This is really important. I see this in funding priorities, institutional reorganization, and curriculum responding to "student demand." Well, they can't demand what they've never seen.

SFsrsrensoc.bsky.socialMay 30, 2024 8:18am

The premodern world held possibilities and imagined futures: the physical and metaphysical systems that were actively built and contested then continue to inform the world in the present. Read our statement on the value of Renaissance & Premodern Studies: www.rensoc.org.uk/statement-on...

“They can’t demand what they’ve never seen” should be the response to all of the arguments—many of which circulate in my institution and department—that understand students as education consumers and courses & curricula as items to be purchased and maybe returned. I hate it all.

Yes the past is important but do Renaissance scholars ever fight for pasts other than their own?