Higher education has not been a comfortable habitat for the humanities in the 21st century. Many of the causes for their steep decline in student enrollment, faculty members and reputation are external: conservative legislatures, economic pressures, technology and the ascent of STEM disciplines. Sometimes, as if there weren’t enough external strains, colleagues in the humanities turn their formidable arsenal of critique and suspicion against their own.
This time, the organizers of the world’s largest annual meeting of medievalists, the International Congress on Medieval Studies, or ICMS, at Western Michigan University, stand accused of “a bias against” or “lack of interest in” sessions dealing with “decoloniality, globalization and anti-racism”.... To read my full article, see "Whose (Medieval) Congress Is It Anyway?" Inside Higher Ed, 2 August 2018.
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