 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Welcome to Global Connections on Think Tech. I'm your host today, Carol Mon Lee. Our show is called ISAS Conference and Dr. Kathleen Davis, and we're going to talk about the global perspectives on Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Saxonisms from halfway around the world. The International Society of Anglo-Saxons' 18th Biennial Meeting brings important scholars to Hawaii and what the Pacific Biennial gives a different perspective on Anglo-Saxon studies. If you want to ask a question or participate in a today's discussion, you can tweet us at thinktechhi or call us at 808-374-2014. Our guest for today is Dr. Kathleen Davis of the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Davis is in Hawaii to attend the conference, the International Society of Anglo-Saxonism, taking place here at the University of Hawaii. She's invited as the Jerry H. Mantley Memorial keynote speaker and will speak on archipelagos of historiography. Professor Davis is a skilled scholar of Anglo-Saxon and medieval English literature and has been described as a courageously committed diologist of medieval and post-colonial studies at the Moscow. Welcome to the show, Dr. Davis. Thank you. It's so nice to have you. Thank you for having me. This is a really important conference for the state of Hawaii and I know that it's been in preparation for many months and years. So why don't you tell us a little bit about ISAS and what that stands for? ISAS is the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, so-called because it is for Anglo-Saxonists who are from all over the world. We have people from Japan, from all over Europe, of course, mainly, however, England and the United States. Anglo-Saxonists, the study of Anglo-Saxon studies, it focuses on anything to do with what's called the Anglo-Saxon period, something we would problematize, which would be from about 500 to about 1100 in England. Only England? Well, yes, mainly England. There are connections to Germany and to lots of other areas because the people who moved into Britain, say, in the fifth and sixth centuries, were from the mainland and many Germanic areas. So the North Sea is another way of imagining how to study this area and this time. But there's a very interesting connection made here in Hawaii and what Dr. Karen Jolly, who teaches here at the University of Hawaii, who is hosting and University of Hawaii is hosting very nicely, the conference, what Dr. Jolly wanted to do was open out Anglo-Saxon studies to a very different perspective, make international means something different altogether. So the International Society meets, what, twice every other year? And typically the meetings have been in Europe? Typically Europe, yes, moving around Europe and the United States. So this is the first time it's ever been in Hawaii or in the Pacific? I believe it is. I have to check my history, but I know it's not been in Hawaii before and I don't think it's been in the Pacific at all. Okay, and so again let's talk again about why that is so important this time to have the conference here in Hawaii. What that means to the study and how the influences from the Pacific may affect the ongoing interest of the many scholars who are here for this program. So the background is that Anglo-Saxon studies has first of all tended to be a very conservative field in the past, although that is changing. And also in the sense of being very Eurocentric. Eurocentric. Yes, very Eurocentric. And focused on issues that don't tend to open out on current dialogues today, whether that be, you know, this isn't the past, not now. Things have changed drastically, but in the past very focused on, well, very white, very male, very nationalist history, all right. So that's why Karen wanted to bring it here, because for a long time, again, I want to emphasize because I don't want my colleagues to get angry with me in the past. This is where it's coming from and great strides have been made, but not enough to fully open out onto the kind of global perspective, which I'll talk about in a minute, that is happening faster and faster today. So the one thing is that it's been tied to nationalism. So Anglo-Saxon studies has been tied to nationalism, and unfortunately today even things like white supremacy. No kidding. Yes, because white Anglo-Saxon is the way people who consider themselves wasps, yes. Very white power would like to think of themselves quite often, that is, the characterization. So of course that is not ever what the field was about, but it's more important than ever for this reason to educate people about, but also ourselves, about the history of the field and what our own responsibilities to a field like this are. So because it has been, going back into the 18th and 19th centuries, a field that has been very much tied to nationalism, it is also very much tied to colonialism, because disciplines that took shape, history, religious studies, anthropology, literary studies, they all took their form in the 18th and 19th centuries, different ones at different, you know, paces and during that time. They tended to be very tied to nationalist studies, not only in England, but in other European countries. And nationalist studies were also the kin of imperial studies and colonialism. So as, for