Forum Editors’ Introduction: Spaces and Times of Crisis

This collection of essays was conceived and drafted on the cusp of 2021 at a moment of feverish attention to a future that no one could fully capture. From the layered crises of pandemic, protests, and elections, the country turned toward vaccination and a new American government while at the same time fearing further death and destruction, as we witnessed higher than ever unemployment, skyrocketing rates of illness and death, and a violent invasion of the US Capitol. As sociologist Rodrigo Cordero writes, “in a way, crisis is the moment where we are compelled to ask questions: where are we, what is going on, what went wrong, how we can get out of here?” (2017, 1) For medievalists working within the university, an institution already facing an array of challenges in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, such questions have a particularly existential cast. Accordingly, we seek medieval resonance with the modern world: In the face of frayed communities and uncertain futures, we ask how the past thought about crisis, how medieval writers grappled with isolation, conflict, precariousness, and disaster. In line with recent projects such as The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic, Why the Middle Ages Matter , and the recent issues of New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession focused on trauma-informed and pandemic-era teaching, we explore what scholars the Middle Ages — historical moments riven by uprisings, usurpations, and plagues — have offer in our state uncertainty. we