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I – Introduction

§1. While these lines are being written (throughout 2022 and 2023), history departments are facing danger. The plans for closing such departments in the University of Sunderland, Aston University, London South Bank University, and Kingston University are well known. The Royal Historical Society has come forth to express its concerns (RHS 2021). The departments targeted for closure are at (relatively) new (post-1992) institutions that generally serve first-generation students from low-participant backgrounds and with a relatively high minority ethnic demography (RHS 2021). Nonetheless, it is not only history that is under attack, but other departments that deal with distant, pre-modern societies. Another possible example is the world-acclaimed archaeology program at the University of Sheffield (Newton 2022).

§2. The examples presented above are limited to Britain. The argument might sound Eurocentric and Anglo-centric. However, this process can also be observed in the Global South. As an example, a national curricular reform was proposed in Brazil in 2015, which tried to fully eliminate the teaching of both ancient and medieval history across the whole country (Lima 2019). In such a context, it is imperative for historians to address why we do what we do and discuss how we do it. This is especially urgent for those dedicated to distant pasts (such as ancient history and medieval history). The objective of this article is to address such questions.

§3. This article proposes to investigate the "whys" and "hows" of teaching and training people in the knowledge about the Middle Ages, in particular those of the early Middle Ages. However, it also addresses the early Middle Ages as part of a broader whole, one that could be simply called "premodernity." This statement is important since the core of the presented arguments are valid not only for the early Middle Ages, but also for the Middle Ages as a whole, ancient history or even "prehistory."

§4. The main hypothesis of this article is that teaching the early Middle Ages can present a world that is completely different from ours, establishing a dialectical relation of otherness and intimacy. The article also argues that the relation of otherness (instead of continuity) with such pasts can be a powerful tool to understand human diversity in time, making it possible to project (and hopefully build) more diverse and inclusive futures.

§5. The first step of the article will be to discuss why the study of the early medieval past matters. Considering the specificity of the author (a Brazilian scholar who works in Brazilian academia), this discussion will draw from the ideas about historical consciousness, the didactics of history and history education and how they have been challenged and discussed in the Global South. The implications of neglecting the discussion of the early Middle Ages in terms of historical consciousness will be addressed. The main example is the far-right abuses of medieval times aiming to build a future of exclusion and oppression. In the last part of this section, the article will discuss how the teaching of the Middle Ages in the Global South can shine a light on reasons why this field of expertise is important, no matter where on the globe a person is. The main hypothesis is that unlike the Global North, no immediate association with the medieval past is possible in the Global South, so the relation of alterity with this distant past is both an imposition and its main advantage.

§6. The second section of this article will address the “hows,” i.e., the possibilities of forms of teaching the Middle Ages and how the Global South can help sow different prospects than those in the Global North. In the Global North a sense of continuity might help framing the large context of the Middle Ages within “national” scales and supposed origins. English academia could rely on the “Anglo-Saxon” period for justifying (and limiting) the study of the Middle Ages (sometimes still read as the origin of the country); French scholars might do the same with the Franks or Spanish with the Visigoths, etc. In the Global South other types of frameworks and justification are required, since (as will be discussed in the first section), the relation of alterity is an imposition. Therefore, this section will try to demonstrate how “backward design” can provide an interesting and fruitful framework for addressing the Middle Ages. Instead of proposing a simple narrative based on selection of the contents, “backward design” requires teaching to be based on pedagogical objectives. In this sense, this type of pedagogical design can help teachers select contents based on those objectives rather than “realms” or “empires.” Consequently, as the “why” section addresses the relation of otherness with this past, the “how” section discusses the possibilities of framing this otherness—which is inescapable for those in the Global South. Hopefully, the articulation of both sections can also share different forms of thinking about teaching the early Middle Ages with the Global North as well.

II – Whys: Historical Consciousness, Temporal Orientation, Political Abuses

§7. The discussion about why we need to study the early medieval period will be framed through historical consciousness, didactics of history, and historical education. It will be argued that the Global South critiques the idea of a Eurocentric historical consciousness, highlighting other forms of consciousness and education related to history. The second part of this section will address how such concepts have very practical consequences, particularly as witnessed by the uses of the past by the far-right in recent years and how the early Middle Ages are being used to project a disastrous future.

a) Historical Consciousness: possibilities and implications

§8. The concept of “historical consciousness” is generally acknowledged as having a European background, or at least a European “cradle.” A good twentieth-century example of how this notion was embedded with a sense of self-righteous Eurocentrism can be found in the reflections of Raymond Aron. In his famous 1957 conference La Notion du Sens de l'Histoire, Aron pointed out that only European society would have a properly historical consciousness. Such consciousness would be composed of three main elements: 1) freedom in history; 2) scientific reconstruction of the past; 3) an essentially human significance of the becoming (devenir) (Aron 2011). According to Aron, European historical consciousness was a role model, more developed than anywhere else; however, it was also open to change and challenge. This notion can be understood within Aron's perspective of history, following the style of Thucydides and a sense of historical development based on reason, although always with an undefined future as proposed by Kant (Hassner 1963, 198). Later in his life, Aron become more skeptical about Europe living up to what he considered this ideal of historical consciousness, since it was not only “decadent,” but actually “unaware of its own superiority” (Aron 1996).

