History lesson: Scholars take aim at racist views of Middle Ages
Sep 12, 2018
3 minutes
Growing up, Matthew Simmons remembers listening to his mother read him stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. But Mr. Simmons says he always felt a disconnect – he was black and the characters in these stories were depicted as white.
When he started college at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD), he enrolled in a poetry course taught by Katharine Jager, professor of English. Dr. Jager’s classes included medieval writing – but she immediately complicated what most students had read about in fairy tales.
Jager presented historical
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