Online Fanboys, Medievalism, and Global White Supremacy
Fri, Oct 4, 2019
7:30 PM–9:00 PM
English Department Lounge (Room 4406)
Over the last few years, white supremacists bearing medieval symbols have both marched and committed mass murder around the Anglophone world and throughout Europe. These manifestations of hate, though, are just the tip of a very ugly iceberg. David Perry has spent the last few years tracking the connections between medievalism and hate on sites like 8chan, 4chan, and the Neo-Nazi website Stormfront. He argues that we need to understand even the most seemingly innocuous medieval chatter in these spaces as part of a new, dangerous, phenomenon to which everyone studying the medieval past must be ready to respond.
David Perry is a journalist and medieval historian. After receiving a PhD from the University of Minnesota in 2006, David was a professor of history at Dominican University in the Chicago area. His book, Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (Penn State University Press in 2015) explores the construction and contests over the memorialization of the Fourth Crusade as revealed in texts about the movement of relics from East to West. Since 2013, David has published over 400 essays in numerous outlets, including CNN, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard, and The Nation. His journalism covers contemporary politics, parenting, health justice, higher education, and the myriad ways that history informs the present.
Co-sponsored by Medieval Club of New York, the Russell Hope Memorial Fund, PublicsLab and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
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