UC Riverside Mellon Workshop

Workshops

Medieval Culture and Postmodern Legacies

We propose a workshop on the subject of the legacy of the Middle Ages as it has been defined and redefined in the late twentieth and early twenty first century. This legacy may seem to be benign, as for instance, in the widespread popular impact of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It may be troublesome or ambiguous, as, for instance, in the use of medieval passion plays in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. But this legacy may also have a unstable political valence, as for instance, the condemnation of Islamic societies as “medieval” in terms of their legal systems and gender restrictions, or the location of the origin of particular forms of patriotism in “medieval” histories, such as the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, which still forms part of the symbolism of division and separatism in the Balkans. At the same time, many of the discourses that are implicated (either to defend or to critique ) in this complex reinvention of history have themselves been turned towards the study of the Middle Ages, revealing a set of synchronic dialogues as well as diachronic developments. That is, in addition to the new importance accorded to the signs and symbols of medieval culture, a culture which almost by definition precedes the modern period, we will also be investigating the degree to which the Middle Ages themselves engage in the production of modernities, both in terms of what French Annales historians call the longue duree and in terms of the awareness of difference by medieval subjects, experiences and works themselves. The almost automatic association of the Middle Ages with war, violence and struggle, and the birth of European (read White, Christian) identity, that is, will be disaggregated and analyzed in the workshops we propose.

The Workshop on Medieval Culture and Postmodern Legacies will be of special importance to a number of faculty on campus in addition to the group participants, since there is no formal, or even informal, organization devoted to Medieval Studies at UCR, and only now is there a critical mass of individuals that would create the kind of synergies meant to be encouraged by the Mellon Workshops. Despite the research activity and productivity of these faculty members, there has been little opportunity, even through the Center for Ideas and Society, to share the impact of each others work. That situation is now changing, and we hope that the Mellon Workshop can be the cornerstone of that change. For instance, in addition, the workshop participants, chosen because of the relation of their research to the questions raised above, many other faculty members, including Dale Kent, Professor of History, Andrea Denny-Brown, Assistant Professor of English, and several others have expressed interest and support of this workshop. One of the ironies of research at UCR is that research in the study of European culture before 1500 has received widespread recognition off campus (Professors Kent, Ganim and Rudolph have been recipients of John Simon Guggenheim, Jr. Memorial Fellowships) but almost no support internally. The success of an external systemwide effort by Professor Gorecki in organizing the UC Medieval History Seminar is a sign of how much interest can be generated by the format we are proposing.

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