What's the Point?
What's the Point?
Arts and humanities in Roma communities with Dr Madeline Potter
Researcher and upcoming author Madeline Potter joins Bryony Armstrong to talk about:
- Tackling intergenerational poverty through the arts in Roma communities
- The importance of knowing your own history
- Maddy’s upcoming book, The Roma: A Travelling History (Bodley Head/ Harper Collins, 2025)
- Why writing and research skills need to be valued and funded
- The role of humanities in combatting “fake news”
- Getting information directly from the source
- The need for the Roma to be represented by Romani people
The article announcing Maddy's book auction can be found here.
The Twitter thread that explains the truth of the Jane Austen headline can be found here.
Find Bryony @BF_Armstrong
Find Maddy @madeline_cct
Artwork: Riduwan Molla https://www.canva.com/p/riduwanmolla/
Music: Madaan Mansij https://www.pond5.com/artist/mansij_tubescreamer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Hello, and welcome to What's the Point, the podcast where we discuss the need for arts and humanities today. I'm your host, Bryony Armstrong. We're living in a time when the arts and humanities are under threat, and I know this firsthand, having studied both English and maths at university, and now doing a PhD in English. Each week, I'll be joined by a guest talk about what arts and humanities do for the world. If you've ever wondered, what's the point of the arts and humanities, then this is the podcast for you. Hi, everyone, thanks so much for tuning in to What's the Point. My guest today is Madeline Potter, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of York who specializes in 19th century Gothic literature. As if that wasn't enough, she's also currently writing a book titled The Roma, A Travelling History, which has been snapped up by Penguin's Bodley Head imprint in the UK and HarperCollins in the US. Her Twitter page caught my eye last summer when she wrote a thread in response to a lot of unfortunate discussion in the media and in politics about arts and humanities degrees being supposedly low value. Just to give you a taste, I wanted to read part of that thread here. So it says, 'I'm so upset about the discourse surrounding low value degrees and the hypocrisy of the social mobility index. For example, I know personally, and I've seen the positive impact the humanities have had on some impoverished Roma communities, the empowerment of it all. It's beyond disgusting to see the closures of English departments, the loss of jobs, and the desolation created by a government who fails to understand what value means, and a society who wants to measure everything through the language of capitalist profit. It's a deeply disturbing and dangerous situation. It's through the humanities that we understand our history of how we came to be as societies and cultures.' So after reading that, I've known for quite a while that I wanted to interview Maddy about the threat to arts and humanities, I hope you enjoy the episode. So how did you come to choose a humanities path?
Madeline Potter:I think for me, it was just a natural development. I was...ever since my childhood, I just loved reading. I read some novels probably way too early. So I remember kind of getting into Great Expectations when I was about 10, and then Dracula when I was about 12, and probably not getting a lot of the books at that stage. But it was just the process of reading. It was just the process of immersing myself in...in that world that sort of just developed naturally for me. In school, I was always interested in the literature part of things. And then, yeah, kind of proceeded up to BA level, MA and then the PhD. So in a sense, for me, it was just...this is what made sense, this was what I was interested in, what caught my attention, and where I felt most comfortable being myself as well.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah. And I'm always curious to ask people like, were you encouraged in that path the whole way through? Because I think maybe not everyone is always encouraged to like, pursue the things that are interesting to them.
Madeline Potter:Yeah, I was quite lucky that I was encouraged to pursue that as my family was super supportive. At times, there was a sense, especially in school, this idea that, well, this is not going to be productive. I do remember once I just walked into a pub when I was doing my PhD. And, you know, people strike up conversations in pubs. And a woman asked me what I was doing. I said, I'm doing a PhD in English literature, and the look of horror on her face I will never forget. And she said, What are you going to do with that? What... to quote, the title of your podcast, what's the point? Why are you doing this? And yeah, I suppose at that point I was already very confident in my own path, I was doing my PhD, but I think this rhetoric is quite harmful for people who maybe haven't found their feet yet who are interested in it, who are good at it, but then just...school narratives pushed on them that they shouldn't be doing this. That really, they should be going into STEM.
Bryony Armstrong:Totally. I have had the exact same experience almost word for word. It's like people have a script. I was on a train once, and a man, like, asked me what I was doing. I also said a PhD in English. And he looked at me in disgust and said, what a useless thing to do. What on earth are you going to do with that? And like you at the time, I felt pretty...it was only a year ago...at that point, I was pretty confident in my choices. But it's sad to think that maybe 16 year olds might tell someone they want to do something like English or arts and humanities at uni, and then they'll get the same script. And it might put them off.
