By BRIANA SPINA
News Editor
The medieval era may have occurred many centuries ago, but it is a significant period of literary history that is still studied today. Recently, white nationalist groups have appropriated symbols from that period to support their own racist agendas. Dr. Dorothy Kim, an Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College and a medieval scholar, has been at the forefront of discrediting these fantastical and prejudiced interpretations of her field.
“The incursion of neo-Nazi fringe views into the mainstream of US public discourse is significant and alarming, making Dr. Kim’s work timely and urgent,” said Dr. Brian Sweeney, an English professor at Saint Rose.
The English Department has chosen her to speak at this year’s English Symposium, an event during which students in the major can share their research with the Saint Rose community. The symposium will be held at at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Apr. 25 in the Carondelet Symposium of the Lally School of Education.
Dr. David Morrow, the Chair of the English Department, similarly emphasized the importance of Dr. Kim’s work on “the intersection of medieval scholarship and current events,” specifically the “white supremacists–a group that has lately become emboldened” who interpret medieval iconography “to their own ends.”
It is important to Morrow and his department to bring in a visiting speaker each year.
“Our Distinguished Scholars share their research with students, professors, and other members of the community, offering perspectives that we would not have otherwise. Visiting scholars always leave us with things to think about,” Morrow said.
Dr. Kim uses the 2017 Unite the Right rally in which Heather Heyer was killed as an example of what she will discuss. Those who participated in the alt-right event displayed “images, symbols, and touchstones imagined as part of the medieval past.” From there, she will discuss the reasons why radical conservatives draw faulty inspiration from this period.
Saint Rose’s own medieval scholar, Dr. Kathryn Laity, admires Dr. Kim’s work.
“Her work is ground-breaking and revolutionary in highlighting the ways that our field has perpetuated an often romanticized view of the past by selectively highlighting narratives that fit dominant ideas about the time period,” Laity said. “Not surprisingly, those narratives tended to be ones that flattered white European male points of view.”
Laity also mentioned that in Dr. Kim’s essay ‘Teaching Medieval Studies in a Time of White Supremacy,’ in which she called other medievalists to take a stance in the chauvinistic violence invading their field. This, Laity explained, caused a vast impact on the scholarship within the academic community, though Dr. Kim made her work accessible to the general public as well.
“The fact that Dorothy Kim has used social media to broaden the audience for her scholarship, while her political adversaries have also used social media to attack her personally, raises questions about the double-edged role of social media in public discourse,” said Sweeney. “We see in the case of Dr. Kim what we also see in the case of the Parkland students: social media being used to give voice to dissent, as well as to shame, dox, impugn, silence.”
The conflict that arose with the publication of Dr. Kim’s call to action in the classroom was widely public. Laity noted that part of this may have been caused by the wide web of medievalists connected via the internet.
“Medieval scholars are often isolated,” she explained, “surrounded by modernist colleagues who don’t generally share an interest in their research…Word gets around quickly when a scholar is targeted by hate groups—even when, sadly, they’re led by a scholar in the field. Academia is not free from the pervasive effects of racism.”
Despite the pushback from some of her fellow scholars, Laity has been positively influenced by Dr. Kim’s work. She said that it caused her to rework her syllabuses to reconsider “how and what [she will] teach from the time period–always a challenge,” for she has about ten centuries of material to teach. Now, she “kick[s] off [her] medieval courses now with a head-on engagement with the threat of racist appropriations of the period.”
Within the field, Laity talked about how scholars have worked together to share information on the intersection of racism in medieval literature.
“[This] has helped many scholars like me to explore new texts outside our areas of expertise to begin to incorporate an even broader range of texts in our teaching,” she said. “It’s exciting to be learning new things as well as to highlight a greater range of complexities in familiar texts. I’m finding a renewed level of engagement in my field that’s really energizing.”
Laity said that she is “looking forward to Dr. Kim’s visit.” Morrow said that he expects a good turnout, and the Distinguished Scholar talks usually draw in about 75 listeners.
Sweeney also has high hopes, expecting “a provocative talk that speaks to urgent issues directly impacting all of us.” He also highlighted the importance of the audience getting “the chance during Q&A to engage Dr. Kim in discussions about historical memory and countermemory, and the functions of social media in public discourse.”
Sweeney also referenced Dr. Kim’s work in relation to the William Faulkner quote, ‘the past isn’t over; it isn’t even past.’
“Dr. Kim’s work invites us to consider how political struggle in the present so often takes the shape of competing ways of remembering the past,” he said. “Critiquing misappropriations of the past is a task humanities disciplines such as literary studies, history, and art history are particularly concerned with. Dr. Kim’s work exemplifies the continued vital importance of humanistic scholarship in our time.”
