"Otherness" at IMC in Leeds: An Open Letter

Assistant Professor, Medieval Literature and Culture Louisiana State University

PhD Candidate, Medieval Studies University of Connecticut

PhD Candidate, Medieval Studies University of Connecticut

Professor, English and Medieval Studies, affiliated faculty, Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Connecticut Director, International Piers Plowman Society

Thank you Prof. Thompson for being such a valuable ally to those in medieval studies working for change within the field. The IMC in Leeds had long been, along with the Kalamazoo Congress, the largest gathering of medievalists in the world. It has also long been, even before this year's deplorable events, a bastion of conservatism, whiteness, and the patriarchy as usual, which is why I stopped attending after 2009 when the conference's theme was Heresy and there were no threads devoted to gender, sexuality or ethnicity/race, even though the history of heresy is intimately bound up with processes of Othering drawn along these axes. So, again, for using your highly visible position within another important organization in premodern studies to draw broad attention to this matter, thank you. Fearless speech.

Associate Professor University of Maryland

Assistant Professor of English, University of Mississippi

I too witnessed deeply problematic comments at IMC in Leeds, and I want to urge the IMC to forcefully address this issue and commit to making the conference and our field more diverse and accountable to scholars and students of color.

Director, Rossell Hope Robbins Library, University of Rochester

Dorothy McBride Orthwein Professor of English and Executive Director, New Chaucer Society

Associate Professor of English, University of California, Davis

Impulsivity makes better scholarship. Our field cannot continue to remain relevant and thriving if we do not incorporate the best in new thought and perspectives.

Professor of Literary Linguistics

Associate Professor of English, University of California-Merced

Book Conservator, USA

Professor of English, Classics, and Medieval Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Assistant Professor of French, The University of Vermont

Associate Professor of English, The George Washington University. Thank you Ayanna Thompson for this letter. You are an exemplary colleague and your scholarship on race and Shakespeare performance (among so many other things) has had a profound impact in early modern cultural studies, and it also provides valuable models for medievalists working on related concerns. I applaud SAA for its proactive, long-term, and public-facing commitment to inclusion in the field and I hope more professional organizations will follow its lead.

Professor of English, Western Washington University

I encourage you to read the work of scholars who present at BABEL, Kalamazoo and the New Chaucer Society. The state of the field in the study of cultural studies and the Middle Ages may be gauged there.