example, and we had a very, another keynote that talked a little bit about yesterday the other day, as missionaries for example would go in the 19th century to proselytize people in Hawaii, they compared Hawaiians to the savage people that needed to be Christianized in the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th centuries that had been Christianized from other places. And then, so their missionaries became like the missionaries who had converted the people in England. It wasn't called England. Many centuries ago. Yes, many centuries ago. So the past, the people of Anglo-Saxon England were considered kind of savage in a way that a 19th century person could say, that is our childish past. We, it is our identity. We identify with that as our past and so we keep it. But we know that we have matured. Now we are the grown-ups and the people whom we are blessing with colonization are the ones who are going to be made to grow up. Yes, I mean that is the history, unfortunately. Well, but now, fields, you know, all disciplines are working very hard, different disciplines at different paces and of course every discipline is, there is a very specific history as to how this played out. The identifications that were made, the very specific ways that these were attached to policies and the way that it fed back because the experiences that people would have, say here in Hawaii, we just heard that an islander who had, and I don't remember his name, unfortunately that our first speaker spoke about, who had become himself a bishop, became a model for how people who were studying the Anglo-Saxon bishops talked about what that Anglo-Saxon bishop was like. So there is an interesting kind of circular narrative that develops. So the people we study that we call the people from Anglo-Saxon England, the name itself is problematic. I see. So what would be a more accurate name? Well, that's always the million-dollar question. And how does the conference advance any of the issues or the scholarship in the field? I know it just started. We're only in the second day of the five-day conference with how many people from around the world? About 200, I believe. About 200. Right. So do you have a tension? It has been fabulous. So first of all, the call for papers emphasized the place that this is being held in this place. The middle of the Pacific? Right. A place that was, but specifically a place that was colonized and a place that will really push us to take a different perspective on our studies. And so that's the kind of papers that we're looking for for this conference. It wasn't the sort of thing where it was prescriptive, right? But this is the theme of the conference. And many people, there have been some wonderful papers, have worked hard to think about what I just explained to you, that here we are with a discipline that has this history to ask ourselves what is our responsibility and what can be done with the material that we have to study that opens it up. But more importantly, how can we look at our materials differently? So instead of looking at it from a nationalistic perspective, there have been papers, for example, on England and Wales. Because Wales was also colonized, right? It was also on the fringe from way back, even many centuries before. So had it been ignored more than that to now? Well, there are aficionados and there are small pockets, but it doesn't have anything like the resources or the attention, of course, under colonialism. I don't want to say under colonialism because that's kind of a broad brush, but under the duress of a dominating power, the language was suppressed, similar histories, as with Hawaii and the culture and the language all, everything, everything. So the question is going back, how do we rethink England and Wales and just think of them as separate entirely, right? So there have been papers opening out the history that was really a regional history that wasn't so separate. We call it now England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, you know? So thinking about regional histories just cracking through all the boundaries, thinking about the text that we have that actually are looking out across the world are not necessarily kind of monocentric. So it's, I can't characterize all of the papers, but there have been brilliant, brilliant papers. Yeah, I know. It's very impressive. I understand there are about 70 different papers that are going to be given, but I know you're speaking on Thursday, and we mentioned it's the Jerry H. Bentley Memorial keynote speaker and of course it's very special to me since it was my late husband. But your topic is, and I'm going to let you give us the name of your topic, please. Archipelagos of historiography. And how does this fit into this overall theme of the globalization of the Anglo-Saxon studies? So going with the idea of the connectedness of an archipelago as opposed to the remoteness of an island, you know, that rather than thinking of islands as isolated, that thinking of archipelagos and connectedness, I'm putting historiography with the archipelago because I want to emphasize the connectedness of histories across the globe. In several ways, one, less fortunate, and that is that the historiography, the writing of history and the study of writings of history have, from Eurocentric perspectives, often and we're done through imperial lives. I see. Right? So, but the sun never sets on the British Empire, right? So in a sense that it's today unfortunate that we have those archipelagos of historiography. And then we could push against that the other way and imagine these connected histories by starting to do different kinds of historical work. Okay. Well, I'm going to ask you to break for a second and we'll get back to that right after the break. We'll be right back with our show on the ISAS conference here in Hawaii with my guest, Dr. Kathleen Davis from the University of Rhode Island. