Episode 51: Race & Racism in Ancient & Medieval Studies, Part One: the Problem

Summary: What are the problems surrounding race and racism in the fields of Classics and Medieval Studies today? Where did these fields come from, and how does that affect the way we think about the past, and how we construct the present? For this episode (and the next) we interviewed eight scholars and put it together into an exploration of these unfortunately timely topics. Thank you to Katherine Blouin, Damian Fleming, Usama Ali Gad, Rebecca Futo Kennedy, Asa Mittman, Dimitri Nakassis, Helen Young, and Donna Zuckerberg for their generous contributions of time and thoughtful discussion of these difficult subjects. In our next episode, we will hear about possible responses to these problems -- in teaching, scholarship, and more.