Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan
Position title: Ph.D. Candidate; Teaching Assistant
Pronouns: he/him/his
Email: tnarayanan@wisc.edu
Address:
L122 Conrad A. Elvehjem Building
Office Hours: Thursdays 1:00–3:00pm, and by appointment.
Education
B.A. University of California–Davis, 2015
M.A. California State University–Chico, 2019
Biography
Drew Narayanan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Art History studying under Professor Thomas Dale. His dissertation project focuses on the various modulations of the “Sultan of Babylon” as both a historical and fantastical racialized construction in fourteenth and fifteenth century Latin Christian manuscripts. His research emphasizes that the expected markers for determining racialization such as particular types of skin color, physiognomy, costume and, accoutrement remain insufficient and inconsistent categories when dealing critically with premodern formulations of race. As a voracious consumer of twentieth century American pulp fiction, he also works on the deployment of racist medievalism in Americana. He has recently published his first peer-reviewed article titled “Sir Palamedes the Indelibly ‘Saracen’ Knight Heraldry, Monstrosity, and Race in Fifteenth-Century Arthurian Romance Manuscripts.”
Research Interests
Race in the Middle Ages, Latin Christian depictions of Muslim Princes, Arthuriana, Crusade & Memory, Americana & Medievalism.
Publications
“Sir Palamedes, the Indelibly ‘Saracen’ Knight: Heraldry, Monstrosity, and Race in Fifteenth-Century Arthurian Romance Manuscripts,” in The Arthurian World, eds. Victoria Coldham-Fussell, Miriam Edlich-Muth, Renée Ward. London: Routledge, 2022.
“Medieval Dreams and Far-Right Nightmares,” co-authored with Benjamin Bertrand, Current Affairs 6 no. 4, (2021).
Guillaume de Nangis, “How Sir John of Acre, butler of France, who was on guard, was deceived by some Saracens who requested baptism,” Global Medieval Sourcebook: A Digital Repository of Medieval Texts, translated by Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan.
Awards
2023 Transforming the Discipline Award
Outstanding Thesis Award for 2019–2020 from California State University, Chico for “White Saracens, Black Muslims, and Brown Hafsids: Imaginations of the ‘Saracen Prince’ in Les Grandes Chroniques De France (Royal MS 16 G VI)”
Courses
AH 303: Race in the Middle Ages and Its Contemporary Afterlives
AFR 321: First Semester Arabic
Primary Advisor(s)
Thomas E. A. Dale