Dr. Erik Wade -- CEASEFIRE NOW's Threads

Jun 30, 2023 • 17 tweets • 4 min read

Why are we not talking about Sir William Neville & Sir John Clanvowe, the two gay English knights buried together in a tomb with marriage motifs???

Who were friends with Chaucer and possibly the inspiration for his The Knight's Tale?

And also maybe SPIES? #MedievalTwitter

So the above image is the tombstone of Sir William Neville & Sir John Clanvowe, who died in Galata (outside Constantinople) in 1391 within days of each other. Their shields are "impaled"; that is, their coats of arms are merged. This really only happens with married couples.

May 27, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read

Plz look at these married Roman queer women!

The clasped hands are a traditional sign of a married couple on funerary reliefs like this.

Their names are Fonteia Eleusis and Fonteia Helena. Quick thread about them!

Fonteia Eleusis and Fonteia Helena were freedwomen. Their funerary relief dates from the first century BC.

Sep 17, 2022 • 25 tweets • 8 min read

I want to highlight an example of the whitewashing & erasure of the work of scholars of color--particularly Black & Indigenous ones--in the work of white medievalists. I came across it yesterday, & it's such a clear demonstration of how their work gets credited to white people.

This isn't a critique of the article's claim or its contribution to the field of race studies in Old English.

This is about how white medievalists who start publishing on medieval race draw on the work of scholars of color while obscuring them.

Sep 6, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read

🧵: Modern people: Oh man, medieval people must have really believed in dragons and been terrified of them coming to kill them.

Medieval people: Dragons are a major threat to manuscript marginalia. They hate decorations.

(Paris, BnF, Espagnol 286 LXv)

Dragon: What the heck is this overly flowery border??? Have none of you heard of minimalism??

(Paris, BnF, Espagnol 227 f.1)

Sep 5, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read

🧵: So several scholars of color are pointing out the problems with racists mad about the new LoTR series. I did the same. My tweet got tepid responses, while the scholars of color faced vicious racism immediately *often from the same people* [CW: racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia]

Most the people disagreeing with me didn't make it an issue of my identity & didn't insult me. These are among the meanest ones.

Easily a third of the responses to the scholars of color were hateful.

Aug 21, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read

🧵The AHA president's "scholarship on race is ahistorical and presentist" blog isn't an outlier view or a brave take in the face of "the woke mob" or the "radical Left". It's been the party line among many senior scholars for decades.

Take medieval studies. (Really. Take it). Look at basically any "state of the field" forum in medieval studies from the last few decades, especially in Old English studies. A lot of the big names--Allen Frantzen springs to mind--made careers out of slamming new approaches as presentist and ahistorical.

Jun 11, 2022 • 17 tweets • 6 min read

Quick #MedievalTwitter thread about saints in the 9th-century Old English Martyrology that defy the gender binary.

Up first: St. Pelagia, who lived in such a manner that no one knew if Pelagia "was man or woman"

Now, the pronouns there are "she/her". However, if we peak at the Old English original, the spelling shifts slightly during the nonbinary period: "hio" instead of "heo." Remember that difference. We will see it again.

May 9, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read

This week, my Premodern Travel Literature class is examining questions of genre by comparing two wildly different travel accounts:

Xu Jing’s 1124 "Illustrated Account Of The Xuanhev Embassy To Koryo"

and Ki no Tsurayuki's 935 "Tosa Diary."

Both are ostensibly factual accounts of travel written by government officials (though in two vastly different times and places). But their genre and style could not be more different.

Xu Jing's account is an incredibly dry (imho) description of Korea during the Koryŏ period.

May 4, 2022 • 19 tweets • 9 min read

This is not remotely an apology. You said Dr. MRO was a race-faker, compared her to Jessica Krug, doubled-down, and blocked anyone who criticized you. This led to a huge amount of others attacking Dr. MRO as a race-faker. Why not apologize TO HER? #BrightAgesSoWhite

https://twitter.com/analuciaraujo_/status/1521600602874294274

Dr. Araujo's awful tweets were quickly followed by similar tweets made by Dr. Sarah Bond's friend, as well as by a series of right-wing accounts. No apologies have been made. #BrightAgesSoWhite

Feb 21, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read

🧵:Are you confronted by a threatening wyvern? Take off your clothes! Wyverns--according to some medieval bestiaries--run away from nude people.

