Thread by @SorchaBrazil

For anyone following #BrightAgesSoWhite it's important you know that there is an alt-right campaign to discredit every aspect of @ISASaxonists's professional standing in her field, and we must not tolerate this continual racist gate-keeping. 1/

Yesterday an anon ac, seemingly run by a grad student, started to look for aspects of Dr MRO's work to discredit. Let it be firstly said that this person 1) seems to not understand bk reviews + 2) has no known credentials to take a critical perspective. Let's start with 1. 2/

Book reviews show experts in a field taking a perspective on a piece of scholarship. If you read 5 reviews on the same work, they may vary widely. The author of the work reviewed + readers of reviews may not agree with the reading offered. That is academia.3/ #BrightAgesSoWhite

For e.g. some readers of my work have either loved my writing style or have not; as an academic it is my job to accept critique + reconcile it; I do not have to agree with it though. 4/ #BrightAgesSoWhite

This tweet about a 10 year old book review proves the point so many Black women make about being held to higher standards; why is it suddenly some kind of "gotcha" to have a part of a book review critique your work? This tweet is misogynoir in action. 5/ #BrightAgesSoWhite

Now to my 2nd point. Academic book reviews are for ppl working in that field, who are in a position, via their training, to make their own judgement on what a reviewer says about an author's work. Picking up + decontextualising a minor point at the end of a review is a 6/

bad faith reading, a complete misunderstanding, or both. I have never seen such treatment of a white colleague. It is disgraceful. Also, negative reviews exist + are allowed to. Doesn't that show the issue with the LARB's behaviour, not disprove it? 7/ #BrightAgesSoWhite

Critical reviews are something we all get + can be v useful, even if it's just to know how some ppl will read your work. However if you have no expertise in an area you cannot even begin to evaluate what kind of bearing a review has on a piece of scholarship. 8/

I am advocating to my colleagues in #medievaltwitter + #academictwitter to not accept this bullying of our colleague @ISASaxonists. Be warned it is not an isolated incident, but a campaign. Fin/ #BrightAgesSoWhite