American/Medieval Future(s) and the Transit of Whiteness

Abstract

The American/Medieval project began as an interdisciplinary faculty research seminar at Wake Forest University some ten years ago. It aimed to look beyond, or differently, at current understandings of medievalism and, in particular, to identify geographically distinct currents of connection between the 'American' and the Western-centric European 'Medieval'. The collaborative work of Wake Forest scholars and external colleagues who subsequently joined the project resulted in two co-edited volumes of essays, American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer and American/Medieval Goes North: Earth and Water in Transit (V&R UniPress, 2016 and 2019). This essay outlines the project's genesis and development and considers what direction(s) future iterations might take. How might it address questions about the ongoing effects of settler identity, environmental crises, systemic racism, and Indigeneity in the United States; about the continuing co-optation of the European medieval in white supremacist contexts; about the current divisions and exclusions within our field; about the pandemic-related revisions of our relations to community? The A/M project does not (yet?) look to the medieval as a solution to contemporary challenges but seeks to comprehend the entanglement that is American/Medieval and how our work as medievalists might be inextricably dependent on the contemporary moment in place and time, whether aesthetic, political, or both, or more.