Campbell has worked in media, publishing, and academia since 1999. During this time, he taught high school and college-level writing, edited various publications, worked as a freelance writer and editor, tutored students and professionals on writing techniques, and led content strategy for successful websites.
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When I was young, a group of my childhood friends and I used to play Dungeons & Dragons often...very often. For those who are not as nerdily inclined, Dungeons & Dragons--or, D&D as it is affectionately referred--is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game that was originally released in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. D&D’s publication is commonly recognized as the beginning of modern role-playing games and the role-playing game industry. I loved the storylines and possibilities. I loved the dice--those funny eight- and ten- and twenty-sided dice. I loved creating characters and fighting dragons. Remember Tiamat? Oooooh! My favorite character-types were: the Elf; the Dwarf; the Cleric; the Rogue; and, the Wizard. My attractions to D&D were borne out of my interests in the Arthurian tales and characters like Merlin and Gawain. At the time, I gave little thought to Medieval Studies. I liked the excitement of getting together with my friends to create characters that went on adventures in the Rhineland of the Germanic forests or the fjords of Norway or the isthmuses of the Britons--ironically, we gathered in dilapidated dwellings in the ruins of what was once the Blackbelt of St. Louis and the Pruitt-Igoe projects near Cass Avenue and 20th Street. Quite the juxtaposition as compares settings of the Middle Ages. Still, my friends and I went on missions, rescued dames and princesses, and fought like hell to keep from being buggered. Poor black boys huddled in the slums of St. Louis dreaming of elves and dragons and potions and warriors and castles located in far-off places with difficult to pronounce names. As I aged and matured through life, I found myself in the academy under the guidance and tutelage of esteemed advisors and professors of Medieval Studies like Dr. Eileen Joy and Dr. Ruth Evans. Dr. Joy’s class re-introduced me to Bede and Ælfric, and exposed me to the Angelcynn and mechanic conceptions of the English people and race. Her class challenged me to consider how the English nation developed out of disparate, heterogeneous groupings of tribespeople. Dr. Evans’s class on medieval theatre--particularly as focused upon the Corpus Christi cycle--was elucidating as regards the roles of the transgressive and the carnivalesque within medieval English society. When combining my youthful approaches and curiosities of medieval literary productions with Joy’s mechanic notions of medieval approaches to race and Evans’s acknowledgment of the transgressive uses of language on the medieval stage, I become quite aghast at the current tenor and atmosphere of Medieval Studies in general with respect to scholars of color within the academy. Racial essentialism, censorship, and the delimitation of academic freedom have no place in Medieval Studies; the concepts should be thought anathema to the field. In “Anglo-Saxon Studies, Academia and White Supremacy,” “Statement Regarding ICMS Kalamazoo,” and “Lost in Our Field: Racism and the International Congress on Medieval Studies” scholars Mary Rambaran-Olm, Seeta Chaganti, and Nahir I. Otaño Gracia, respectively, outline the state of race relations within the field of Medieval Studies as regards the dearth of Medievalists of Color (MoCs). More specifically, the scholars elucidate why MoCs are leaving the field and why MoCs feel unwelcome in their chosen fields of study and inquiry. Like me, Dr. Rambaran-Olm was drawn to the field as regards its literary beauty. She writes, The first time I read Beowulf, I was hooked. Set against an ominous backdrop, the flawed hero immortalized for his pride just as much as his courage piqued my interest along with the complexity and foreignness of the archaic language in which the poem is told. It’s like that for a lot of us: One spark starts our journey into academe. That was nearly two decades ago. Today I am one of the only active scholars of color specializing in Early medieval England* in the native-English speaking world.. (Rambaran-Olm) Just the same, she continues, “I’ve struggled to prove my worth as a scholar, as my skin color constantly impedes on how I am perceived and in turn what I am capable of achieving. Additionally, I’ve watched as other colleagues of color leave the field. In a field laid claim to by white supremacists, this is a tragedy” (Rambaran-Olm). This is the oxymoronic existence of the typical MoC. We are made to feel uncomfortable--either by participants within the field themselves or by the organizations and institutions undergirding the field--within the very landscapes we have chosen as regards our professional endeavors. And why? In many instances, the answer lies