The Stories We Tell: Medievalism and White Supremacy

Taught by Dr. Sarah Bogue

A famous anthropologist suggested that culture was simply “the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves”. These origin stories and how we tell them matter. Many white supremacists seek out stories from the “Middle Ages” to support ethnic nationalism. They try to connect their actions to a version of the past perceived as more pure than others’ stories. Building on scholarship around these stories, we will look at how our context shapes the way we read and tell stories of the past. Our leader, Dr. Sarah Bogue, was voted faculty member of the year for five consecutive years by Candler students .