had no idea. Here’s an article written by Jameelah Nasheed.
An excerpt:
In the late 18th century, new economic opportunities and growth led to an increasein the free African and African-American populations of New Orleans. This was because some people of African descent were newly able to make money, buy their freedom, and subsequently increase the free Black population. And with that came an increase in interracial relationships, to the dismay of colonial authorities. As Ze Winters notes in The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic, “Charles III of Spain demanded that the colonial governor of Louisiana ‘establish public order and proper standards of morality,’ with specific reference to a ‘large class of ‘mulattos’ and particularly “mulatto’ women.”
During this time, women of African descent were known to wear their hair in elaborate styles (yes, we’ve been fly for centuries). By incorporating feathers and jewels into their hairstyles, they showcased the full magic and glory of their gravity-defying strands, and appeared wealthier than they actually were. As a result, these enticing styles attracted the attention of men—including white men.
To address this “problem,” in 1786, Spanish colonial Governor Don Esteban Miró enacted the Edict of Good Government, also referred to as the Tignon Laws, which “prohibited Creole women of color from displaying ‘excessive attention to dress’ in the streets of New Orleans.” Instead, they were forced to wear a tignon (scarf or handkerchief) over their hair to show that they belonged to the slave class, whether they were enslaved or not. In The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, historian Virginia M. Gould notes that Miró hoped the laws would control women “who had become too light skinned or who dressed too elegantly, or who competed too freely with white women for status and thus threatened the social order.”
In response to the laws, Creole women did cover their hair, but they did so with intricate fabrics and jewels (think Angela Bassett in American Horror Story as real-life New Orleans sorceress, Marie Laveau). As Baton Rouge curator Kathe Hambrick put it in a recent interview with The Advocate, “they owned it and made it a part of their fashion.” Instead of a cover-up, the wraps became a symbol style. And, of course, the women continued to attract men with their extravagant hairdos.
I recommend reading the whole article over there.
If you’d like to see what some of these amazing fashions looked like, I highly recommend checking out artist Agostino Brunias (one of his paintings is used to illustrate the article above):
medievalpoc reblogged
Fun fact: Tenochtitlan fell in 1521. From 1603 onwards, large numbers of honest-to-god fricking Japanese Samurai came to Mexico from Japan to work as guardsmen and mercenaries.
Ergo, it would be 100% historically accurate to write a story starring a quartet consisting of the child or grandchild of Aztec Noblemen, an escaped African slave, a Spanish Jew fleeing the Inquisition (which was relaxed in Mexico in 1606, for a time) and a Katana-wielding Samurai in Colonial Mexico.
Also a whole bunch of Chinese Characters BECAUSE MEXICO CITY HAD A CHINATOWN WITHIN TEN YEARS OF THE FALL OF THE AZTEC EMPIRE.
I love how much this shakes up people’s worldviews, and the way it makes you realize how unnaturally we isolate historical events (and peoples).
For people looking to dig into some research:
**ETA just to make it clear I hate the title of the first book up there ^^ and the overall tone of it-I’m using it to verify information that’s true but the interpretation leaves quite a bit to be desired
medievalpoc reblogged
I can’t really understand people who complain about the possibility in “TEO: Skyrim” to marry a same-sex NPC ‘cause “it doesn’t fit with the whole medieval setting of the series”. Yeah, you’re right, how could Bethesda dare to do something so anachronistic? I mean, the wonderful Middle Ages, such a beautiful period. Remember those old good times when we could marry hot lizards?
Yeah Me neither
Ah yes, the Elder Scrolls, the medieval setting complete with orbital space stations, time-traveling cyborg demigods, and magic email.
Plus, institutions very like same-gender marriage did exist in medieval Europe. Up until around the 13th Century, “spiritual brotherhood” ceremonies that were identical to marriages all but in name - including joining hands and reciting prayers at an altar and a ceremonial kiss at the end - were commonly performed between two men. Though prohibitions against the practice began to arise in the early 1300s (prohibitions which in themselves constitute evidence for the prevalence of such ceremonies - you don’t specifically ban something that never happens!), it’s believed that in some regions it persisted well into the 16th Century.
