Please take a moment to read "BlacKKKShakespearean: A Call to Action for Medieval and Early Modern Studies" by Kimberly Anne Coles, Kim F. Hall, and Ayanna Thompson in the latest issue of MLA Profession.
A key excerpt:
Currently, overwhelmingly:
White teachers teach the works of pre- and early modern periods.
White scholars cite each other’s work.
White directors direct the works.
White producers produce the works.
White narratives are reproduced in and through the works.
White reporters and pundits define the state of the fields.
So the question must be the following: How can we irrevocably alter
the current lack of diversity in our fields? A large body of research
demonstrates the positive effects that faculty members of color have on
the educational receptiveness, knowledge acquisition, and learning
outcomes and successes of students from underrepresented groups. But
while increasing the number of scholars of color in the instruction of
premodern and early modern literature should be the commitment of every
English department, there are simply not enough scholars of color in the
pipeline. These same departments are not producing many scholars of
color in their PhD programs, after all. Thus, there is a chicken-and-egg
problem:
There are very few dissertation directors, committee members, and mentors of color in medieval and early modern studies, so
graduate students of color opt to do
research in later periods where they see more representation among the
faculty and their peers, and
these graduate students of color receive greater opportunities for mentorship and collaboration in these later fields, therefore
pre- and early modern studies continue to remain oh so white.
We cannot yield up medieval and early modern studies as fields for
white students only. As the general population in the United States
continues to diversify, surely our fields’ recalcitrant homogeneity will
result in the death, or at the very least the atrophy, of the fields
themselves. If we wish to nurture faculty members of color in earlier
periods of literary scholarship, then we need a concerted strategic
plan.Read the whole thing HERE.