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. The grandmother, what big eyes you have. She said, what are you doing? Research says reading from birth accelerates our baby's brain development. Push! Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child. Every parent. Every day. I'm Helen Dora Hayden, the host of Voice of the Veteran, seen here live every Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. As a fellow veteran and veterans advocate with over 23 years experience serving veterans, active duty and family members, I hope to educate everyone on benefits and accessibility services by inviting professionals in the field to appear on the show. In addition, I hope to plan on inviting guest veterans to talk about their concerns and possibly offer solutions. As we navigate and work together through issues, we can all benefit. Please join me every Thursday at 1 p.m. for the Voice of the Veteran. Aloha! Welcome back. This is Carol Mon Lee on Global Connections with my guest, Dr. Kathleen Davis from the University of Rhode Island, who is here for a very important conference called the International Society of Anglo-Saxonist by annual 2017 meeting in Honolulu. And Dr. Davis is one of the keynote speakers on Thursday. But let's talk a little bit about your own particular work in Rhode Island and other places that you've been. I know you were at Princeton for a while. So my teaching? Yes. Yes. You're teaching, you're writing, you're research. Okay. So I'm generally a medievalist, so my teaching can be anything. I'm in the English department, so I teach literature. So what are your classes, for instance, during the semester? I teach sometimes Chaucer, sometimes an overview of medieval literature, which can include and go from, say, works from about 800 to about 1500, all different kinds. I generally teach topics courses, so I get to pick, which is very nice. More pertinent to what we're doing now are two classes. One is history of the English language, which can be taught in such a way, and this is what I do with it, to impress the students who are mainly going to be secondary education English teachers. So it matters. They're going out and in Providence, where I am up in Rhode Island, they're going to be going into some minority neighborhoods, because it's a city. So I want to emphasize the global history of English, that it is a language that has dominated and its domination has a history that they need to be aware of. I also really, really emphasize that there is no standard English in a way that means this is the correct English, but rather that a standard English is actually a language of privilege that comes with university education, usually, or socioeconomic privilege. So they're the sorts of things I try to do. But of course they learn the history in various other ways, going back into the past, regional dialects, as well as going through the centuries and seeing actually how it's changed. And of course now, do you also cover how the changes in, whether it's the internet technology, slang, has all evolved in emojis? Yes, I started the last year when I started teaching the very first day, we talked about emojis, which was a very, I've discovered a good way to start off that class and get some going. Well, let's talk about some of your publications. I know we have a, let's pick Ray, let's have a cover of one of Professor Davis' books. And this is called Medievalism in the Post-Colonial World, and what is the subject? The idea of the Middle Ages outside Europe. So it's Medievalism's plural in the post-colonial world. So I edited this with Nadia Alcho, a friend of mine, and she is from South America. She does Medieval Spain. She works with Medieval Spain, but more now on South American editing and reception of the idea of the Middle Ages. But the idea of the Middle Ages, how it performed in the, for example, the writing of South American history, there are many, many examples. That's one example of Medievalism in a post-colonial world, the world that was colonized. So all of the countries treated in the book were places that had been colonized by Europe. And what the idea of the Middle Ages did in the history of those people. I'm not sure if that's entirely making sense. Just as I said earlier, that people in Hawaii, for example, would be considered the savages who need to be converted, et cetera. But they would be labeled backward or medieval in many parts of the world. So for example, in the South American countries, the idea that the people were backward and living in the Middle Ages and had to get out of the Middle Ages was very powerful. I'm speaking of it in extremely general terms. There are specifics of how that operated. So for example, the idea that