The International Congress of Medieval Studies Presentation: The Dangers of Teaching the Black Devil

Throughout this job market season, I have thought a lot about how I market what it is I do. Throughout my graduate school experience I have consistently been told to downplay my folklore interests, the folkloric foundation of my work. Yet the last year I have realized that the fact that I use my extensive medieval and early modern background to trace these trends, and tropes, of folkloric figures, how they are the vehicle for historical and cultural moments, from the medieval period up through modern pop culture is the strength of my work. Yet, it's the aspect I've been told to suppress. I understand why, it's interdisciplinary work, it crosses period and genre boundaries, and this is still work that people don't know what to do with. But I also strongly believe this is the direction that many fields are headed in.

So, even though this year's job market still has me in its clutches, I have already decided that if/when I'm on the market again in just three short months (Oy!) I will forge my own path, and revise my materials so it highlights MY work, what I do, and abandon any attempt to fit into any square pegs.

All of this is to say that as I've realized the academy doesn't want me, or seemingly, my work, I see less and less reason to conform to their arbitrary nonsense. So, I wear jeans and t-shirts to conferences now, and never been happier. I have decided to publish, or not, work that I want.

So this is the headspace I wrote my presentation for this year's Kzoo.

When I submitted the abstract, I wanted to focus on the dangers, in present day, of teaching the figure of the black devil without interrogating, or problematizing, misreadings and misunderstandings of "black is bad, white is good," especially with Nazis looking to medieval writings for justifications for their actions.
I was also interested in looking at how these lessons could be applied to Candyman and the television shows, The Exorcist, which I'd been writing about for my presentation at De Paul University's Popular Culture conference, and which I hope to expand into an article.

So, here is the presentation. And here is the paper.



I hope, that this will help people who teach surveys, or teach some of these materials, to be able to teach these texts and ideas in a way that is clearer, more situated in a complete context. I hope too that it encourages more people to think about the history of these popular culture representations, and talk about how they are problematic, not just accept them, and discuss the issues surrounding them.