Antiracist Pasts and Futures: An Interview with Jonathan Hsy
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 his 2013 Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism and Medieval Literature. This earlier work remained very much on my mind when I first read his 2021 Antiracist Medievalisms: From ‘Yellow Peril’ to Black Lives Matter as well. Much like the “polyglot milieu,” the “fluidity” and dynamic linguistic diversity of the Middle Ages that Hsy studies in Trading Tongues, in Antiracist Medievalisms he argues for the spatial, linguistic, and geotemporal “flexibility of the ‘medieval’” (19). Moving deftly from the medieval period to the present, Hsy’s analysis covers: medieval romance and ethnic minority Bildungsromane; 19th-century theaters that forged alliances between Chinese Americans and Jewish Americans; Frederick Douglass’s excoriation of crusade rhetoric; and contemporary reworkings of Chaucer. The discussion ranges from models of “collective identity” formation and “flexible forms of racial positioning,” to the palimpsestic conversations that both stem from and inform the Chinese detention poetry of Angel Island, for instance.
Throughout Antiracist Medievalisms, Hsy reminds readers that “medieval and modern forms of xenophobia, racism, and oppression never occur in a vacuum” (2). He brings numerous examples of “shared” conversations that traverse time, location, modality, and language to the fore, and insists upon the transformative potential of building community, activism, and solidarity movements. As such, Antiracist Medievalisms is a “world-building” book. Profound and insightful, it offers a generative model for antiracist methodologies to “dismantle unjust structures” and create a better world. It is a contribution to which readers will surely wish to return numerous times, just as I have.
I was recently able to chat with Dr. Hsy at the 2022 RaceB4Race Symposium on “Genealogies,” and prior to this, I had the wonderful opportunity to direct some of my questions to him. Hsy’s answers below are thoughtful, meticulous, and challenging. They chart a capacious, intersectional, and interdisciplinary trajectory of groundbreaking research and pedagogy that anyone who engages with Antiracist Medievalisms can use as model, standard, and ideal.
Alani Hicks-Bartlett: You have an established record of researching, teaching, and writing about medievalism, and in your book as well as in other venues, you aptly underscore that “medievalism is always polemical.” How has your understanding of “medievalism” and its impact developed over the course of your career?
Jonathan Hsy: Teaching and research are a feedback loop. What I do in the classroom informs my writing, and vice versa — and my thinking about medievalism is shaped by this process. I’ve long taught medieval literature alongside modern-day adaptations, as this approach appeals to a diverse range of students and encourages everyone to think carefully about the contemporary and historical themes of my courses (such as language and power, or the intersections of class, gender, race, and disability). Teaching has helped me recognize there’s a rich tradition of medievalism by people of color, but aside from a few exceptions the academic field of Medieval Studies has been slow to engage with these traditions or put communities of color in conversation with one another. I felt it was important for my book to show that the Middle Ages isn’t exclusively “white property” (to borrow a phrase from legal theorist Cheryl I. Harris), and there’s a long history of people of color using medievalism to advocate for meaningful social change.
In the classroom especially, our study of medieval culture must contend with our present-day circumstances and frameworks for reading and interpretation. I have come to understand that scholarship on the Middle Ages and creative works inspired by medieval things are two sides of the same coin: both are at their core “about” interpreting some version of the medieval past — and all of this, to me, is valuable as medievalism. When I decided to write this book about medievalism by and for people of color specifically, I reserved for myself the right to be as inclusive as possible about what “counts” as medievalism — and to bring together a wide range of works by BIPOC academics, writers, and artists.
AHB: Your many appeals to solidarity and your addresses to the reader throughout Antiracist Medievalisms are moving and powerful, as is your use of first-person plural, which helps foment the sense of community you argue for in your work. Can you please share how your thoughts about your ideal readership developed, and the rationale that motivated this shift, as they manifested themselves both pedagogically and politically?
JH: By focusing on scholarship and storytelling by people of color, I wanted to build new frameworks for understanding medievalism’s role in fostering social change. I knew from the start that I wanted to situate medievalism within a broad history of cross-ethnic and multiracial coalitions against systemic racism, antisemitism, and related oppressions.