§9. The idea that Europe has a privileged form of history (and historical consciousness) has been challenged for decades. If Europe is an essential part of the “Global North,” it is not surprising that the critique of this position comes from scholars with a Global South background (broadly speaking, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Oceania). At least since the 1950s, Cheikh Anta Diop’s reflections about cultural bias in scientific research have been crucial to understand and criticize this “privilege” (Diop 1979; 1981). Diop’s view of the past have been also criticized (Howe 1999, 167). Nonetheless, Diop is still praised as a fundamental thinker, responsible for what can be considered the “postcolonial turn,” especially when considering the African past (Devisch and Nyamnjoh 2011, 17).

§10. Another very important voice to criticize Europe’s pretension to uniqueness is Dipesh Chakrabarty. Chakrabarty’s thought has been crucial to rethink the shaping of historical development and historical sense. His argument of the close connection between the development of modernity and the creation of its own narrative opened important paths to reassess other forms of historical feelings, senses, belongings, and time shaping(s) (Chakrabarty 2007). In other words, postcolonial critique has been fundamental to better understand the possibilities of history, historical sense, and historical consciousness.

§11. Brazilian scholar Luis Fernando Cerri proposed two (main) forms of thinking about historical consciousness: 1) historical consciousness as something that is specific of one portion of the population, a goal and/or something to be achieved; 2) historical consciousness as something inherent to the human experience and, as a consequence, socially (re)built (Cerri 2011, 22–23).

§12. The first understanding of historical consciousness can be exemplified by thinkers such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Phillipe Ariès. Gadamer, for example, considered that modernity (at least from Galileo) would produce revolutionary ways of thinking that were crucial to the relationship between method and truth (Gadamer 2004; 1996, 69–70). As Cerri points out, for Gadamer one of the most important aspects of modernity is historical consciousness, which can be understood as the “full consciousness of the historicity of the present and the relativity of every opinion” (Cerri 2011, 25–26; see also Gadamer 2004, 214–25). Ariès follows a different path: historical consciousness is achieved when an individual realizes that he is an agent of history, and yet he is also determined by history itself (Ariès 1987). The consequence of such consciousness is the relativity of individual freedom, as well as the emergence of the interest in history as a form of extension of one’s self (Cerri 2011, 27). In other words, although following different paths, both authors come to similar conclusions when it comes to the theme of historical consciousness: something to be achieved or produced, as pointed out by Cerri. Another important point for the discussion of this article is that such understanding of historical consciousness is connected to an idea of continuity between past and present, while the possibility of alterity between these time dimensions is downplayed.

§13. The second understanding of historical consciousness views this phenomenon as an essential part of human experience. Historical consciousness can be summarized as knowledge production that involves individuals or collectives according to time (Cerri 2011, 28). Agnes Heller points out that historicity is built by everyday practice, forming different stages of historical consciousness (Heller 1982, 3). All stages start with daily thoughts and the need to organize human experience through time, in which the past is inevitably summoned and present. In other words, as Heller states, “In the beginning there was the beginning” (Heller 1982, 5). According to Heller, the threshold of humanity is when norms and institutions overcome behavior and regulations based on instinct; therefore, when someone is born, that someone is born into social institutions (e.g., clans, tribes). The legitimation of such institutions are generally attached to their genesis, often through myth (Heller 1982, 5–7). In other words, someone is born within a tradition, which is embedded within a past, and a way to address it. The knowledge of such past is part of an organized form of time that humans inherit unawares.

§14. Jörn Rüsen has a more essentialist approach to the matter. According to Rüsen, humans can only act once they can interpret the world and themselves according to their passions and the intent behind their actions (Rüsen 2006). Human agency can only happen once there are objectives, which necessarily imply existence beyond the present. For Rüsen, any social action happens when a person reads the past anchored to the present with expectations to the future. The ongoing tension between time as experience and time as intention is dynamic, moving individuals and communities (Cerri 2011, 29). Although defending the position that historical consciousness is something essential to the human species, Rüsen argues for an internal dynamic. In other words, historicity (i.e., change over time) is inevitable; the consciousness of such historicity, nonetheless, changes over time. However, the sense of time and how to navigate through time is crucial for any human (Rüsen 2006).

