by Kathleen Eck Thorman The consummation scene in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde replaces reciprocal love with pity-sex. It presents the modern reader with a series of troublesome events reminiscent of current discourses around power and gender. The #MeToo movement against sexual abuse and rape culture has reignited debates on ethical…

Interview by Alana Edmondson in conversation with Noémie Ndiaye, author of Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race (Penn Press, 2022) I was introduced to Noémie Ndiaye’s work shortly after reaching out to one of my undergraduate professors requesting more to read in regards to…

by Bridget M. Bartlett In January 2023, conservative social media figure and former Congressional candidate Lavern Spicer tweeted:

Interview by Andrea Zamora Chavez in conversation with Katherine Gillen, Adrianna M. Santos, and Kathryn Vomero Santos, editors of The Bard in the Borderlands: An Anthology of Shakespeare Appropriations en La Frontera, Volume 1 (ACMRS Press, 2023) As an intern at ACMRS, I had the pleasure of copyediting the first…

by Robyn A. Bartlett In October 2022, the long-dead medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer trended on Twitter. The reason is one that has dogged scholars for over a hundred years: what to make of a legal document from May 1380, in which Cecily Chaumpaigne releases Chaucer from a charge of rape…

Interview by Shanelle Kim in conversation with Matthieu Chapman and Anna Wainwright, editors of Teaching Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide (ACMRS Press, 2023) While reading the collection Teaching Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide, I was struck not only by the breadth and depth of…

by Laura Ingallinella In the first episode of the second season of HBO’s The White Lotus, an award-winning series exploring human behavior and privilege in resorts around the world, two American couples walk into their adjoined suites at a luxury hotel in Sicily. Here, they see a colorful majolica vase…

by Philip Goldfarb Styrt On January 6, 2021, following his loss in the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump called on his supporters to come to Washington, D.C. In a speech that day, he told them that the election had been stolen from him and them, and that “if you don’t…

Interview by Alani Hicks-Bartlett in conversation with Jonathan Hsy, author of Antiracist Medievalisms: From “Yellow Peril” to Black Lives Matter (Arc Humanities Press, 2021) I have been a grateful reader of Dr. Jonathan Hsy’s groundbreaking contributions to the fields of Medieval Studies, Disability Studies, and Queer Theory since first encountering…