simply in our skin color. As Dr. Rambaran-Olm recounts, "I have been told many times I “do not look like an ‘Anglo-Saxonist.’” I’ve even been told after a campus interview, by the chair of a hiring committee (for a job I didn’t get) that the deciding factor against me was the department’s struggle to “justify to their students that [I] was an ‘Anglo-Saxonist.’” (Rambaran-Olm). Dr. Chaganti writes of the organizational leadership challenges that are apparent within the field, particularly as regards the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo. She writes, While performing a seemingly virtuous commitment to academic freedom, the actions of this organization’s leadership not only silence marginalized voices but also enable racially-based harassment. More than one organization whose intellectual profile reflects a commitment to politically progressive critical theory along with social and racial justice has found its voice minimized in the planning for next year’s conference...an environment permitting such minimization...facilitates harassment and potential harm. It is an environment entirely inimical to genuine academic freedom. (Chaganti). In great detail, Dr. Chaganti explains how the leadership of the organization refuses to create safe spaces for MoCs, allowing racist harassment not only online with respect to ICMS events but in-person during panel presentations and discussions. As Dr. Gracia explains, “ICMS in particular has now lost a valuable scholar [in] Dr. Seeta Chaganti, who will not return to the conference...ICMS has chosen to support whiteness and white supremacy...choosing panels proposed by white scholars over similar panels proposed by medievalists of color reinforces our societal bias in favor of white candidates over a minority” (Gracia). Dr. Gracia goes on to suggest that “while ICMS has recently offered to revisit the issue of panel selection process, I believe a deeper problem persists in what Dr. Chaganti calls their ‘miscomprehension of academic freedom,’ which ‘has enabled white supremacy’” (Gracia). As a result of ICMS’s miscomprehension of academic freedom, Dr. Gracia, too, has stopped attending ICMS. Too many instances of being misgendered and undervalued as a scholar by members of the leadership apparatus associated with ICMS, specifically, have led to Gracia’s self-imposed exile from the organization.
I am a Medievalist--among many, many other things. While I may never attend ICMS, I plan to publish on topics with respect to concepts associated with approaches to Medieval Studies and I plan to congregate among, and to associate with, other Medievalists, particularly scholars of Early Medieval England. I will NOT be pushed from the field. I find many of the concepts, theories, and structures of analysis developed as regards approaches to Medieval Studies useful in my scholarly endeavors--even those not seemingly connected to medievalism. For example, consider the historiographical concept translatio imperii. In the following discussion, I utilize translatio imperii to explain the significance of the character Erik “Killmonger” Stevens in the movie Black Panther. Translatio imperii, or the transfer of imperium, refers to an approach to history that focuses on a centralized world power determined by linear succession of rule. This concept combines ideas of geography and genealogy as factors for determining the transfer of power between places. This transfer of power is determined in an unbroken and linear manner, and suggests that imperial power exists as an uninterrupted process of rule subject only to the movement of the demographic group possessing the power. In practice, this power is usually described as an incrementally western movement. This was a popular medieval model of history. Take, for example, the case of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. According to Geoffrey, in the Middle Ages imperial succession flows from Troy to Rome to Britain [1]. He describes how Aeneas of Troy founded Rome after the Trojan War. Then, Aeneas’s great-grandson Brutus--after being banished from Rome--founded Britain. Geoffrey describes Britain as inheriting the seat of imperial power from Rome; he exploits the importance of Britain in the course of world history by linking it to the great empires of earlier world history. In Black Panther, the importance of African Americans in the course of world history--as represented by Erik Stevens--is exploited by linking Killmonger--and, by manner of substitution, all African Americans--to the great, mythical nation of Wakanda. The Black Panther and Wakanda’s exclusive hold over vibranium represent centralized world power determined by linear succession of rule...with a difference. Yes, T’Challa--the current Black Panther--is the son of T’Chaka, the Black Panther before him and a descendant of Bashenga. The mantle of the Black Panther transfers from T’Chaka to T’Challa as descended from Bashenga in a linear fashion. Still, ascendance to the Black Panther is a democratic, meritorious