(And that’s without even touching on the matter of pirates…)
For anyone who wants to get their research started with a bang (several of these open as PDF):
People with a History – the history of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people, edited by Paul Halsall
Transgressing the Boundaries of Holiness: Sexual Deviance in the Early Medieval Penitential Handbooks of Ireland, England and France 500-1000, by Christine McCann
The Roman De La Rose and the Thirteenth Century Prohibitions of Homosexuality, by Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran
Remarriage and Ass-F**king: Shifty Byzantine Views of Sex, by Stephen Morris
Woman-Woman Love in Islamic Society, by Stephen O. Murray
Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477), by Helmet Puff
Homosexuality in Medieval Iberia – extract from the Encyclopedia of Medieval Iberia (2003)
The Questioning of John Rykener, A Male Cross-Dressing Prostitute, 1395 – from the Medieval Sourcebook
The 600 Year Tradition Behind Same-Sex Unions – by Allan Tulchin, History News Network
Personae, Same-Sex Desire, and Salvation in the Poetry of Marbod of Rennes, Baudri of Bourgueil, and Hildebert of Lavardin, by Tison Pugh
Queer Vikings? Transgression of gender and same-sex encounters in the Late Iron Age and early medieval Scandinavia, by Sami Raninen
Homoerotic Liasons among the Mamluk Elite in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria, by Everett K. Rowson
Representing the Negative: Positing the Lesbian Void in Medieval English Anchoritism, by Michelle M. Sauer
Brotherhood of Vice: Sodomy, Islam, and the Knights Templar, by Mark Steckler
Salvation, Sex, and Subjectivity, by Bruce Vernarde
medievalpoc reblogged
Simply perfection.
so just imagine how much these factors shape our interpretations of historical evidence. ;)
They will star in The Woman King, which is "the powerful true story of an extraordinary mother-daughter relationship." TriStar has just acquired the worldwide rights. "There’s no-one more extraordinary than Viola Davis and Lupita Nyong’o to bring them to life," said Hannah Minghella, president of TriStar Pictures, in a statement. The film is inspired by true events in the Kingdom of Dahomey, a powerful state in the 18th century. It will tell the story of Nanisca (Davis), general of the all-female military unit known as the Amazons, and her daughter Nawi (Nyong’o), who together fought the French and neighboring tribes who violated their honor, enslaved their people, and threatened to destroy everything they’ve lived for.
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The recent online dispute concerning white-nationalist appropriation of medieval symbols, in particular the harassment, threats against, and demeaning of an untenured scholar of color during that dispute, serves as a stark reminder that our academic pursuits do not exist in isolation from the hate, racism, and violence that continue to play a powerful role in US politics and in the social and legal arrangements that endanger the safety and well-being of people of color throughout the country.
We wish to reaffirm that our role as scholars and educators centrally includes the fostering of a culture of inclusiveness and mutual respect that prizes our diversity rather than seeing it as a threat. Such a culture depends on a willingness to listen carefully to other viewpoints, and to engage critically with them, in ways that respect norms of reasoned argument and the use of evidence. Particularly in the context of emotionally and politically charged issues, it is crucial to respect the right to freely express and argue for one’s views, especially when they are controversial or run counter to popular opinion.
But when disagreement takes such forms as bullying, racially charged attacks, and the glorification of violence against those with whom one differs, then speech is no longer primarily a matter of the expression of ideas, viewpoints, or opinions, and an invocation of the right to free speech is a distraction from the real issue. There is a crucial difference between speech that makes claims and articulates ideas, and speech that demeans, intimidates, or harms others. Such hostility has no place in academic life.
It is our responsibility as scholars not only to condemn and repudiate hatred expressed in speech and other forms of action, but to model forms of discussion that manage criticality in a spirit of open inquiry, committed to acknowledging and thinking through the difficult histories and difficult present in which we are all embedded.
It’s been my experience that viewing art that empowers, versus art that dehumanizes you/representations of "you", is a difference that can be felt immediately & viscerally.
Part of why I post European art is because most Americans have been physiologically trained to value that art style or origin (through education, media exposure, and cultural contexts given), but to devalue representations of people of color.
[art info]
It’s been my observation that this either resolves or creates a conflict in the viewer, and which of those it does depends on who the viewer is.
[art info]
Seeing a positive and (in this context) valuable representation of a person who is not white creates a conflict in a white viewer only if they’ve built their entire sense of self and identity in the idea that ONLY white people can have value, history, dignity, and other traits they associate with these artworks. This is an identity and value system based entirely in exclusion, and who is NOT allowed to “claim” what they view as “cultural accomplishment.”
