This book is called a manifesto because it has an unapologetically political objective. Richard Utz wants to help reform the way we think about and practise our academic engagement with medieval culture, and he uses his own observations as a medievalist and medievalism-ist over the last twenty-five years to offer ways in which we might reconnect with the general public that has allowed us to become, since the late nineteenth century, a rather exclusive clan of specialists who communicate mostly with each other. The traditional academic study of the Middle Ages, after more than a century of growing and plateauing, is now on the decline. While, at least over the next five to ten years, we will still be basking in the reassuring proximity (at conferences) of thousands of others who are involved in what we do ourselves, there is a manifest discrepancy between the large number of students who request that we address their love of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and medieval-themed video and computer games, and the decreasing number of actual medievalists hired to replace retiring colleagues. We should pursue more lasting partnerships with so-called amateurs and enthusiasts for the sake of a sustainable future engagement with medieval culture. Richard Utz suggests some ways we might do this, and looks forward to “a more truly co-disciplinary, inclusive, democratic, and humanistic engagement with what we call, for better or worse, the Middle Ages”.
Contents
What’s Love Got To Do With It? Our Middle Ages, Ourselves
Don’t Know Much About the Middle Ages? Toward Flat(ter) Futures of Engagement
Intervention One: Residual Medievalisms in Eastern Bavaria
Intervention Two: Race and Medievalism at Atlanta’s Rhodes Hall
Intervention Three: Medievalism, Religion, and Temporality
Manifesto: Six (Not So) Little Medievalisms
Reviewer Quote(s)
“[Medievalism: A Manifesto] is a great little book—deliberately accessible, off-beat, and provocative. […] Importantly, it really is a book with messages for all medievalists, not just those already consciously engaged more narrowly with the reception of medieval history and culture.” – James Palmer, University of St Andrews; “On Utz’s Medievalism Manifesto,” online at Merovingian World
“This book—especially its final chapter, which comprises the real ‘manifesto’ of the volume—should be required reading for every medieval studies Ph.D., and taped to the door of many a public history professor.” – Paul B. Sturtevant, The Public Medievalist
“Medievalism: A Manifesto aims to do nothing less than to reform the ways in which we think about academic engagement with the Middle Ages, and with medievalism as a whole. […] [Utz presents] a fundamental, challenging, and difficult intervention aimed squarely at those who may not want to listen, and who, for that precise reason, most urgently need to do so.” – Andrew B. R. Elliott, University of Lincoln; review in Arthuriana