§15. Agnes Heller and Jörn Rüsen concur that historical consciousness is an essential part of the human experience. In their views, scholarly knowledge about time and human experience in time is not essentially different from the everyday need for orientation in time. However, as Cerri points out, it certainly is more complex and specialized, producing more developed results that could not be obtained otherwise (Cerri 2011, 29). Heller and Rüsen also agree that although the term “consciousness” may seem ethereal, it is a concrete and practical phenomenon. Therefore, temporal orientation is just as important as spatial orientation in this perspective.

§16. Both trends of thought presented above have important implications. It is not by chance that Gamader also attributes the modern way of thinking to the Greek (and Presocratic) philosophers, drawing a line of continuity between Ancient Greece and modern philosophy (Gadamer 2001). Such genealogy has been critically assessed and broadly dismissed by many scholars, especially those with a Global South background, which drew on postcolonial critiques. One of the most severe critics of this model in Brazil is Norberto Guarinello. Guarinello is a professor of ancient history, and he addresses how the uses of ancient history follows a road pointing to the West (Guarinello 2003). In this sense, the teaching of ancient history starts with the “Near East” (i.e., Mesopotamia and Egypt) followed by Greece, and finally Rome. Such progression understands that the “torch of civilization” is passed along societies that are seen as the building steps to the present, coming from the East to the West. The chronology proposed in this reading of the past implies the idea that the fire of civilization is extinguished in the East as civilization itself moves West (Guarinello 2003, 52). Such perspective is drenched in Orientalism (Said 1979). Another very important consequence of Guarinello’s perspective is the impact of time morphology on teaching, and how it addresses historical consciousness. In other words, the Global South’s postcolonial critiques of time morphology is not limited to philosophical consequences, but it also highlights its pedagogical implications, as explained in the next paragraph.

§17. According to the Gadamer’s perspective, historians (or those with similar scientific training) are perceived as the ones possessing “historical consciousness,” with a perception of time that is implicitly seen as superior. In this sense, the relation between historians' and teachers' knowledge and those of the “masses” can only follow one path. This path can be summarized as the teacher as the owner of the knowledge, filled with it, and the student as an empty recipient of the knowledge that will be poured from the teacher. This perspective has been discussed and criticized by Paulo Freire, which called it a “banking concept of education” (Freire 2000, 72). In her critique of traditional forms of education, bell hooks highlights how Freire’s perspective on education can be a key to understand the colonizing process—including the “colonizing mindset” (hooks 1994, 46). In other words, both Freire and hooks highlight the need to undertake a pedagogical practice that takes into consideration the experience and thoughts of the students when organizing and performing teaching-learning experiences. It is crucial to highlight the obvious parallels between the paternalist approach of European toward non-European “consciousness” and those of teachers to students; it is also important that the critique of this colonizing practice comes from one Global South scholar and a Black American scholar. These scholars highlight that students do have impressions, feelings, tastes, and non-scholarly knowledge. For the purposes of this article, it is crucial to understand that among this non-scholarly knowledge, different forms of historical consciousness can be found, as proposed by Jörn Rüsen and Agnes Heller.

§18. The attention to the existence of historical consciousness beyond scholarly knowledge produced a new field of study. The field of “didactics of history” was developed in the German curricular reform of education in the 1960s and 1970s as a bridgehead between pedagogy and philosophy of history (Rüsen 1987). Since its first elaborations, didactics of history was expanded to include the methodology of instruction, the function of history in public life, the establishment of goals for historical education in schools, and the analysis of the nature, function, and importance of historical consciousness (Rüsen 1987). The ideas of Rüsen have been fruitful in discussing these concepts in Brazil. Didactics of history is currently a field more connected to “theory of history,” while “historical education” has been a branch of the research of history teaching. Considering that, it is important to discuss “historical education.”

§19. “Historical Education” was formed as a way to assess how this phenomenon occurs, its potential, limits and social impact (Barca 2001). The field of study has grown in England, Germany, the United States, Canada, Portugal and, more recently, Brazil (Germinari 2011). The pioneer study about historical cognition was produced by Dickinson and Lee in 1978 (Dickinson and Lee 1978). In this study, the authors concluded that history teaching was much more meaningful for students once they were taught based on historical concepts within a context (like national or regional history) articulated with general notions (like “immigration” or “revolution”). Later on, Lee and Ashby produced another study trying to understand how historical understanding and historical empathy were related (Germinari 2011, 57). The conclusion is that higher level of historical comprehensions would lead to historical empathy (Ashby and Lee 1987). However, it is crucial to map out how students think about such elements and, therefore, how they understand history and build their historical consciousness. A study produced in the 1990s tried to understand students and teachers' historical consciousness.

