Chaganti, Seeta. "Deplatforming Chaucer." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/deplatforming-chaucer. [Date accessed].

Deplatforming Chaucer

Using Chaucer's House of Fame to talk about the political memorialization of the past.

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Seeta Chaganti
University of California, Davis

Given that The House of Fame is concerned with the broadcasting of speech, the meaning of what is broadcast, and the platforming of the histories that produce our political ideologies, it incorporates many of the central terms involved in any discussion of not only monuments, but also deplatforming and free expression. It is thus a useful—maybe especially useful in its unexpectedness—place for a discussion about the role of Confederate monuments and other forms of oppressive memorializations in our country.

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Further learning

Video

Juxtaposing Chaucer

Seeta Chaganti offers an introduction to her "untimely juxtaposition" method, which places Chaucer's texts next to modern artifacts like film, visual art, and contemporary literature to open new avenues of exploration and discussion with students.

Seeta Chaganti
Reading list

Teaching Chaucer and justice

A list of contemporary readings on critical theory and justice frameworks that help us reimagine ways to teach Chaucer in the 21st century.

Seeta Chaganti

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Activity

Erasure poetry exercise: Chaucer’s The House of Fame

A student exercise using erasure poetry to interrogate Chaucer's text. By redacting Chaucer's poem, students can reimagine their relationship to premodern literature.

Seeta Chaganti
Video

"Merciless Beauty" and carceral justice

“Merciless Beauty” is a poem written in a late 14th-century English that may or may not be Chaucer’s but is highly comparable to Chaucer’s usage. Reading the poem alongside the film The Prison in 12 Landscapes, students are asked to make connections between the poem and the film and their formal examinations of time, incarceration, and repetition.

Seeta Chaganti
Video

Race and religious conversion

Bringing conversations about religious conversion into the classroom can help students see that religion was—and still is for some—more than just about what a person thinks and believes.

Dennis Britton

Selected annotated bibliography