process in many ways. As depicted in the movie, all Wakandans who are eligible to become the Black Panther are born with a glowing sequence of characters on the inside of their bottom lips. As the son of Prince N’Jobu--T’Chaka’s brother--and an American woman from Oakland, California, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens--whose Wakandan name is N'Jadaka--is a cousin to T’Challa. And, a legitimate claimant to the throne. When Killmonger defeats (only temporarily) T’Challa and usurps the Black Panther, translatio imperii occurs. The transfer of power goes from T’Chaka to T’Challa to N'Jadaka. On one hand, this succession of power falls in line with normative understandings of translation imperii: after all, both T’Chaka and N’Jobu are princes descended from Bashenga. Nevertheless, this repetition of translatio imperii as relates Wakanda in comparison to its occurrence within the Western tradition does exhibit a difference. In a sense, the transfer of power is NOT unbroken, for Killmonger is an exiled prince in a foreign land: the United States. Not only does Killmonger’s ascension to the throne represent a break in the line of succession as relates T’Chaka’s familial line, but his ascension represents a western movement of power: from eastern Africa to western United States. Still and all, as regards the line of Bashenga, Killmonger’s ascension to the Black Panther suggests that imperial power exists as an uninterrupted process of rule subject only to the movement of the demographic group possessing the power: the Panther Cult. This thought experiment, utilizing the historiographical concept translatio imperii, will be developed with greater emphasis in the forthcoming “Medievalists of Color” special issue of Quimbandas: Explorations of Identities. I would implore MoCs seeking a safe place to engage in professional scholarship to consider submitting to the journal or serving as a reviewer. More information coming soon. Notes [1] I discuss Geoffrey and translatio imperii with greater detail in 2012’s “A Jay Without Decency.” In the paper, I suggest that the imperium of the cocaine trade is transferred from Richard Porter to Jay-Z within the narrative landscape of Shawn Carter. Works Cited Chaganti, Seetha. “Statement Regarding ICMS Kalamazoo.” Medievalists of Color, 9 July 2018. Otaño Gracia, Nahir I. “Lost in Our Field: Racism and the International Congress on Medieval Studies.” Medievalists of Color, 24 July 2018. Rambaran-Olm, Mary. “Anglo-Saxon Studies, Academia and White Supremacy.” Medium, 27 June 2018.
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This is the pilot episode of a weekly news program Tallis Piaget is launching called The Black News Hour. It will be something comparable to the daily show with news stories regarding Black America. The first 20-25 minutes is the news, the last 30 minutes is a discussion. I hope you find it informative and entertaining. Remember this is the first episode so a perfect presentation isn't apparent yet. The show will definitely improve as we continue to grow. Constructive criticism, important stories, guest, and other ideas are welcomed. Featuring author and host Tallis Piaget, writer and journalist Sylvester Brown, Jr. and our founder, social activist and writer Tarrell Rodney Campbell. Tarrell Rodney Campbell - Global and Local Social Justice Initiative Conference @ SLUEnglish doctoral student and writer Tarrell Rodney Campbell presents his research on the social justice implications of functioning as an African American writing consultant at a predominantly white institution, while serving a nontraditional, international clientele. The presentation is entitled "Practicing Social Justice@UWS: Presence, Policy, Purpose." I write to know myself. I write because I don’t know myself. I write because I want Others to know me. I write to keep my thoughts to myself. I write because some of my ancestors could not. I write because I can. I live to write; I write to live. I write for immortality; I write because I am mortal. I write to connect to spirits past, circling above-head searching for a place of safe landing. I write because of Cornel West: he is a hellava influence. I write for Baldwin, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Clemens, Wallace, Shakur, Carter, Davidson, Davis, Taha, Gerima, Shahbaz, Moore, Glaspy, Farrington, Muhammad, Payne, Campbell. I write to find myself lost in a world without coordinates. I write because I am not sure if we are really here. I write because of Descartes and Locke; because of Mafouz and ibn Battutu. I write because ignorance dominates the world; speculation, a close second. I write because I don’t know my father, my mother, my brother, my sisters; I write because I want my family. I write because this moment is gone: to ensure that I am present for the next (this one). I write because I am afraid of my supreme self-confidence. I write because I am poor. I write because I have wealth. I write because I am loved; I write because I am love.