§20. Magne Angvik and Bodo von Borries led the project “Youth and History” in 1997 (Angvik and Borries 1997). The research was based on Rüsen’s ideas about historical consciousness. The survey was made among 28 countries (mostly European ones) and had more than 32,000 responses. Angvik and Borries concluded that 15-year-old student ideas about past, present and future mirrored their countries' cultures. In other words, industrialized countries were both skeptical and critical of the past, while countries with more traditional economies were more enthusiastic about the past and the study of history (Angvik and Borries 1997). However, as Germinari points out, in order to better understand historical consciousness, it is necessary to go beyond the school and scholarly knowledge (Germinari 2011, 57–58).

§21. Germinari proposes the Portuguese development of Angvik and Borries's survey, which focused on understanding the relation between historical consciousness, culture and identity (Germinari 2011, 65–66). This survey has produced data that reinforce the idea that young people address human experience in time to form their self-image and their identity in their own group. Moreover, the data pointed out what could be described as a “generational identity.” This means that youngsters need to appeal to time (crystalized as the older generations) to build their identity (Pais 1999). Such understanding is crucial to forge a shared and remembered past, a shared and lived present, and a struggle for the future. Considering the “generational” aspect of identities and historical consciousness, it is important to face the challenges imposed on the current generation of medievalists. This article focuses on the historical appropriation of the Middle Ages and its impact on historical consciousness. The most urgent debate concerns the rise of the far right.

b) Struggles for the past: historical appropriations and projects of society

§22. The importance of both historical education and historical consciousness regarding the Middle Ages has been discussed a lot recently, both in the Global North and South (Sturtevant 2018; Pachá 2019; Kaufman and Sturtevant 2020; Pachá and Krause 2020; Lazieri 2021). A very important contribution about how the Middle Ages is perceived through different cultures over time was made in 1980s by Umberto Eco (Eco 1986). Eco’s work analyzed how scholarly knowledge, literature, and film making were responsible for broadcasting certain views of this past. And as Eco points out, the Middle Ages is the point in time to which people (in the Global North) go back when they ask about their origins (Eco 1986, 65). If Eco is right and there is a widespread idea that the origins of the present can be found in the Middle Ages, scholarly knowledge is also responsible for such understanding. In the last couple of decades, the idea that modern nations had their infancies in the early Middle Ages has been debated (Geary 2002). As Patrick Geary points out, the nineteenth century was a crucial point in time for such perspectives. It was not by chance that the Middle Ages as the cradle of European people was nurtured while four other important phenomena were taking place: 1) history was established as a discipline of its own; 2) European Imperialism was raging across the globe; 3) modern nation-states were built; 4) scientific racism took shape and heavily impacted social relations, including academia. Consequently, the medieval world was hegemonically understood as a masculine, heterosexual, European, and white universe. In other words, the birth of medieval studies is painted with Orientalist colors (Da Silva 2020). Despite current critiques, historiography is rife with titles that are reify the idea that the early Middle Ages are the origin of the West (Collins 2014; Rollason 2014; Franco 2001).

§23. The view of medieval time and space as masculine, white, European, heterosexual, and patriarchal is present in academia, but can also be observed in the population in general. As post-Brexit and post-Trump (in the so-called “Conservative Trend”) society made clear, medieval symbols and imagery were part of politics building and projects of society (Demier and Hoeveler 2016; Kaufman and Sturtevant 2020). The most crystalline example of how medieval images were leveraged by the far right certainly was the “Unite the Right” rally of 2017 (Little 2018; Alakas 2020; Kaufman Sturtevant 2020). Some scholars have insisted that in Australia, Canada, the USA, and the UK this way of addressing the past is connected to an idea of continuity: tracing connection between now and then through appropriation. In other words, the medieval past is “their” past, in which “they” refers mostly to “white” (Young 2017). This (false) connection is more easily understood in the context of the Global North. But this trend of appropriation of the medieval past is not unique to that part of the planet. So, why are societies located in the Global South—societies that “did not have a medieval past”—doing the same thing?

