Medieval scholars spar on a modern battlefield: Twitter

Medieval Twitter can be a noisy and fractious place, where scholars post articles, memes and, not infrequently, fierce blasts at one another.

>> Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times
Published : 8 May 2022, 05:23 AM
Updated : 8 May 2022, 05:23 AM

But over the past week, things turned hotter than a pot of boiling oil as a dispute over a spiked book review spiralled into a conflagration involving charges and countercharges of racism, bullying and deception.

It started when Mary Rambaran-Olm, a literary scholar who focuses on race and early medieval England, accused editors at the Los Angeles Review of Books of “torpedoing” a strongly negative review she had written of “The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe” because of their friendship with the fellow white scholars who wrote it. As the online furore grew, one of the editors posted a fierce rebuttal, accusing her of misrepresenting the situation and saying the publication had killed the review because she refused to accept edits.

By the end of this past week, some of the protagonists had either locked or deleted their Twitter accounts, as rubbernecks outside the profession started sharing screenshots and joking about the latest circular firing squad on academic Twitter.

The online fracas was the latest blowup in a field that has been roiled in recent years by an acrimonious debate over race. Some scholars have accused their colleagues of not sufficiently pushing back against white nationalists who have appropriated medieval symbolism and weaponized a highly distorted version of medieval history.

Groups such as Medievalists of Color have sought to diversify the overwhelmingly white field. And scholars have also pushed for a broader conception of the Middle Ages, looking beyond the traditional focus on Western Europe to encompass the Middle East, North Africa and even China, Japan and the Americas.

“The Bright Ages,” published by HarperCollins in December, was written by Matthew Gabriele and David Perry, two scholars who have been vocal proponents of diversifying the field. In it, they synthesize research from across the field to correct the popular view of medieval Europe as primitive, violent, drudgery-ridden — and entirely white.

In her review, which was commissioned by the Los Angeles Review of Books, Rambaran-Olm briefly praised the book before moving into an extended critique of its “white-centrism.” Ultimately, she wrote, in a version later posted on Medium, “the language and the core themes of the book don’t reveal brightness so much as ‘whiteness.’”

“While ‘The Bright Ages’ challenges some racist and fascist notions,” she wrote, “Europe, Christianity, and whiteness remain central themes,” while the authors “rely on their whiteness for authority.”

Cover of the book 'The Bright Ages' via Twitter

The editors killed the review in early March after several days of editorial back and forth over length, structure and evidence. “This has nothing to do with Gabriele and Perry,” an editor wrote in an email to Rambaran-Olm, “and everything to do with us simply not having the same coordinated vision for how a book review should be presented and argued.”

The Twitter furore began weeks later, on April 24, when Rambaran-Olm, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, saw that the publication had posted a much shorter, more appreciative review of “The Bright Ages” by a different reviewer.

“Some shady things from the editors,” she wrote on Twitter. “My review *IS* coming out and it’s not whitewashed which is what this incestuous club wants.”

Others on Twitter jumped in, assailed what they saw as the racist treatment of a woman of colour, and called on both the Los Angeles Review of Books and the authors of “The Bright Ages” to issue statements.

On April 27, Rambaran-Olm posted what she said was the nearly 3,700-word review “as the editors received it,” with only “four minor edits.” The post, which ran under the headline “Sounds About White,” was accompanied by a photo of the book next to a piece of bread, decorated with a frowny face drawn in what looked like mayonnaise.

And on Twitter, she posted what she said were parts of her email correspondence with the editors. In a telephone interview, she said she did not contact any Los Angeles Review of Books editors directly.

“I was waiting to see what they would do,” she said.

Rambaran-Olm is no stranger to the field’s battles. In 2019, she drew headlines when she stepped down as second vice president of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, saying it was encouraging and emboldening white supremacists by refusing to change its name. (The group subsequently voted to rename itself the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England. “The term ‘Anglo-Saxonist’ is problematic,” the board said at the time.)

Rambaran-Olm said she had written “a balanced review” of "The Bright Ages." The intention “wasn’t to take down two scholars,” she said. “It was an openhanded gesture to dialogue.”

But over last weekend, in a quickly deleted Twitter thread, Sarah Bond, a classicist at the University of Iowa who commissioned the review, pushed back strongly against the idea she would “kill a review for friends” and accused Rambaran-Olm of giving a selective version of the facts.

“You have gone to great lengths for days to not show our actual emails or comments in full because it would show: 4 editors voted down this review, including an editor of colour,” she wrote. And, she said, Rambaran-Olm had posted a different version of the review on Medium, while also deleting comments from an editor of colour.

Rambaran-Olm, she maintained, had refused “70%” of the edits, resulting in “an impasse.”

“This is not about whiteness,” Bond said. “It is not about protecting white men. It is about saying sometimes reviews and writing don’t work out in public spheres rather than academic journals.”

But the furore intensified as others chimed in. At one point, two scholars of colour suggested that Rambaran-Olm was not, as she says in her bio, part Black. (One later deleted the tweets and apologized.)

In the interview, Rambaran-Olm, who described herself as “very mixed,” with parents with Afro Indian Caribbean roots, called the accusations that she had lied about her race “shocking.”

“I was blown away — after having a review rejected in the way it was — that it had descended into this mess,” she said.

And she connected it with Bond’s charge that she had misrepresented her original draft and the editing emails. “If you are a woman of colour, you have to prove everything and have everything in order,” she said, calling it “a matter of being gaslit all the way.”

The precise details of what happened at the Los Angeles Review of Books, a nonprofit online publication produced by decentralized teams of scholars/editors who often work on a volunteer basis, are unclear.

In an email, Boris Dralyuk, editor-in-chief, said editors in charge of different sections operate independently. And he said the other review was commissioned a week before the one by Rambaran-Olm, by a different set of editors.

“We are aware this created the impression that the published piece was a replacement” for Rambaran-Olm’s, he wrote. “This is not the case.”

On Thursday, Bond tweeted an apology to Rambaran-Olm. “In defending our editorial decision, I centred myself & showed my fragility,” she wrote. “I apologize for this great harm & do not stand w/racist attacks on her or questioning her identity.” She then deleted her account.

Reached by email, Bond said she stood by the decision to cancel the review but reiterated the apology. Her earlier tweets, she said, “brought out allegations that I had not foreseen but which is horrendous.”

In an email Friday, Gabriele, one of the authors of “The Bright Ages,” declined to comment on the controversy. “We welcome any and all reviews of our book,” he wrote, “and condemn harassment of any kind.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company