In his latest blog posting, “The Blog as Literary Genre,” Kevin Eagan of Critical Margins asks, “Is the blog, in its mature form, a literary genre?” He believes, ultimately, that the blog is “a literary form or genre” and, although the blog “does more than an essay because of its playfulness, [i]n its play, it can move between personal diary entry and sophisticated essay with ease.” I agree and disagree with Kevin; but, above all I appreciate his blog’s prompt and call for a defined understanding of, and purpose for the blog, especially from one who is already a leader within our new generation of literary scholars.  Kevin Eagan Writer, editor, blogger In full disclosure, I must admit that Eagan is my former university mate; our graduate tours overlapped at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. And so, it is with great pleasure and respect and seriousness that I approach Kevin’s question. First, let us address some terminology. I am a little uneasy with some of the descriptors used by Kevin. For example, what is a “mature blog?” Elsewhere in his posting, Eagan juxtaposes the seemingly untidy blog against the “tidy” novel and writes of blog postings evolving into “longer, more thoughtful articles” (italics mine). I think that using such descriptors destroy the concept of the blog and work towards confining the blog to an area where ideas of hierarchy begin to dominate and democracy begins to dissipate. To think of the blog as genre confines and destroys it; to think of the blog as literary form offers more freedom.  Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) As literary form, the blog already, always exists as what it is: written poetry or prose, made from letters, of a fiction or non-fiction distinction. To start speaking of the mature blog or tidy blog or longer, thoughtful blog is to begin to make valuations in relationship to particular blogs. To make such valuations would make one a critic of blogs. And do not get me wrong, we are trained to discuss the excellence of form regarding literature and its expression and whether or not the literature expresses universal ideas and interests, but the blog should not be confined to a genre: it is a literary pharmakon, a remedy and a poison. It should remain as such! When it comes to the anxiety that Kevin implicitly betrays regarding the nature and role and purpose of the blog, the blog itself is both remedy and poison to his problem. The blog is problematic and somewhat poisonous to the Academy from which Kevin and our ilk spring; the blog is poisonous to the hierarchy of genres and forms so analogous to the teaching of literature from ivory towers on high. At the same time, the blog is a remedy to any and all concerns and anxieties related to and engendered by a need to categorize literature(s). It removes such concerns. As literary pharmakon, the blog’s ‘essence’…lies in the way in which, having no stable essence, no ‘proper’ characteristics, it is not, in any sense (metaphysical, physical, chemical, alchemical) of the word, a substance…It is rather the prior medium in which differentiation in general is produced. (Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, 125-6) The blog should remain our literary tabula rasa; it should be blank every time we approach it; it should be a tool of literature, but not controlled by the structural rules of existing literatures. It should always, already remain ambivalent to literature. And, its ambivalence should constitute the medium in which opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links them among themselves, reverses them or makes one side cross over into the other (soul/ body, good/ evil, inside/ outside, memory/ forgetfulness, speech/ writing, [poison/remedy].).…The pharmakon is the movement, the locus, and the play: (the production of) difference. It is the différance of difference. It holds in reserve, in its undecided shadow and vigil, the opposites and the differends that the process of discrimination will come to carve out. Contradictions and pairs of opposites are lifted from the bottom of this diacritical, differing, deferring, reserve. (Derrida 127) Allow the blog its free flowing, democratic nature. To place it within a genre, to make it the generic, robs the blog of its characteristic of instantaneous, always new creation. A blog is a place where thought experiments, like this one that I am having right now, can freely take place: a place where thought experiments can take place and where the arbiters of style and syntax and grammar are not welcome…unless they are.