§24. A good answer to start with can be found in the reflections of Paulo Pachá, who addresses how this question is raised in Brazil. Brazil has a vibrant diversity of races, sexualities, spiritualities, religions, etc. In the last decades, historiography has been dedicated to understanding and highlighting the contribution of traditionally marginalized or peripheral groups to the making of Brazilian society. However, far right think tanks like Brasil Paralelo (“Parallel Brazil”) have been producing the narrative that Brazil is nothing more than Portugal’s ultimate (crusading) project. In this sense, Portugal would not be a distant, oppressive colonial power, but a type of “motherland,” responsible for nurturing Brazil with its (European) language, culture and “Westernness”—which in this case encompasses whiteness (Pachá 2019). In other words, the Brazilian far-right appropriation of the Middle Ages is a form of whitewashing Brazil’s history.

§25. Josep Fontana is a potent voice highlighting that the view of the past is not politically neutral. Each analysis of the past is connected to its own project for the present in the society. The analysis is built in order to create a form of future (Fontana 1982). In other words, historical consciousness (as defined above) is crucial to understand how different social groups understand the present and construct their political agenda. The far right denies diversity in the past to “standardize” the future, to make it as its own image. The false image of the Middle Ages built and reproduced by such groups have significant implications for the future. The far right is disputing historical consciousness while building a very specific type of historic orientation. Consequently, the far right is eroding what Dickinson and Lee considered history's potential for building empathy.

§26. The acknowledgement that the Global South has no “direct connection” to medieval realities can shine a light on other possibilities of relations with this past. Instead of looking for continuities between the present and pre-modern pasts, another perspective could be that of alterity. In this sense, the relation of alterity is more obvious for scholars who could never justify their field of work through an origin myth, as the Global North used to.

§27. As the opening phrase of L. P. Harvey’s novel The Go-Between states, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there” (Hartley 1913, 9). Our knowledge about the Middle Ages has grown significantly in the twentieth century, especially through the dialogue with anthropology, with its emphasis on the alterity principle (Bloch 1983; Nora and Le Goff 1974). However, there are two questions that arise from how alterity is used in history.

§28. In the first place, texts that highlight alterity (and therefore an anthropological approach) were mostly produced to contribute to historiographical conversations among scholars, not necessarily to how we teach the past. This means that despite the incredible potential to teach the Middle Ages from the perspective of alterity, this potential has yet to be deeply discussed. For example, it would be very important to discuss the teaching of how phenomena like gender relations, social domination, or migration (very present and daily questions) vary throughout time. The idea of making such phenomena historical (i.e., varying in meaning in time) is crucial to build a form of historical consciousness that is able to perceive change in time, as well as understanding human agency in such transformations. And as Dickinson and Lee's study proposed, it also help making contents meaningful (and more interesting) to students.

§29. In the second place, the past as a form of alterity has been proposed only for specific chronologies (Early Modern, medieval etc.). An interesting step could be better taking such contexts not only in singular terms, but as a set. This set is composed of many different societies, like the Roman Republic, medieval Portugal, or Great Zimbabwe. However, they are a set when opposed to the present (i.e., modernity and/or capitalism), constituting a radical relation of alterity. Framings like “pre-modernity” or “pre-capitalism” can make such contexts meaningful through such contrast. Moreover, distant pasts (including what is generally called “prehistory”) may offer even more radical otherness and a sensation of strangeness (when compared to the Early Modern period), instead of familiarity. History studies human relations in time; it necessarily encompasses some sense of belonging, at least a species-wide sense of belonging. In other words, the ambiguities, contradictions, varieties, and possibilities of the human experience can be better visualized.

§30. Strangeness, the understanding of phenomenon that no longer exist, the analysis of what endures throughout time (but is different along it) can contribute to the building of a historical consciousness that praises and treasures otherness and alterity in the human journey. Also, by being exposed to such radical alterity that is embedded in distant pasts, students can produce a self-understanding that is intertwined with the dialectic relation between the difference and unity with humans of the past, building a sense of empathy that crosses time. To understand what makes us equal as a species we must also understand how different we can be and, consequently, be capable to analyze and praise such multiformity of the human. In a nutshell, the appraisal of diversity in the past can also contribute to treasuring human diversity in the present as well. Giving up distant pasts is to give up an immensely rich laboratory of human experiences.

§31. One last answer to “Why study the early medieval period?” can be found in the analyses of the period of crises (famine, pandemics, wars, social domination) that humankind endured on such long durée, and how we collectively overcame them. There is message there, echoing through time that could guide us, just like the long-gone stars that can be watched on a clear night. No matter how grim the present is, we know that humanity has experienced and survived apocalypses and crises. Every present is historical, and it will be changed, transformed. Distant pasts can be a beacon of hope, and one that might kindle a form of historical consciousness capable of imagining and building brighter futures ahead of us.

