Spotlight on Jes Battis's Thinking Queerly: Medievalism, Wizardry, and Neurodiversity in Young Adult Texts

"Thinking Queerly: Medievalism, Wizardry, and Neurodiversity in Young Adult Texts," by Jes Battis, is the first book in MIP's Premodern Transgressive Literatures series, which takes a decisively political, intersectional, and interdisciplinary approach to medieval and early modern literature. Published in 2021, "Thinking Queerly" traces the figure of the wizard from medieval Arthurian literature to contemporary young adult adaptations and asks questions like Why do we love wizards? Where do these magical figures come from? How do they think differently? And how can these characters offer spaces of hope and transformation for young readers?

"Thinking Queerly" was recently reviewed in the International Journal of Young Adult Literature by David Clark, who calls the book "a heady witch's brew of reflections on contemporary medievalism, young adult literature, queer theory, and neurodiversity. It is not your conventional monograph." Clark's review captures the engaging, playful, and complex nature of the book, which examines texts and properties as varied as Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth-century Latin text "The Life of Merlin"; the Middle English poem "Gawain and the Green Knight"; modern adaptations of Arthurian legends like T. H. White's "Sword in the Stone," Amy Capetta and Cori McCarthy's "Once and Future," and Cassandra Clare and Wesley Chu's "Red Scrolls of Magic"; TV shows "The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,"  "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and "Schitt's Creek" and more. Clark says, "This is a book that is at turns learned, playful, illuminating, provocative, engaging, flawed, quirky, and irreverent. It will undoubtedly delight and annoy, intrigue, educate, entertain, and—above all—challenge."

Battis has also appeared on "Queer Lit," a podcast hosted by Lena Mattheis, to talk about the book. Asked about the link between witches, warlocks, witches and queerness in general, they replied, "I think, you know, the short answer is that magic is queer. And so, people that can manipulate magic—it tends to be kind of queering force on their bodies and on their minds. If we think of a traditional character like Gandalf, in "The Lord of the Rings"—Gandalf is really a kind of, you know, several-thousand-year-old spirit in the body of an old man whose psychological context is just kind of on such a different—the way that they think is going to be different than the Hobbits. And that, I think there's a kind of a queering force there."

Battis reflects on this more in "Thinking Queerly," in which they use they/them pronouns for Gandalf and call the wizard "the lightning that moves through" the novel "The Hobbit": "the queer instigator, the unreliable storyteller, the presence that can't quite be contained." They argue that "throughout 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings,' Gandalf also has a slyness, a wit, that separates them from more binary characters: a neuro-queer way of thinking." In Battis's epilogue, they recall the wizard Schmendrick's lament in "The Last Unicorn" that "Wizards don't matter." Battis shows throughout  "Thinking Queerly" that "they do, of course. But they matter differently, strangely, charmingly." They argue that "wizards, if anything, are survivors, just like our students. And addressing wizardry in medieval literature, and medievalist YA, reveals that these magic-users have particular lessons to teach a diverse spectrum of teen readers... Wizards and enchantresses are us, and we can bring their magic into the classroom in order to replace academic rigor with practical magic. Wizards belong to everyone. They show readers who don’t fit in that fitting in doesn’t have to be the only choice."

Learn more about "Thinking Queerly" by reading David Clark's full review, listening to the "Queer Lit" podcast episode, or checking out the table of contents. "Thinking Queerly" is available for purchase now, and you can save 20% off the list price when you use Medieval22 at checkout!