As I state in the preface, I originally thought this book about medievalism would address an academic audience working in the predominantly white (and anglophone) field of Medieval Studies. During the writing process — and especially due to the increased prominence of racial justice movements throughout the global COVID-19 pandemic — I came to realize I could give myself permission to write the book not only as an “academic medievalist.” I could also write as a queer Asian American addressing fellow BIPOC readers.
Writing in the first-person plural “we” initially felt strange and illicit to me, as academics who work in earlier historical periods are often taught to convey a cool, distant relationship to our materials. I’m hoping that one effect of my use of “we” is to invite readers along in a shared pursuit of knowledge, as one might do in the intimate space of the classroom. Just as importantly, I hope the book creates a shared space for BIPOC audiences in particular, since we — here I use the term “we” deliberately — are so often seen as outsiders to all things medieval.
One important outcome of studying the past is understanding that certain harmful or unjust structures that define our lives now were not necessarily a “given,” nor inevitable. Understanding and building new worlds can and should continue in Medieval Studies or Shakespeare or Classics or whatever — I’d just emphasize that liberatory work can happen wherever you are located.
AHB: Given the unfortunate ways in which the medieval past has long been co-opted by hate groups, the current political climate, the violent rhetoric and actions of anti-Asian, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, and anti-Semitic groups, and the very recent violences that have been done to bodily autonomy, trans rights, and reproductive rights, how do you find that medievalism has evolved in relation to wider sociopolitical concerns and current events? In what ways do you anticipate medievalism becoming even more relevant to our efforts at collective worldmaking?
JH: It’s tremendously important that public-facing scholarship in Medieval Studies today not only critiques “bad actors” (elitists, sexists, transphobes, racists, fascists, and the like), but that it also offers compelling counter-stories, or capacious views of history itself. I am encouraged by how medievalism enriches our appreciation for the heterogeneity of the past while transforming our understandings of vital issues today.
I don’t really have much interest in discussions of how we can make academic Medieval Studies more “relevant,” etc. I’m more interested in how people who “happen” to find themselves in Medieval Studies are developing meaningful ways to work toward a liberatory future, and passing such an ethos along to a broader community (see resources list below). Antiracist Medievalisms includes a list of further readings on antiracism along with a bibliography of creative works by people of color, in a sense to pass the baton to future scholars. It is this ethos of “paying it forward” that I see happening most clearly in areas such as Disability Studies, the Indigenous “turn” in Medieval Studies, and more.
AHB: Your prioritization of local and global unity “in collective struggles,” and of community, collaboration, and the “dynamism” and “vitality” that can be born of solidarity, made me think so much about Sara Ahmed’s important work on exclusion, “stranger making,” and “stranger memory.” How does community help combat the exclusionary tactics that are often waged against scholars of color, from racist individuals trolling online platforms, to the gatekeeping and professional exclusion that occur departmentally and institutionally, and what are some ways that readers of your book can cultivate solidarity, both as sociopolitical acts and scholarly pursuits?
JH: I’m glad you mentioned Sara Ahmed, since her work on citation as feminist memory has had a profound influence on how I structured my book, which intentionally foregrounds citations of queer and intersectional feminist scholars of color. I appreciate what Ahmed says about structures of unbelonging and stranger making and I’m especially mindful of Ahmed’s idea of finding company in strangers. My book’s citational practice is one attempt to create such company among strangers who might not typically appear on the same page together.
Just as importantly, I want the book to offer a vision of community and care that can become part of a support network against the ubiquitous forms of micro (and macro) aggressions that BIPOC face–whether it’s online, in the public sphere, publishing, or higher education. To be honest, I want the book to offer hope. BIPOC networks are a lifeline of mutual support, but that’s not all — they also expand how we think about art, community, and the ethics of scholarship in the first place. My book, for instance, cites academic scholarship and journalism as well as blogs and Twitter threads, engaging with BIPOC knowledge and experience wherever it is found. In these ways, I try to signal broader horizons for academic writing, readership, and dialogue. My book refers to Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s notion of “restorying” time and place in creative worldbuilding, which suggests a restoration or revision of the past and also a crafty remaking of the world itself. Knowledge can come from multiple spaces and we’re all better off when we work together.
