Matt Gabriele

@profgabriele.com

20530 Followers 1294 Following

Professor, historian, author THE BRIGHT AGES (2021), OATHBREAKERS (2024), and VIOLENCE: A CHRISTIAN HISTORY (coming soon). Host podcast "American Medieval" nostalgia/apocalypse. religion/violence. medieval/modern. Neutral Good. He/ him. profgabriele.com

One incident in June involved hundreds of teens convening after dark at Romare Bearden Park, where police arrested 23 teenagers and one adult and issued citations to 13 parents.
Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. " The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain statue at Bowdoin college in maine
A lone attacker builds a world view the way you build a plate at a buffet — a bit of racism here, some antisemitism there, a scoop of anti-government conspiracy; whatever fits his grievance. It doesn't hold together as a doctrine. It holds together as a feeling.
Trump staring at the sun
But perhaps the worst parts of this report are its repressive conclusions. A committee that fears left-wing censorship of scholarship (which is a real thing to be concerned about) could have easily proposed any number of excellent recommendations, such as urging stronger protections for academic freedom and tenure and calling upon all colleges and professional associations to adopt defenses for free expression. Instead, the committee takes a much more disturbing direction toward endorsing academic authoritarianism—the use of administrative power to seize control of academic departments and impose ideological standards on them in order to purge leftist scholars.
Post from Instagram about the film “death of Robin Hood” saying: “"You think of medieval battles as knights in shining armor, riding in on horses, but most of the time it was just peasants beating each other to death with shovels in the mud." Director Michael Sarnoski in an exclusive new look at THE DEATH OF ROBINHOOD”
There is, however, a long-standing and deeply rooted current in contemporary humanistic scholarship that regards the idea of scholarly objectivity with profound suspicion. One version of this skepticism is purely epistemological. A scholar of literature or history may concede that there are genuine facts about the meanings of texts or about the past which prevail independently of our representations of them, while at the same time holding that scholarship is aimed, not at an accurate reconstruction of those facts, but rather at an edifying narrative. Any such narrative is constrained to fit the data — the indisputable facts about the text or the historical record. But insofar as it goes beyond
from the "report:" Taken as a whole, however, our review of the disciplines paints a mixed picture. Every field we have studied shows some signs of the pathologies sketched above: a deterioration in scholarly standards fueled by the substitution of political criteria for properly scholarly criteria in the assessment of research and a more general repudiation of long-standing ideals of rigor and objectivity." my comment: go fuck yourselves
But this we cannot abide. Simplistic comparisons to the past do violence not just to their time but to ours. By pretending this is just like that, we excuse ourselves from trying to really understand the “how” and “why” of the thing we lament or the thing we adore. The historical analogy becomes a simple explanation for what inevitably is a complex phenomenon. And as historians, it’s always our job to remind people that anyone who offers that type of simplistic narrative is selling something. It’s always the historian’s job to say “it’s more complicated than that.” Indeed, it is always more complicated than that.
Horny grasshoppers
The late Svetlana Boym called this “restorative nostalgia.” In her The Future of Nostalgia, she argued that nostalgia claims to look backwards, towards a particular place in time that’s been lost. But what nostalgia really does is to rebel against time’s inexorable forward movement. Those in the thrall of nostalgia desire “to revisit time as space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.” Specifically, “restorative” nostalgia posits a universal truth, asserts that this truth existed at some point in the past, and concludes that the present is a deviation from that ideal. As such, the past is a loss that needs to be recaptured, to be brought back into the world. In Huntington’s case, his supposed medieval past is almost entirely fictional – a cherry-picked caricature of interactions between Islam and Christianity created in the present, then projected backwards to provide moral, justificatory force when summoned forwards. According to him, the “West” was attacked by Islam in the Middle Ages and the West fought back. But we no longer fight. This is what’s been “lost.”
cover for Matthew Gabriele's book with oxford university press, "Between Prophecy and Apocalypse: The Burden of Sacred Time and the Making of History in Early Medieval Europe"
Governor Spanberger Announces Appointments to Virginia Tech Board of Visitors RICHMOND, VA - Governor Abigail Spanberger today announced that she removed Rector John Rocovich from the Board of Visitors of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and appointed Edward "Ed" Baine to complete his term, which ends on June 30.2027. Baine was previously appointed to the Board of Visitors on July 1, 2018 by Governor Ralph Northam and reappointed on July 1, 2022 by Govemor Glenn Youngkin. Additionally, Sharon Brickhouse Martin— who the Governor previously announced would serve a term beginning on July L2026 — has been immediately appointed to fill the open term ending on June 30. 2026. Martin will then begin to serve her full term on July 12026. * want to thank Ed Baine and Sharon Martin for their service to the Virginia Tech community and our Commonwealth," said Governor Abigail Spanberger. "I trust that these proud alumni will serve with a focus on upholding the excellence of this institution and maintaining the public's trust." Board of Visitors of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
from Magnifica Humanitas: "After having considered faith, which contemplates the Father’s loving plan; love, which unites us in one ecclesial body; and hope, which sustains our actions in the world, the fourth pillar of this program for Christian life is prayer. Mary’s song accompanies our commitment. Before Elizabeth who announces to her that she has become the mother of the Lord, Mary bursts into a hymn of praise and joy. Her soul magnifies the Lord, and her spirit rejoices in God her Savior, for he chose a young, poor and humble girl for his plan of salvation. Mary suddenly sees all of history through the lens of this revelation. Nothing has changed around her; the socio-political situation of her time remains the same. The Romans continue to control her land, and her people are still subjugated and humiliated. Yet, everything has changed within her, and this allows her to see what is invisible. God has already shown the strength of his arm; he has already scattered the proud, cast down the mighty, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed. He has already helped Israel, his servant. God “takes the part of the lowly. His plan is one that is often hidden beneath the opaque context of human events that see ‘the proud, the mighty and the rich’ triumph. Yet his secret strength is destined in the end to be revealed.”
cover of Julia Armfield's book "Our Wives Under the Sea" with a melting woman on the front
Del Frisco Steakhouse in Dallas is on Olive St
Del Friscos in Dallas is on Olive St
Hollis Robbins guts post in Noahopinion’s blog. He is an enormous idiot
Baldwin: ""You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people."
Chronicle article: “Al Will Make the Academic Article Obsolete”
Stop making medievalists relevant