§32. Since the “whys” have been presented, it is now necessary to discuss a few “hows” to teach the early Middle Ages, considering the author’s experience in the Global South.

III — Hows: Pedagogical Design, Objectives and Examples

§33. The Middle Ages is a long period, circa a full millennium. A thousand years filled with complex dynamics, structures, and contradictions. The immensity of the chronological frame also imposes limitations. When it comes to teaching the Middle Ages, no matter the length of a course, choices must be made, and content selected. While the Global North can resort to “national” contexts, the Global South needs to make choices. Which region(s) will be addressed? Which dimensions (social, economic, political, cultural) will be prioritized and analyzed? Which set of primary sources and historiography will be selected? All these questions are true for other chronologies. However, the immensity of time that distant pasts encompass make the necessity of this selection more obvious. So, how to select? And, moreover, how can this selection reflect the answers to the “whys” pointed out in the earlier section?

a) Pedagogical design and pathways to objectives

§34. The discussion about “how(s)” to teach contents might find a fruitful path when seeking dialogue with pedagogical design. Pedagogical design can be summarized as a field of knowledge that connects learning objectives and pedagogical theories in a dialogical way. One of the main objectives of this field of study is to identify teaching and learning strategies, activities, and assessments in order to reach educational results that were proposed in the articulation of learning objectives and the educational theory (Laurillard 2012). This is why the discussion of theoretical questions in the first part of this article was so important.

§35. A specific development of pedagogical design can provide interesting insights on the teaching of the early Middle Ages. In “traditional” curriculum planning, a list of content that needs to be taught is produced. In other words, planning starts with “what” is going to be taught, rather than “why” or “how.” However, “backward design” proposes a different approach: first, the educator starts with goals; next the educator plans assessments or evaluations; only then does the educator make lesson plans and organize the content (Wiggins and McTighe 1998). Stated slightly differently, "backward design" argues that the first step is to define the desired results; then determine what can be considered acceptable evidence that these results were met; and the last step is to plan teaching-learning experiences and instructions. A good metaphor for the process of backward design is that it creates a “road map”: the destination must be chosen beforehand, and then the planning is produced on how to reach this destination. By contrast, “traditional” curriculum planning has no identifiable destination (McTighe and Thomas 2003).

§36. A very important point must be highlighted here. While in the Global North, higher education is a field of expertise, with researchers and departments fully dedicated to it, this is not true for all areas in the Global South. In Brazil, there are no specific departments or research labs fully dedicated to the discipline of higher education. While “backward design” has been used for decades in some parts of the planet, it is certainly new for other regions.

§37. Doug Buehl has pointed out three main advantages of the backward design: 1) students will know what the goals of the course are. This is important since it is harder to become lost in details or what are not the core points of the topic being taught. 2) Instruction is delivered with a global understanding of the curriculum, of the units and the individual classes. The teacher maintains focus on course goals too, and each lesson connects to the units and the whole course. Learning is more clearly processual. 3) As evaluation/assessment is planned before the lessons, teachers can drive students towards what they actually need to know, improving communication accuracy (Buehl 2001).

§38. Paulo Freire has proposed that teaching must dialogue with students' reality and start from it (Freire 2000). If Dickinson and Lee are correct and history teaching is fruitful once students are presented with concepts and ideas closer to their real, daily life, backward design can help the teaching of the early Middle Ages be more meaningful. The next step is therefore an attempt to present examples of how to do so.

b) Possibilities of meaningful teaching for the early Middle Ages

§39. The advantages of backward design can be very helpful when planning the teaching of the early Middle Ages. Making the objectives of teaching the compass guiding the selection of contents can produce interesting (and desired) results. The possibilities of addressing the rich period of the early Middle Ages (supported by its rich historiography) can encompass many different objectives. This section will now discuss how these objectives have been mapped out and proposed for lessons in the author’s experience in the Global South.

§40. In the beginning of the “History of the Middle Ages” course, the author uses the platform “Mentimeter” to form word clouds (“Mentimeter” 2023). Word clouds show words in a size relative to their frequency of use in a given context, making it clear where consensus exists. In the first class of the term, students are asked to provide five words to describe whatever comes to their mind when they hear the expression “Middle Ages.” At the end of the course, they are asked to reassess the word cloud from the first class and think about how their understanding changed throughout the course, and which text(s) helped them to shift their thinking. But, most importantly, when evaluating the course, students are asked which the topics they were most interested in during the course, and which they recommended be included in the next version of the “Middle Ages” course, forming a new word cloud (also using Mentimeter). This a crucial tool to understand what is most meaningful for students, including what was covered and what they wished had been covered. Changes to the author’s courses are based on this student feedback. While some objectives were rooted in particular times and student interests, others have endured, particularly the topics of “gender,” “migration,” “racial relations,” and “global history.”

