The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast

In this episode, art historian Christopher T. Richards chats with Jon and Reed about what we can learn from medieval theories of art-making and sexuality from illuminations found in manuscripts of the Ovide moralisé, an anonymous French poem composed in the fourteenth century. For more information about this conversation, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

What knowledge exists about medieval peasants and their lives? How do we know what we know? In this episode, Elías Carballido González explores various historical approaches to thinking about the peasantry, considers the state of the field in the present day, and discusses a handful of examples with a focus on northwest Iberia. For more information about Elías, medieval peasants, or this podcast,...

In this episode, Andrew Albin and Andrew Kraebel, the editors of Speculum's essay cluster on the textual cult of fourteenth-century mystic Richard Rolle, chat with MMA series producer and host Jonathan Correa-Reyes about Rolle's life, his works, and the contemplative life that he practiced. This episode is a collaboration with Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies. For more information about Ric...

In this episode, MMA series producer and host Reed O'Mara chats with organizers of and participants in Cosmic Ecologies: Animalities in Premodern Jewish Culture, a recent symposium held at Northwestern University and the Newberry Library. The conversation explores medieval Jewish art and culture, particularly cosmic ecologies and their continuities across the animal-human-divine-demonic spectrum....

Art and politics have long been intertwined in Spain. From the early medieval Visigoths to the Umayyad Caliphate to the fall of Granada under Muhammad XII in 1492, political, cultural, and artistic landscapes were continually reshaped as successive groups took power. Ghadi Amer explores the relationship between politics and art movements in medieval Spain, focusing on the paintings of the Hall of...

Afghanistan today is often called medieval: “a broken 13th-century country” (Liam Fox), “delayed by a few centuries” (Thomas Barfield), ruled by “a medieval band of degenerate savages” (Senator Cotton). How did this label come to take hold, and where do we go from here? Join scholars Tanvir Ahmed and Sabauon Nasseri as they discuss how Afghanistan has been made out to be medieval from the British...

Medievalism has been a common—and hardly innocent—practice in eastern European political discourses ever since the dissolution of the USSR in the 1990s. To use but one example, both Russia and Ukraine have laid claims on such prominent historical figures as Prince Vladimir/Volodymyr the Great, Princess Olga, Boris and Gleb/Hlib, as well as on such semi-legendary characters as Ilya of Murom. The re...

Recent years have seen the re-ignition of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The historical monuments of this mountainous territory in the South Caucasus attest to the presence of Armenian people in the region for millennia. With the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict having culminated in the expulsion of Armenians from their homes after Azerbaijan assumed control...

Scholar Adam Mahler reflects on their experience with researching and writing their article, "'“Ai flores, ai flores do verde pino': The Ecopoetics of the Galician-Portuguese Pine Forest," which appears in Speculum 99.3 (July 2024). Denis of Portugal’s “Ai flores, ai flores do verde pino” [Oh flowers, oh flowers of the green pine] is the medieval monarch’s most famous cantiga de amigo and is one o...

In this episode, four scholars from the "Conques in the Global World" project (Kris Racaniello, Adrien Palladino, Martin Lešzák, and Janet Marquardt) discuss their research on the diverse ways in which this French village has been (and is still) historicized, museumified, and "Disneylanded," producing a "living" medieval space in the present. This episode spans over one thousand years of history t...

In this episode, Amanda Valdés Sánchez addresses the crucial role of Marian devotion in the Castilian domination of the former territory of Al-Andalus and its native Islamic population. She analyzes the Castilian exploitation of the local Islamic cult of Maryam as an essential tool for consolidating the Castilian control over the recently conquered territories of the South and the expansion of the...

In the centuries after the Norman Conquest, as many as eight languages were spoken in the British Isles: English, Anglo-Norman, Latin, Norse, Welsh, Cornish, Irish, and Hebrew. Who spoke these languages, and how did they interact and influence each other? In this episode, Austin Benson discusses the linguistic and literary landscape of multilingual Britain, interviewing Dr. Sara Pons-Sanz at Cardi...