Hello, world! Welcome to the first official posting of the Tarrell Rodney Campbell site. I guess I am a full-time blogger now! I was recently involved in a conversation, on Facebook (what has happened to man?), centered on Jesmyn Ward’s award-winning novel, Salvage the Bones. The conversation was initiated by Kelly Virella, founder, publisher and editor of Dominion of New York - the digital magazine for creative and forward-thinking black people who love New York and want to make the most of their lives there. Be sure to check out the Dominion of New York site: http://www.dominionofnewyork.com. Our conversation went something like this: Kelly Virella: So has anyone read “Salvage the Bones,” last year's National Book Award winner? If so, what did you think? I just finished the first chapter. And that brings us to today. In response to MF’s prompt, I want to discuss the nature and direction of my research regarding Salvage. I am interested in whether or not Ward, as an African American female novelist of the twenty-first century, continues in the tradition of some African American female novelists of the twentieth century with regards to queering conceptions of African American masculinity. In his work, Masculinist Impulses: Toomer, Hurston, Black Writing, and Modernity, Nathan Grant suggests that black women writers of the twentieth century are interested…in showing their [black men’s] errant natures [and desire to] resurrect black manhood by complicating his nature beyond his ordinary depictions, even those mistakenly chosen for himself. [For example, the representation of the] complications [of some] black male characters developed by black women writers, [such as Paul D in Beloved] interrogate some of the inner reaches of [black feminism] to aid in creating the discourse of a black masculinity responsive to feminism’s political and social impetus. (17-18) I want to know: Does Ward continue in this tradition? If so, to what degree? What does adherence to, or, deviation from, such a tradition insinuate about the direction of the literature of African American female novelists in the early twenty-first century? Do Ward’s representations of African American men, manhood and masculinity in Salvage the Bones aid in developing a discourse/discourses of black masculinity responsive to the political and social impetus of any feminisms? To begin, let us all develop common ground regarding the word queer. In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler does an excellent job of explicating the word queer and its changing use. In describing the use and meaning of the term in her analysis of Nella Larsen’s Passing, Butler declares: the periodic use of the term “queering”…where queering is linked to the eruption of anger into speech such that speech is stifled and broken…the sudden gap in the surface of language [referred to] as “queer” or as “queering”… it seems…did not [always]…mean homosexual, but it did encompass an array of meanings associated with the deviation from normalcy which might well include the sexual. Its meanings include: of obscure origin, the state of feeling ill or bad, not straight, obscure, perverse, eccentric. As a verb-form, “to queer” has a history of meaning: to quiz or ridicule, to puzzle, but also, to swindle and to cheat…forbid[den]… to mention…race: described as “queer”… When… a passing black woman… hears a racial slur against blacks… “from [the woman’s] direction came a queer little suppressed sound, a snort or a giggle”…something queer, something short of proper conversation, passable prose…[a] longing to travel to Brazil is described as an “old, queer, unhappy restlessness”, suggesting a longing to be freed of propriety… queering is what upsets and exposes (Butler 176-177 ) With regards to African American female novelists of the twenty-first century, I am interested in how the representations and characterizations of their male characters reflect a queering of African American masculinity; more specifically: to what degree do Ward’s representations of Esch’s father and brothers – Randall, Skeetah, Junior - and Esch’s romantic love interest, Manny, upset and expose concepts of African American middle-class patriarchal masculinity that the boys and men may have chosen for themselves? Do the representations of any of the African American male characters in Salvage reflect an understating of, or intuition reflecting, concepts of black masculinity that interrogate some of the inner reaches of black feminism(s) to aid in creating the discourse of a black masculinity responsive to feminism’s political and social impetus?
Lastly, I believe that Naturalistic literature and catastrophe/disaster literature function similarly. Audiences are asked/expected/guided to understand the actions and motives of characters in light of the extremely powerful structural forces that control the milieu in which the characters find themselves in the literature. With that perspective in mind, to what degree has disaster literature become a tool, in the twenty-first century, in exposing, that is queering, structural inequities and inequalities that exist in the United States? More specifically, in the South – with regards to black men? How do such structural forces delimit the practice of middle-class patriarchal masculinity for black men? How does the literature reflect such a delimiting structural force? I remember when I first met Jesmyn “Mimi” Ward. We were both undergraduate students at Stanford University; we both did our Work Study under the stewardship of Dr. Ewart Thomas and, then Ph.D. student, Dr. Angela Cole in the university’s psychology department. I never would have thought that over a decade later, I would seriously, in the manner of a scholar, research and investigate and analyze imaginary worlds and people created by little ole Mimi. She is little no more. She has earned her place as a literary giant. Her voice is powerful. Her voice is welcomed. Her voice is queering. And in these days, these times, when so many men are destroying themselves, their families, their spouses and mates – in the furtherance of living up to and adhering to the criteria of middle-class patriarchal masculinity – exposure of the queerness associated with such criteria and exposure of how men may mistakenly choose concepts of masculinity that are indeed harmful, may be exactly what is needed. And for that Mimi, we – men – say: thank you! |
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