ABSTRACT
Teachers and scholars, too, are focused on the crusades, reflecting the ubiquity of the crusades in political discourse and pop culture. Clearly, academic discourse on the crusades is occurring in the context of political discourse on and popular fascination with the crusades. The more controversial or ‘relevant’ a historical topic is – for example, the crusades – the more these dynamics may be exaggerated. As scholars of the crusades, people can and should engage in critical self-reflection. The dynamics of scholarly engagement with the public in a mass media world, then, have the potential to enhance and reinforce the privileged hegemony of historical expertise within the academy, creating a vicious cycle that is hard to disrupt. The relationship between the academic study of, and public attention to, the crusades is a most intimate one, as is the relationship between hierarchies of power and performances of expertise inside and outside academia.
