ASIMS Statement of Anti-Racism and Academic Inclusivity

Aware that Medieval Studies as a whole, and the study of the Irish Middle Ages in particular, has been used and misused by those seeking to justify contemporary actions or attitudes of exclusion, violence, or harm, we, the American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS) declare the following:

  • We encourage and support the study of marginalized agents and communities in the Middle Ages, both within Irish Medieval Studies and beyond;
  • We deny that the history of the Middle Ages is only a history of Europe, or that there is homogeneity in any region of Western Europe;
  • We support and embrace scholars who themselves represent marginalized identities and communities;
  • We have a membership that is international and inclusive, and we welcome individuals from all disciplines, backgrounds, and perspectives;
  • We decry those who would reject fact in order to propagate dangerous and self-serving untruths;
  • We affirm that there can be no community without understanding the full complexity of human identity, and reject those attitudes that seek to amplify marginalization;
  • We acknowledge our own need and responsibility to undertake the work of combating a long legacy of scholarship that is marginalizing and/or exclusionary, including passive concepts of what “counts” as proper subjects or approaches for the field, not only to broaden our own scholastic and personal horizons but, more importantly, to creatively recruit a more inclusive base into our undergraduate and postgraduate programs as much as into our existing faculty and administrative structures;
  • We believe that ASIMS has a particularly powerful voice because Irish Medieval Studies is one of several fields within the larger body of Medieval Studies that continues to be explicitly seen by some as supporting and even encouraging insularity, exclusion, bigotry, prejudice, and the sociopolitical ideologies that rely on these attitudes;
  • We therefore reject any refusal to recognize and combat structural and discursive problems in the field and insist that we must not remain ignorant of medieval cultures beyond Ireland, the Irish Sea, and indeed beyond Europe as a whole, and we refuse to deny the impact of and interactions between those cultures and medieval Ireland;
  • We determine that we must not diminish or ignore the experiences of our own colleagues, whether in Irish or any field of Medieval Studies or beyond, who are calling out that they are mistreated, made to feel unwelcome or unwanted, or marginalized in a range of ways both subtle and overt;
  • We reject further the abuse of history, and of Irish Medieval Studies itself, that so often takes the medieval as an ideal past by imagining it as a time of homogeneity predicated upon the exclusion of Jewish, Muslim, and non-white communities; and
  • We affirm instead that the medieval period, like any period, is made up of many diverse communities, traversed by people of many identities, and that its peoples were aware of each other—there was conflict, certainly, but there was also exchange, exploration, and sharing, and these border-defying activities occurred throughout the medieval world even in the northwestern islands of Europe, of which Ireland is but one.