Christine Rauer
My research focuses on literary history, where “Anglo-Saxon” serves as shorthand for Old English or Anglo-Latin. My current work is on early Mercian literary production (seventh to ninth centuries), for which I sometimes need to refer to the wider context of the later Anglo-Saxon period.
“Anglo-Saxon” is everywhere: many of us have the term written into our biographies. It is in the names of institutions, publications and places of publication, funding bodies, departments and job titles. More than 100,000 people saw a recent British Library exhibition, “Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms”. In my particular field, the Old English Newsletter bibliography lists 5,000 items with “Anglo-Saxon” in their titles. Anyone seriously investigating England of this time will need to engage with the term regularly. It brings together historians, archaeologists, literary experts, art historians and linguists, and not only from the English-speaking world. It’s not perfect, but may be the best, or one of the more practical options.
It is the larger field of medieval history, not just Anglo-Saxon studies, that is tainted by racist appropriations. The terrorist who committed the recent New Zealand mass murder had inscribed his weapon with “Charles Martel”, “[Battle of] Tours 732”, “[Siege of] Acre 1189” and “Odo the Great”. In the context of Brexit and growing nationalist tendencies within the uk and elsewhere, replacing “Anglo-Saxon” with “English” or “medieval”, in professional or general contexts, seems futile to me; it also disrupts the communication between academics and members of the public in the uk.
Would we ask biologists to stop using the word “bird” because some people use it abusively to refer to women? Language should be allowed to evolve naturally and gradually, following informed, individual preference, not driven by ideology or politics.
Allowing individual scholars the freedom to choose their own preferred vocabulary will help us put our differences and divisions aside, and focus on the history and culture of the period we study. Anglo-Saxon studies is open to everyone, regardless of ethnicity or background. I am myself a non-native speaker of English, with a family background from outside the English-speaking world.
Christine Rauer is reader at the School of English, University of St Andrews