§41. Based on these topics, the author created the following objectives: “Analyze the historicity of gender in early medieval Europe”; “Study the network of connections and migration in the early Middle Ages to challenge nationalist narratives”; “Consider ethnic and/or racial relations in early medieval period throughout history and historiography”; “Evaluate the connections between the African, Asian and European worlds of the early medieval period.” For each of these objectives, different classes were planned. The following paragraphs will present some examples.

§42. The historicity of gender is a good point to start. The theme of gender is seen as increasingly important for students, especially considering the forth wave of feminism (i.e., post-2012) (Cochrane 2013; Rivers 2017; Chamberlain 2017). It is quite clear for both students and teachers that gender relations are an essential part of social life and one of the key elements of any society. If concepts are important to approach present and past to create historical empathy (as proposed by Dickinson and Lee), starting with a vibrant and essential concept may be fruitful. Early medieval gender has already been discussed through very diverse lenses: monastic practices (Coon 2011); myths and beliefs involving elves (Hall 2007); lawmaking (Nelson and Rio 2013); medical practice that could reinforce (and even produce) gender identities (Green 2013); and the connection to different religious traditions (Baskin 2013; Elliott 2013; Berkey 2013), among other possibilities. A class (or sometimes a set of classes) dedicated to apprehending the historicity of gender with such possibilities were designed to produce comparisons between these different expressions of the gender phenomenon. In other words, to assess what sort of knowledge was built—or, using McTighe and Wiggins's words, to establish what is acceptable evidence of the desired results—students were asked to produce different sets of data. Two examples of data produced can be used as example: 1) comparisons of social relations between lay women and clerical women in eighth-century Northumbria, using the case studies of the abbess Hild (in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History) and the bed burial of two lay ladies in Street House (Loftus) (Bede HE 4.23; Sherlock, Sheil-Small, and Neumann 2012); 2) compare the gender expressions of feminine, masculine, and holy virginity in medieval Europe (using historiography) and compare how these phenomena are represented (or not represented) by the far right in the present (Salih 2001; Marzec and Pugh 2012). The far-right representations selected were mostly those of the “Brazil Paralelo” documentary, especially its first episode named “Brazil, the last Crusade.”

§43. Migration and diasporas are common points of discussion across humanities. Modern (and early modern) expressions like the African diaspora and the migration crisis in the 2010s might indicate they are modern phenomena (Polakow-Suransky 2017; Parra et al. 2003; Larson 1999; Boyce Davies 2008). However, they are not, even when addressing an island (like Britain). Drawing from topographic, genetic, literary, archaeological (and other types of) evidence, Joanna Story and Iain Walker have produced a study that is deep in detail and analysis and large in scope about the impact of markers of identity in diasporas. The conclusion of the study is that all those elements are fluid, dynamic and are transformed to each new layer of human movement and new sets of connections and relations (Story and Walker 2017). In other words, these phenomena are not new, and each generation can face it in different forms, which characterizes the historicity of the matter. Sometimes the element of movement and the cultural impact of migration can be essential parts of identities that are commonly thought of as crystallized and immovable (like “Englishness”) (Ormrod, Story, and Tyler 2020). The objective of the class with the theme of “migration” was to challenge the stiff nationalist view of the early Middle Ages. The assessment of this objective was done by dividing the class into small groups. Some groups presented sets of data about immigration and demographic movements in certain areas of Britain, as collected and organized by Story and Walker. Other groups presented a few passages of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and Gregory of Tours’s Historia that delt with the topic of movement and managing different populations. The groups then would present to the class how these topics were part of the intellectual debate on the early Middle Ages. After debating, the groups would share their findings to the class, comparing them to the nationalist-based historiography (read before the class) (Stenton 2001; Gregory Historia 5.7; Bede HE 1.15).

