Undisciplined: A medievalist in public life

In History Matters, Judith Bennett links contemporary activism to the deep study of the remote past. In my presentation, I will explore intersections between my career as a medieval historian and my work in public media. On the surface, the connections seem tenuous. I write highly specialized scholarship on medieval hagiographic narrative and civic identity, a path that culminated in the publication of a university press monograph. In my more public life, I produce widely-disseminated journalism on disability rights, police violence, gun control, reproductive rights, media best practices, tv and movie criticism, and many other subjects. Sometimes I comment directly on the use of history in politics and public discourse, but mostly my popular pieces don’t seem very medieval.

Yet everything I write is informed by my decades as a scholar engaged with the remote past.  My work as a medievalist, as Bennett suggests, provides the tools to look for important continuities of oppression, also enabling me to locate key historical changes. I bring that lens to my new book, on the use of force against disabled Americans in the 21^stcentury, to locate both the ways in which history informs violence and the emergence of actually new threats. It won’t be a historical book, but I couldn’t write it without being an historian.

I am being “less safe, and more offensive,” Bennett’s mandate. My PhD … and, frankly, tenure … make both possible.