Anglo-Saxonism and Indigenous Dispossession: Land-Grab Universities and the Emergence of Medieval Studies

Abstract

Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone’s 2020 report on the Morrill Act of 1862 tied the founding and funding of “land-grab” universities, including several institutions key to the development of medieval studies in the United States, to the forceful dispossession of Indigenous peoples. When this history of active policies of Indigenous displacement, genocidal campaigns, and corrupt negotiations is considered in light of the growth of medieval studies in American institutions, this context brings forth the uncomfortable settler colonial association of the active erasure of Indigenous histories and their replacement with a Western medieval past. Motivated by the development of American Anglo-Saxonism and further bolstered by an academic focus on American medieval lineages, medieval studies profited from and contributed to Indigenous erasure both tangibly and intellectually, as its intellectual contributions to the American state and the academy became a tool of settler colonialism. We argue that the connections between medieval studies and Indigenous studies need to be recognized alongside and beyond the Indigenous turn, postcolonial studies, and medievalism to include the field’s historical implications and ongoing benefit from systemic Indigenous dispossession in the United States.

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