(BnF, Français 1951 f.5) #MedievalTwitter

This idea seems to have some connection to the wyvern's serpent-like nature and to the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

(BnF, Français 15213 f.63v)

Feb 13, 2022 • 25 tweets • 8 min read

A #MedievalTwitter thread on some early medieval interactions between the British Isles & Africa.

The British Isles were in constant contact with Africa throughout recorded history.

(BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B V/1, f. 56v)

There's been a fair amount of work done on Africans in the British Isles during the Roman period, so I won't repeat it here, but I recommend these major summaries of Africans in England.

Jan 24, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read

I am always here for campy gay indie-cinema, and I just started watching this new TV show/webseries called Demonhuntr, and it. is. EVERYTHING.

Camp, horror, 90s vibes, ridiculous plots, multiple sex scenes, silly monsters, and all in 10-minute episodes.

This is basically a Buffy tribute show, but with queer and POC people as the leads.

And, um, a lot more full-frontal nudity.

Jan 24, 2022 • 12 tweets • 5 min read

🧵: In my continuing quest to document medieval depictions of queer people, I am looking at depictions from Dante's Inferno of the sodomites, depictions that often seem to emphasize buttocks and temptation (and feature a lot of monks!).

(BnF, Italien 74 f.47v) #MedievalTwitter

Certainly, there are depictions where the sodomites clearly writhe in pain in the fiery rain, like this one, but a lot of the depictions don't show much suffering and present the sodomites as almost tempting Dante.

(BnF, Italien 2017 f.191)

Jan 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read

The lack of scale in this battle image makes the elephants looks like they are the size of small dogs, which is possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen.

(Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 264, f. 43v) #MedievalTwitter

Lil elephants are like ".....why are we needed in this battle again?"

Oct 20, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read

[TW: sexual harassment & abuse, threats, homophobia, anti-Semitism, drinking culture.]

Please read & share this 2-year investigation of Andy Orchard, UOxford Prof and one of the most notorious sexual predators in medieval studies. #MedievalTwitter

https://twitter.com/AJIunit/status/1450404340775145473

The accompanying podcast episode features stories from incredibly brave women in the profession who've witnessed and been affected by his predatory behavior. I want to acknowledge their work and courage in coming forward.

Sep 24, 2021 • 13 tweets • 4 min read

As promised, a quick thread on medieval ghost lawsuits. So. Those were a thing. I know of examples from Scandinavian and Chinese literature.

Two forms: suing ghosts and being sued by ghosts.

Let's dive in! #MedievalTwitter #MedievalGhostStories

First up! Viking ghost lawsuits. This is a famous story from Eyrbyggja Saga, whose ghostly events are SUPER complicated. The relevant part is pretty simple: a fishing ship goes down at sea & everyone is drowned.

Then the drowned men come home.

Jul 25, 2021 • 14 tweets • 5 min read

🧵: Let me show you Jacqueline de Weever's pioneering 1994 study on how modern translators of medieval texts often reinforce ideas that Blackness cannot be beautiful, & how they claim, in their translations, that blackness is a "stain".
#MedievalTwitter

De Weever analyzes translations of a major passage in the Old French romance 'Aucassin et Nicolette', when beautiful Nicolette discovers she's Arab and "anoints" her face black/noire.

Modern translators refuse to translate "noire" as "black" when applied to a beautiful woman.

Jul 24, 2021 • 12 tweets • 5 min read

🧵: Here are four Ethiopians from a late-tenth century Old English manuscript, depicted as blue men in accordance with a tradition of black-skinned people being described as blue.

Here are some thoughts on them.

(BL, Cotton MS Claudius B IV, f. 5v) #MedievalTwitter

We can see the Old English description of them above the portrait.

Jun 30, 2021 • 52 tweets • 11 min read

Attending @ISASaxonists' talk for the Early Medieval Identities series. I have officially been given permission to livetweet the talk. #MedievalTwitter

Lol, and my internet just dropped the talk. Reconnecting!

Dec 14, 2020 • 12 tweets • 5 min read

Are you an Egyptian lesbian in the 2nd or 3rd century AD? Is there a woman you want to fall in love with you? Well, you might consider summoning ghosts to put a spell on her!

We have several surviving spells Egyptian women cast on other women. Let's dive in! #MedievalTwitter

The above image is a pair of 2nd-century lead tablets from Upper Egypt with spells on them in Greek. The spells direct a corpse-daimon (basically a ghost) named Horion to make a woman named Nike fall in love with a woman named Pantous, but only, apparently, for five months.

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