Teaching the Medieval as Mediterranean:
Reorienting the Metanarrative
Virtual AHA 2021 • 23 March 2021, 2:00–3:30pm EST [Zoom]
The virtual Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association featured the colloquium, “Teaching the Medieval as Mediterranean: Reorienting the Metanarrative.”
The long-established metanarrative of the Middle Ages which focuses on northwest Europe and northern Italy emerged out of a nationalistic Enlightenment culture which both consciously and intuitively privileged a white, Christian, masculine elite perspective. Scholarship of the last half-century has done much to move to more inclusive view of the Middle Ages, incorporating previously marginalized groups such as women, Jews, the poor, Muslims, and non-national ethno-cultural groups. However, the narrative of the Middle Ages and the emergence of Modernity remains stubbornly rooted in a teleological and inherently chauvinistic Eurocentric perspective. This is not only at odds with the historical evidence, which places the Mediterranean – a zone of integration of Christians, Muslims and Jews from Europe, North Africa and West Asia – as the epicenter of pre-Modern innovation and dynamism, but is a vision which is clearly obsolete in view of our evermore diverse student bodies and comparatively-trained faculty communities. There is a groundswell of interest in teaching the Middle Ages as Mediterranean, but few tools to do so. In February 2022 Burman, Catlos and Meyerson will publish (through the University of California Press) The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650–1650, a textbook, and Texts from the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650–1650, an accompanying document reader, which together presents an entirely reconceived narrative of the long Middle Ages with the Mediterranean at its center. In this round-table session, in conversation with the chair, panelists, and the audience the authors will discuss their rationale for this revisionist narrative, and strategies for teaching the Middle Ages as Mediterranean to undergraduate students.
Follow the links for draft tables of contents for The Sea in the Middle and Texts from the Middle.
In the interest of time, panelists will not be introduced during the session, find links to author bios and pre-circulated “position papers” below. Note: all papers are (c) the author and are not to be distributed or cited without written permission. [Remaining on this page and/or downloading these materials indicates your consent to these terms.]
The following topics will form the core of the conversation:
1. The logistical challenges of teaching a course on the medieval Mediterranean
• given that few of us were trained to do it all, we inevitably find ourselves teaching “out of field.” How do we manage that?
• given that there is so much material and so little time to present it, how do we condense it in ways that still give our students a meaningful sense of the whole?
2. The revisionism inherent in such a course may be lost on students who come with comparatively little previous exposure to the subject.
• is it important that our students understand how medieval studies used to operate before it redefined itself as a Mediterranean field?
• do we need to teach some of the canon so that we can teach against it?
3. How should instructors navigate the “presentist” concerns that such a course is likely to inspire in its students, given its increased attention to ethnic/religious relations, colonialism, etc.?
• how do we productively address these concerns without succumbing to anachronism or teleology?
• is a survey course on the medieval Mediterranean any less of a “civics lesson” (albeit with a different “moral” to the story) than the traditional survey on medieval Europe?
Chair and moderator: Kenneth Baxter Wolf, Pomona College
Panel:
Fred Astren, San Francisco State University [position paper];
Thomas E. Burman, Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame [position paper];
Brian A. Catlos, University of Colorado Boulder and University of California, Santa Cruz [position paper];
Claire Gilbert, Saint Louis University [position paper];
Mayte T. Green-Mercado, Rutgers University-Newark [position paper];
Mark D. Meyerson, University of Toronto [position paper]
Comments and Questions: the Audience
This event is free and open to all.
Attend at: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ycTVhmJSRVezsAUwXqgVmw
Click for further information on the American Historical Association and the Annual Meeting.