TOEBI believes that Black lives matter. The society recognises the many failures, present and historic, to support and listen to Black academics, both in academia generally and within our own field specifically, and that these failures contribute to a larger system of oppression against Black people. As a society, our aim is to promote the teaching of Old English in universities, and we commit to fostering an environment supportive of Black scholars, scholars of colour, and scholars from other ethnically marginalised backgrounds, including Irish Travellers. 

We have work to do. Scholars privileged by race and by other characteristics have an obligation to learn more, and to support marginalised colleagues and students. In the future, we will do more to amplify diverse voices and the work of BIPOC scholars. 

The 2020 bibliography on race and medieval studies crowdsourced by Dr Mary Rambaran-Olm and Dr Erik Wade provides a useful starting point: https://mrambaranolm.medium.com/race-101-for-early-medieval-studies-selected-readings-77be815f8d0f . For further resources on anti-racism, see this project page from Dr Nicole A. Cooke at the University of South Carolina: https://padlet.com/nicolethelibrarian/nbasekqoazt336co . 

You can find a broader statement of TOEBI’s values and our anti-harassment policy here.

Old English Futures

TOEBI (Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland) Call for Papers, for English: Shared Futures 2020 conference, Manchester/Salford June 26-28^th 2020

www.englishsharedfutures.uk @EngSharedFuture

TOEBI invites submissions for a panel to be submitted to the English: Shared Futures 2020 conference on the future of Old English studies within and beyond global English literary studies.

We particularly welcome submissions that show how the teaching of Old English naturally engages with issues such as ecology and ecocriticism, transnational literatures, literatures of the body, anachronic and transhistorical readings of literature, issues of migration and ethnicity, and inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to the past and present.

E:SF indicates that approaches may cover:

• new research from any area of the discipline, including practice-based research;
• learning, teaching and pedagogy;
• aspects of professionalization (including precarity, mental health, employability, recruitment, gender and BAME imbalance).

Areas of Old English studies which may be particularly relevant to the themes of E:SF 2020 include:

• inequalities: working-class literature, language and creative writing; regional differences; access to literature and social capital;
• literature, language, creativity and music;
• ‘applied’ English: how English language, literature and creative writing work in the world beyond universities and address local, national and global challenges;
• refugees and displacement;
• translation;
• publishing and book history;
• issues around decolonization, broadly understood, including decolonizing the profession and curriculum;
• migrancy and borders.

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words to michael.bintley@bbk.ac.uk for 20-minute papers by Friday 13^th September 2019.

By Josephine Livingstone (The New York Times Magazine, 04-01-2019)

I went to college a little bit later than most. Excited but nervous to plunge into a degree — in English literature — that demands all students learn Old English, I asked a friend what studying the language was like. “It sounds bizarre,” Roberta said, “but it’s what people spoke in Britain in the early medieval period. And there are these beautiful things called kennings in the poetry.” We were just in the pub, I think, but I got this feeling. Something like stars in my eyes, but more like starlight dancing on a deep, dark sea.

… read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-old-english.html