[art info]
However, for someone who is living the conflict of wanting to value your identity as a person of color, BUT is surrounded by white supremacist values and representation, seeing an artwork like this:
[art info]
might help to resolve an existing conflict between valuing the self, and living in a culture that only values a particular art style and a specific manner of presenting it.
Certainly this conflict doesn’t exist for everyone, but I know that it did for me. Also, this work is certainly Eurocentric, and it truly gladdens me that more and more people are looking outside the sphere of European and Eurocentric art and creating art archives like East Is Everywhere, which centers Asia and the Middle East, other ways of viewing early modern and classical antiquity global cultures or intercultural interactions in the work of Dr Caitlin R Green, and focus on interdisciplinary diversity and individual perspectives at the margins of the field at The Medieval Middle.
Art has always affected my life, the way I feel about myself, and the society I live in. Researching and looking for artworks that might fall outside the narrative my culture has pushed onto me has been incredibly freeing and inspiring to me personally, and it’s my hope this information can find its way into the hands of anyone who might be able to benefit from it.
Born in stories, born of stories, I grow and learn more tales—this time almost exclusively in the language of the West, with its royal happy endings and fairy tales rewarding virtue, its epic fantasies with humble adventurers questing for justice and their land’s salvation. I learn the countless stories of the Star Wars expanded universe and am entranced. I see why so many people of my parents’ generation clung to it so fiercely—to Star Wars and Voltes V; people fighting an evil empire, uprising against oppression.
I read Cervantes and Rizal; I listen to what Don Quixote has to tell me about madness and seeing the world as it is and not as it should be; I weep at the end of El Filibusterismo, as Simoun dies with his dreams of revolution crushed to bloody pieces.
I take it all and make it part of me. I begin to understand how stories ignited the 1896 Revolution. We are tinder. Stories are the spark.
You should definitely read this ^^ fascinating exploration of how Roger Fry, a restorer in the 1930s, decided to paint over a Black man on the original fresco, making him white. Although he has since been returned to his original color, several copies in Mantua are still white men.
Some people make a great deal of noise about how some of the works I post do not adhere to their personal concept of “medieval”, since my url is “MedievalPoC.” I’d like to reiterate that these works do not come to us untouched by the centuries that lie between their creation and ourselves.
This is far from the only Black person to have been painted over, cut out, or otherwise obscured in the last few centuries in order to make the past seem whiter than it was. Giulia de’Medici, the mixed-race child in this painting, was painted over sometime in the 19th century as if her very existence was a stain on history:
Not only are our perspectives on these works shaped by ideas from more recent centuries of colonialism and Eurocentric education, sometimes the physical works themselves have been changed to reflect modern ideas about history and race.
To get a more accurate understanding of the past, we must peel away the layers of literal and metaphorical whitewash and actively engage with racist ideas that have been attached to our explorations and dialogues with the past.
Many people are not aware that Harriet [Tubman] was a disabled person (this has been “conveniently” omitted in our already skewed history books). She sustained a severe head injury as a teenager while protecting another slave. Due to this injury, she developed symptoms that are described to be temporal lobe epilepsy and narcolepsy. It was not until I began to study disability history and Black disability history that I learned that Harriet was like me – disabled. Underground has managed to do what few slave narratives have – portray disability in general, and to do so in a light that was not tragedy or inspirational porn leaning. We tend to “forget” that disabled people have always been here, and that there were indeed disabled slaves. In my advocacy work, I make it a priority to discuss disability and slavery when I explain the triple jeopardy status of Black disabled women.
Why do I do this? Disabled slave experiences matter. We cannot have a full discussion about the dehumanization of Black bodies and chattel slavery in America if we do not recognize how Black disabled bodies were also disregarded, abused, and exploited by slave owners.
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Attributed to Kano Domi
“Barbarians From the South” Namban Byobu (detail)
Japan, Edo period (c. 1570-1600)
“Why Is My Curriculum White?” (2015)
‘Why is my Curriculum White?’ is a national movement aiming to challenge the persistence of Euro-centric hegemonic narratives across curricula. This movement aims to encourage a broader diversity of course content and perspectives, to help provide a richer and more global education.