AHB: On a related note: given the many ways the humanities are under siege, what advice do you have for burgeoning and future medievalists? What actions do we need to take as a discipline to encourage their success?
I think we’re at an opportune moment for encouraging “both/and” approaches to Medieval Studies. Humanists engaging in critical approaches to cultural analysis can and should be clear and unapologetic about the social value of our work bridging historical and present-day concerns. As for future medievalists and early-stage scholars in particular, I’d say: think carefully about what your intellectual or cultural investments really are and be creative in making your academic work align with those investments (e.g., gender, race, disability, labor, environment, theory, poetics, however you might frame these). Don’t be afraid to go outside your comfort zone and talk with people beyond your “home” discipline. Who is asking the same big questions as you? How can you enter into ongoing conversations or join movements with those who are navigating shared struggles? Build your craft and voice by writing for different kinds of audiences or venues (even if such writing is only for yourself, at first). Build as broad of a support network as possible, thinking beyond your field, institution, or geographical location (online platforms can be good for this, when used wisely).
It’s also worth saying that we need joy and care. I build many of my arguments upon the work of queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz who is decidedly utopian in much of his work, and we have to believe in the long arc of time that world transformation is possible. It may not come in within one generation or even our lifetime, but we must maintain hope that it can happen.
AHB: Bringing into dialogue approaches that include race and anti-racist strategies, to gender, language and linguistics, criminalization and carceral politics, homosociality, disability, citational politics, and ecocriticism, you cover an incredible range of critical approaches in your book. I’m curious to hear more about your theoretical priorities, and especially about a critical angle or two that you would have liked to address in your book but chose not to or were unable to pursue. Is there anything you wish you would have had more time and space to address?
JH: This book invests in antiracist work by people of color and it necessarily considers many issues that intersect with antiracism, such as sexism, ableism, and more. It sends the message that pursuing racial justice means undoing oppression by addressing its root causes and not just advocating for your “own” group. By attending to how systems of oppression interrelate, such work shows that we can truly care in intellectually rigorous and ethically responsible ways about multiple things at once. I hope readers of this book will pursue some of the strands or pathways they find most compelling and continue such work.
I’m currently thinking about medievalism through the framework of Disability Justice, a movement led by disabled activists who are queer or people of color that centers communities who are most affected by multiple forms of oppression. For instance, I am now considering how disability informs the medieval-themed poetry that detained Chinese migrants wrote in the men’s barracks of the Angel Island Immigration Station (discussed in one chapter of my book). How do these poets create new vocabularies for illness, trauma, and collective care within an inhospitable space of confinement? This is all to say that studying antiracism and creative worldbuilding of communities of color is never a “one and done” affair. The work is ongoing, and it will continue to generate new possibilities.
Antiracist Medievalisms: From “Yellow Peril” to Black Lives Matter is now available in both hardback and paperback from Arc Humanities Press.
Resources for Community-Based Scholarship:
RaceB4Race is one example of a network of scholars working across disciplines and geographies to advance new ways of understanding race in history and build robust mentorship systems in the present.
Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography creates timely resources for teaching and combatting disinformation today (see its Appendix of respectful, inclusive, and non-violent terminology).
The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship charts new directions in intersectional feminism, calls out historical and present forms of sexual harassment, and aims to create a more ethical profession.
Alani Hicks-Bartlett is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, French and Francophone Studies, and Hispanic Studies at Brown University, and affiliated with the Programs in Early Cultures and Medieval Studies and the Center for the Study of the Early Modern World. Her teaching and research interests center around gender, violence, and race in Medieval and Early Modern English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese Literatures. In addition to articles examining the prose works of Petrarch, Christine de Pizan, Montaigne, and Cervantes, she has recently published on disability, race, and authorial voice in theater, and lyric and epic poetry.
Jonathan Hsy is Associate Professor of English at George Washington University and affiliated faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Sigur Center for Asian Studies. His work asks how critical theory and literary analysis reshape our understandings of language, disability, and cultural identity (from the Middle Ages to today). Hsy is author of Antiracist Medievalisms and Trading Tongues, co-editor of A Cultural History of Disability in the Middle Ages, and co-director of Global Chaucers. Hsy has proudly served on the boards of RaceB4Race, the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, and the MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession.