What goes into editing a special issue of a journal? How does the framework of race and race-thinking inform medieval studies today? What is the role of objectivity in the study of the Middle Ages? Join us for this conversation with the editors of the special issue Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages , published by Speculum (99.2) in April 2024. This episode is a collaborat...

What is the relationship between so-called built and natural environments as they are represented in medieval literature, and what is the value of thinking about this relationship? Amy Juarez, Chelsea Keane, and Rebecca Davis discuss the nuanced connections between medieval literary representations of “built” and “natural” environments. Their wide-ranging discussion covers the multiplicity of Midd...

The producers of The Multicultural Middle Ages podcast sit down to talk about where we've been, what it's been like, and what's to come. www.multiculturalmiddleages.com

Scholars Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos reflect on their experiences with researching and writing their article, "The Cerne Giant in its Early Medieval Context," which appears in Speculum 99:1. The Cerne Abbas giant is a well-known figure cut into the chalk of a hillside in Dorset. Recent archaeological investigation has concluded that it had been cut in the early middle ages. Morcom and Gittos ar...

Scholar Georgios Makris reflects on his experiences with researching and writing his article, “Jewelry and People in the Byzantine Cemetery of Parapotamos, Epiros,” which appears in Speculum 98:4. Jewelry reflecting the tastes, needs, and practices of past users across all social strata constitutes one of the most representative portable arts in the Middle Ages. Jewelry’s typical lack of iconograp...

What does it mean to experience a sacred text? How did Buddhism make its way from south Asia to the Japanese archipelago? How did the adoption of Buddhism impact the Japanese Middle Ages? Join Jon Correa Reyes and Reed O'Mara for a conversation with Charlotte Eubanks, where they discuss some of the many ways in which Buddhist beliefs and practices shaped medieval Japanese history, individuals, and...

Join your episode co-hosts Kersti Francis (BU) and Misho Ishikawa (NYU) for a lively conversation with Chris Chism (UCLA) about prequels that attempt to "diversify" preexisting fantasy IP. Together Kersti, Misho, and Chris discuss the racial politics of The Lord of the Rings and the new Rings of Power series based on Tolkien's Silmarillion . Throughout the conversation, they deconstruct the white...

What did medieval music sound like? How can we read and perform the musical notation from medieval manuscripts? What does singing and playing music written before 1500 actually feel like? How did the early music tradition carry forward into the seventeenth century? In this episode, Reed O'Mara interviews musicologists Elena Mullins Bailey and Allison Monroe from the musical ensemble Trobár on the...

Scholar François•e Charmaille reflects on their experiences with researching and writing their article, “Trans Climates of the European Middle Ages, 500 to 1300,” which appears in Speculum 98:3. This article gathers evidence of a distinct strand of writing in Western Europe from the sixth century onwards, which concerns itself with the relation between the seasons and sexual difference in humans,...

What can we learn from those who came before us? How does the art we make reflect and define who we are? And why is the medieval past just so interesting? In this conversation with the MMA’s Logan Quigley, filmmaker Caroline Golum reflects on these questions and more as she discusses creating her most recent film, “ Revelations of Divine Love, ” which turns for strong inspiration to the narrative...

Ogres, VHS tapes, bad puns, oh my! Join three late millennial/early Gen Z-ers and premodern scholars, Alice, Erin, & Olivia, on a journey across the medievalisms and their media of the 1990s and Y2K eras. Follow this link for more information about Alice, Erin, Olivia, and this topic: www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

T. Liam Waters and Ana C. Núñez discuss the application of New Materialism for the study of the Middle Ages. Exploring different source bases, questions, and insights, Liam and Ana take listeners from Viking Age Scandinavia to Crusade-era Jerusalem. Follow this link for more information about Liam, Ana, and this topic: www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

Within a cultural climate where representations of the medieval are often employed to serve racist and white supremacist ends, the topic of medievalism becomes increasingly relevant. In this episode, Bryant White (Vanderbilt University) discusses his work on the use and abuse of medievalism in Francophone literary contexts. Bryant looks at how a trope used for othering in medieval travel literatur...