Argentina was a feudal country and it needed to get over that feudal organization. Modernized. Modernized. Now, that may sound like, OK, well, it's just language that's being used. But no. It has to do with the organization and the ownership of land. It has to do with power structures. It has to do with rationalizing why one person should be able to be dominant rather than a group of people spreading the power out, which would be labeled at sometimes feudal, because it's like feudal lords, each having their own little feats. So the idea of things like the feudal or like the medieval were powerful rationales for manipulating power. And that can be traced in so many countries all around the world. So is this an ongoing area of study for you, focusing on South America? Nadia focuses on South America. I mentioned that as an example. My interest, which is more of the other book, Periodization. Let's show the cover of the next book. And both of these were written in 2008, 2009. This was published in 2008. I think it wasn't medievalism. I think the other book was published in 2010. Yeah. And this track, After a while. Right. It's called The Periodization and Sovereignty. Periodization and Sovereignty. How ideas of feudalism, where you can see my interest there, and secularization govern the politics of time. And this book was met with great critical acclaim. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. I was very impressed. Yes. So please tell us a little bit about this. Okay. As I started to realize the deep intertwining of medieval studies and colonialism and the work that the Middle Ages as a category was doing. Because first of all, this is hard to explain to people, but the Middle Ages, where you have to kind of unthink that, right? That's just the category. It's a label that was put on a group of centuries across Europe. And it seems very innocent. But you really have to remember that it is a category that was produced over a certain amount of time. It didn't just pop up all of a sudden. But in a shorter period of time than one would think. And it did a lot of work. Just as I was saying, the idea of the feudal does work in, say, for example, South America. I wanted to get at, where did this come from? How is this so powerful? Let me try to figure out where it came from. And as I searched, I was searching the term, the Middle Ages. And other people had before me, there were various articles that tried, just talked about where this comes from. It was all very shallow, none of it was satisfactory. And I thought, you know what? What holds it together? What really holds this idea of the Middle Ages together? I thought, what are the real big categories? And I thought, well, feudalism, Middle Ages and feudalism, they're just almost made to be identical. And very different secularization in the sense that if you, coming from something that Jerry, when he called moderno-centrism, people, critics for many decades, all through the 20th century, so focused on, what's the modern? And what do you have to be to be modern? What do you have to be to be modern means not being what came before the modern, which would be the medieval, which would be the example of what not to be. And that's another thing about colonialism is people who were colonizing, you have to be modern, you have to catch up. You're in the Middle Ages, catch up, catch up, get out. What do you have to be? Well, you have to not be religious, stuck in religious, under theological oppression. You have to be secular. Now, of course, that meant a very specific thing and it was always defined in such a way that no one outside Europe ever could really satisfy the requirements, but the secular is something, as you can see today, is driving a lot of very violent politics. Right. Well, you get a chance to talk about your books at the conference? I don't know that I will. I wanted to focus on some particular things in the talk that pays more attention to the relationship between an Anglo-Saxon past as it has been used and thinking about colonial histories. Okay. So it's implicit. Right. The work of the book is implicit in what I will be talking about. Great. Well, this has been so interesting. Well, thank you. And there's so much to cover. I urge our audience to learn more about ISIS, ISAS, International Society of Anglo-Saxons and how it's so important for us as a global society to understand all parts of history in the world and by bringing you coming to Hawaii, it really has given us the opportunity to interact more and understand better. So let's show one last slide, which is the Conference International Society of Anglo-Saxons 18th Biennial Meeting this week at UH Manoa. And on that note, I'm going to thank you so much for coming today, Dr. Davis. Well, thank you for having me. It's been a treat. Yeah. Well, this brings us to the end of our show. We've enjoyed bringing it to you and I'm your host, Carol Monly, with our guest Dr. Davis from the University of Rhode Island. And we've been talking about the conference and look forward to having more scholars come to Hawaii and share with us their different areas of interest. So thank you again. And on behalf of our staff, Bray Sangalong, our production engineer, and Rob McClain, our floor manager, and all the others who contribute to our ThinkTech Productions mahalo.