https://nypost.com/2024/03/03/world-new ... val-tower/
Doing a search for Krisztina Ilko and chess brings up lots of interesting material.
https://www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/news/dr-kri ... iddle-ages
https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-krisztina-ilko"Chess and Skin Colour in the Global Middle Ages
Speaker: Dr Krisztina Ilko
Queens’ College, University of Cambridge
Wednesday 8 November 2023, 9am-10.30am GMT
World History Seminar, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Online via Zoom."
"How could the game of chess facilitate cross-cultural interaction? To perambulate this question, this talk explores medieval images of chess games between players of contrasting skin colour. Key pieces of medieval art, like the lavishly illuminated gaming manual commissioned by King Alfonso X of Castile, are brought into conversation here with little-known pieces, such as a fourteenth-century Mallorcan altarpiece. Despite chess often being perceived through the lens of western European chivalric culture, these examples highlight a much more diverse social and cultural spectrum for this ‘game of kings’. This talk investigates the crucial role of colour in the chequered world of chess, and highlights new avenues to refine our understanding of the representation of skin colour and diversity in the Global Middle Ages."
It is quite exciting to see chess get this sort of attention from academic historians (this sort of history tends to go beyond a simple narrative exposition, delving deeply into archives, verging into the philosophical and theoretical, pushing the boundaries on new and cross-disciplinary concepts - it can be a difficult read [not everyone's cup of tea] and is not generally aimed at the public reading market, but is invariably extremely rigorous with huge amounts of research and lots of peer review)."My project, ‘The Pawns of History: A New Approach Towards the Global Middle Ages,’ uses the game of chess and surviving chess pieces to find a tangible approach towards the global medieval past. In contrast to previous histories which have focused on the development of gameplay, my project employs chess to study cross-cultural communication in the Afro-Eurasian world between 800 and 1400. Scholars have often approached the multicultural Middle Ages either through its connectivity or as a period of barrier making and cultural difference. Chess, however, opens up the possibility to trace interconnectivity between different geographies, cultures, and social strata, but also show how the same connections could be used to create separation and distinctiveness. The primary goal is therefore a critical rethinking of wider processes, practices, and products of cross-cultural interaction. Ultimately, my project addresses how the ‘global’ was experienced in the medieval era, and contributes to broader discussions about how the Middle Ages overlaps but also differs from the modern global world."
It will take years, but will be very interesting to see the end results of her work. Deserves its own thread in the 'Chess History' section at some point.
