End-of-January News Recap

In the News: January 22 to February 1

• (1/24): Visiting Professor Matthew Chalmers discussed the ancient and modern history of Israel before a luncheon crowd of students and community members in Hillel House on Wednesday January 24 and 31. CLICK HERE for a full summary of the lectures.
  
  

• (1/25): Students and faculty from Washington and Lee University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison hosted a webinar on Thursday, January 25 to celebrate the release of Wan-Chuan Kao’s newest book, White before whiteness in the late Middle Ages. Kao teaches English and is the chair of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at W&L.
  
  The webinar focused on three different aspects of his book: whiteness as an operation of fragility, precarity, and racialicity. According to the book’s description, Kao “argues that while whiteness participates in the history of racialisation in the late medieval West, it does not denote skin tone alone.”
  
  Each speaker highlighted specific conceptions of whiteness present in Arthurian legend and other medieval literature. Such topics included the different “modes of whiteness refracted through space and time,” “the relationship between Jewishness and whiteness,” and whiteness as a “technology of chivalry” in Medieval literature. 
  
  Participants were given temporary access to the book’s introduction and a 30% discount code through December.
  
  

• (1/25): Thirteen students attended a College Republicans meeting on Thursday, January 25 to discuss Donald Trump’s victories in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. Of the students present, six said they would vote for Trump in the general elections, and six said they would abstain. One student went so far as saying he would vote for Biden over Trump, who he believes is “much more of a threat to our Constitution.”
  
  

• (1/28): Students for Historical Preservation (SHP) invited Tom Camden, the former director of W&L Special Collections and Archives, to discuss W&L’s role in the Civil Rights Movement and his personal experience attending the university in the early 1970s.
  
  Camden also described a letter written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Professor Louis Hodges in 1967. Written on Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) letterhead, King declined to speak at the university, citing a busy schedule of fundraising and grassroots activism. University trustees had rescinded King’s original invitation several years earlier, which Camden and SHP President Kamron Spivey, ‘24, discussed in further detail.
  
  SHP meets monthly in the Colonnade to discuss different periods in W&L history. Their February meeting will focus on George Washington and his 1796 donation to Liberty Hall Academy.

(SHP flyer for their January meeting. Source: Instagram)

• (1/29): Campus Kitchen and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology began a new virtual series on Monday, January 29 to explore “the intersection of food and social justice.”
  
  Dr. Fabio Parasecoli, a professor of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University, examined the various roles that food can play in culture and human development. His talk focused on three key concepts: food materiality, food tradition, and food's role in cultural development.

(Fabio Parasecoli presents on Zoom about food and culture. Source: The Spectator)

• (2/1): Elgin Cleckley, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Virginia, spoke during W&L’s 2nd annual DeLaney Dialogues on Thursday, February 1. These sessions focus on “Southern race relations, culture, and politics” and the tensions created by such topics.
  
  Cleckley discussed and answered questions about his designs and for the restoration of the Anne Spencer House and Garden, located in Lynchburg. The site is the only known historically black-owned garden that has been restored in the country.
  
  Cleckley opened his presentation by stating that Virginia legislation prohibits certain topics — specifically related to African Americans and diversity — from being included in kindergarten through twelfth grade curriculums. Therefore, the Anne Spencer Coloring and Activity Book was created to inform students about the house and garden’s history.
  
  When asked to elaborate on this legislation, Cleckley claimed that Glenn Youngkin’s campaign for governor included an emphasis on the prevention of teaching such topics in the classroom.
  
  Twenty-two people attended the event, the latest of several DeLaney Center programs this year.

(Photographs and coloring book pages about the Anne Spencer House and Garden restoration. Source: The Spectator)

[Caden Brousseau and Ella Wong also contributed to this article.]