§44. The discussion about race and ethnicity is another crucial element to understand the present world. The Black Lives Matter movement had a very important part on placing this discussion at the center of public debate. Racial relations have been heatedly debated, and the intellectual productions of the Global South have been reassessed by the Global North on this topic, especially by those who consider racial relations one of (if not) the main structure(s) of modern societies (Almeida 2019; Yancey-Bragg 2020; Blyden et al. 2021). However, there is an ongoing debate about whether racial relations are exclusive of the modern world or if they have a longer history. Thinking about race as modern, it would be possible to discuss the ideas of race specially after the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This view understands that “scientific racism” divided humankind into different groups, whose cultural, economic and politic realities were determined by their behavior, which needed to be addressed in racial and biological terms (Hällgren and Weiner 2006; Müller-Wille 2014; Da Silva 2020). Other scholars believe that the roots of racial relations can be found in the medieval period, or that at minimum, ethnic frontiers were a crucial element of medieval societies (Robinson 2000; Heng 2018; Whitaker 2019). Another very important topic that has been lately discussed is how socio-racial relations have affected the historiography of the early Middle Ages. This discussion has become an important trend when analyzing the English early Middle Ages, generally known as Anglo-Saxon England. This nomenclature itself has been challenged, since it has white supremacy connections—both in the past and the present (Da Silva 2021; Rambaran-Olm 2021; Rambaran-Olm 2019). The pedagogical objective of a class on that topic was to consider such relations and try to understand which concept would be more adequate. The class was divided in groups, presenting them with primary sources (the Jew wearing the Jewish badge in BL Cotton MS Nero, D2, fol.180, 13th century; the statue of St. Maurice at Magdeburg Cathedral, and Marco Polo’s description of the Mongols) and then asking them to present the discussed arguments to the whole class. The focus was on considering how historiographic thoughts are built, criticized, and reformulated. This topic is among the most heated ones in a country like Brazil, in which racial relations are fraught and inequality is obvious and rampant.

§45. In the past few years, global history became a trend. Thinking about the medieval period focusing and emphasizing connections and relations that crosses borders (both historical and historiographical) has become a trend (Moore 2016). The global history approach has been more common in the study of the second half of the Middle Ages (Almeida and Torre 2019). However, it has been argued that despite the emergence and the fragmentation of empires, some level of intercontinental connection was preserved in the first half of the Middle Ages. In this sense, Ireland was not part of the Roman Empire and Japan was not part of the Chinese empire, but they were part of the Roman and Chinese worlds, respectively (Belich, Darwin, and Wickham 2016, 4). This trend is very helpful to organize classes with the objective to deconstruct both the nationalist and the Eurocentric perspectives of the Middle Ages (and the whiteness embedded in those) (Silveira 2019). Selected texts highlighted how Europe itself was not insular, and it needs to be understood as connected on many levels (economically, religiously, culturally) with the broader world. Rivers and seas are presented as pathways and connections (instead of frontiers) in this perspective, and traditional frameworks challenged (Belich, Darwin, and Wickham 2016, 4; Jarman 2021). In order to evaluate how such objectives were met or not, students were asked to creatively and freely propose new possible frameworks for early medieval studies, abandoning traditional perspectives such as “the Frankish Kingdom” or “early medieval Italy.” The assessment/evaluation was not to be focused on how “ready for use” or “pristine” the proposed frameworks were, especially considering how difficult this step is. The main criterion was the internal consistency of the argument and its innovation.

§46. These are just a few examples of the proposed teaching approach. They are based on the ongoing dialogue and critique of students and colleagues and are in constant revision, although they retain methodological consistency. The examples mentioned here can be mixed and matched with each other, and other possibilities are not just plausible, but welcome. And they will probably happen in the coming years.

IV – Conclusion: A Distant and Common Past as a Gateway for the Future

§47. History and historiography have hegemonically served the power for a long time (Fontana 2002). The power of understanding human agency through time and giving meaning to the flux of events have served multiple purposes. One of the most employed and dangerous uses of history has been making power look unmovable, unchangeable, natural. And this “natural” power can be expressed and related to the state, to gender negotiations, to class relations, to racial differentiation. Unmaking perceptions of what is “natural” and replacing it with the historicity of social relations (and its transformations) is crucial for disputing hearts and minds.

§48. In a famous poem, Bertolt Brecht urged people to not take the habitual as natural and to reject de-humanized humanity; to make it imperative to understand that nothing should seem impossible to change. The study and teaching of the early Middle Ages (and the distant pasts as a whole) demonstrates that the human experience is subject to change through the stark contrasts it holds with the present. It can also teach empathy for the different, both in the past and in the present. Seeing the Middle Ages with more than two genders might help students realize how present gender performances are produced. Understanding ethnic or racial relations (or their absence) in the past might be useful for rethinking racial equality in the present. Understanding movement and connections as having a long history might be a fruitful approach for understanding why no human should be illegal.

§49. James Scott once proposed that (well-done) history is the most subversive discipline (Scott 2017). By meaningful teaching-learning, through dialogue and backward design, distant pasts can be an essential part of this subversive aspect of history—if not the most subversive context. The early Middle Ages can be part of the historical consciousness of empowerment and fulfilling the rebellious potential of history: a fire to kindle the beacon of hope, so let there be light.

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