As difficult as Heng’s articles were to read I actually really enjoyed them and was able to stay focused and interested. Heng explains to us the pattern within Medievalist studies that completely try’s to ignore that there was racism in the middle ages. I love her thorough explanation of race and how it’s way more than just skin color. I’ve talked about this a good bit in my Education classes when we discuss designing multi-cultural curriculum. Just this ides of differing cultures and how every single person has a completely different home culture and school culture. So tying back to what Heng is saying, racism can be about religion, cultural background, color, and ethnicity. So for medievalist to narrow racism down to skin color discredits so many peoples suffering and makes the issue a lot more shallow than it really is and should be.
I actually enjoyed Richard Coer de Lyon so much! I’ve kind of been getting into poetry during this quarantine so I was super excited when I started reading. It was so interesting to read and keep up with what was going on. The way it was written almost gave an emotional feel to it that I think wouldn’t be there if it was just a simple story, if that makes sense. I did throw me for a loop when all the cannibalism came into play and just the whole idea of “yeah we think this group of people are demons so we’re going to eat them!”. First of all, the fact that they think their demons and evil simply for just being Muslim Ottomans is messed up. Second, if I thought someone was a demon I would NOT want to eat them!!! Anyways, I loved it even though it was real long.