Erin Black from Cary, North Carolina (USA). Source material from The British Library via The European Library via Europeana (@europeanacollections).
About This Guide
This is a preliminary guide designed to help faculty decolonize their Premodern syllabi and help students explore beyond Western, canonical histories. This guide is far from exhaustive, but should offer a starting point for researchers interested in exploring varied Premodern histories. It includes book lists, blog posts and other syllabi created by Premodern scholars.
Why This Guide
This guide was made in response to MICA students' desire to see their curriculum deconolized and is a first step at the library's participation in such a project. There is no way this list could be exhaustive -- as it is addressing millennia of history across disciplines and continents -- and should not be seen as such. Rather, it is a starting point for learning and discussing the varied work around race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality in the Premodern world, with an intended audience of undergraduate art students and their educators.
Further, this project comes from the author's firm belief in the importance of historical analysis in the development of anti-racist, feminist politics. As a former medievalist, she is interested in the ways we create histories and narratives to suit contemporary political purposes. As an activist, she believes there is no moving forward without understandings of our histories. (But she also thinks linear trajectories of history are kind of BS.)