Madeline Potter:Exactly, exactly. And I think also, as I said, for me, this was just the obvious path from the age of probably 10 ish. But I think there are people who are interested in it, but could go either way. And then I think the narrative pushes them into choosing...if they're good at, say English and maths, then they will get pushed towards maths just because of this societal bias.
Bryony Armstrong:Totally. Yeah, I mean, because I did English and maths at uni, and then somehow ended up actually leaving maths behind and coming into English. But yeah, that's really not always the case. There were in my first year at uni, a couple of other people doing English and maths, and I think a few of them ended up just doing maths. So yeah, I totally hear that too. So I wanted to kind of like dive straight in and refer back to that...that tweet that I saw almost nine months ago.
Madeline Potter:Wow.
Bryony Armstrong:I know, it's crazy. I was just looking at it this morning. And it obviously, like, really stuck with me, because I just thought about it for months. And then when I started this podcast, I was like, I really need to find that tweet again, and talk to you. But I wanted to just ask, like if you could kind of begin by telling us what you mean by the positive impact that the humanities have had on impoverished Roma communities? And maybe give us some examples as well.
Unknown:Yeah, absolutely. So music is a huge one for many Romani communities. So there are in Romania, where I'm originally from, there's actually a traditional musicians cast called the Lautar who practice this traditional way of music, and they've practiced it for for a long time. But I've seen music as an option for other Roma who weren't necessarily from that Lautar cast as a means of, first of all, just growing up with music in the background, as as a way to, to just get yourself out of that state that many of...many people are pushed into. And then I've seen a lot of my friends, for example, take up music playing the violin, playing the accordion. And pursuing a career out of that. A career which...it's not...there's no easy answer to generational poverty, especially in a place like Romania where they're still being pushed into ghettos and pushed to the margins of society. But it's a step forward. It's something that you can take in your own hands, and pursue. And I've seen a lot of my neighbors, for example, from back in Romania, going on to have music careers that help them achieve a sense of stability and financial independence through this. And it's something that, if you look at history as well, music has been huge. If you think about the flamenco of the Cale communities in Spain, or if you think about Django Reinhardt who pursued his musical career, that was what he could do. That was what he was good at. And he became huge. I mean, he's an absolutely amazing jazz musician...Manouche jazz. So I think these are examples of...of how very practically, arts and humanities have helped people push against the kind of situation that they're forced into...push against this generational poverty that they've been imprisoned in.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, it's really interesting example to think of music actually, because I think often we hear a narrative of, like, don't pursue the arts because you're not...you're not ever gonna make any money from that or get a...get a job from that. But I guess what you're saying is like there is demand for musicians and people can have jobs from that, and maybe even jobs that are more freelance, and jobs where you perhaps have a bit more say in...in what you're doing. And it's more, like, independent.
Unknown:Exactly. And I think that's really important specifically when it comes to Romani communities in, say, in Eastern European space, because there is a lot of prejudice. So they're often not hired, you often can't get a job if you're Roma. So if you apply for a, say, traditional office job, you will often just not get hired, even if you have the relevant qualifications. Precisely because you're Roma. So there is still this racist practice, that...even though it's illegal in practice on the ground, it still happens. So that sense of taking matters into your own hands, having this degree of freedom, as you put it, I think that's really, really important
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah. I was going to ask you about that as as well. well. Because I love...I've seen you talk about, sort of, the role of humanities in empowerment in this context, I wonder if you could maybe expand a bit on, yeah, on...on the arts and humanities, and kind of like the empowerment that you've witnessed in those communities.
Unknown:Yeah, and I mean, apart from what we've just said, this idea of taking matters into your own hands, I think knowledge is power. And that's something that people will generally agree with. So let's move to...from music...move to history. At the moment, the history of the Roma is not known. It's...something that I've noticed, both in Romania and in the UK, is a lack of understanding and knowledge of the history of the Roma. So for me, understand...understanding our own history has been empowering, because it's helped me to understand how this impinges on the present. And it's helped me think through what needs to be done about it. And I've seen that same situation with other Roma, and discussions I've had with childhood friends and discussions I've had on Twitter. This idea of, right, this is what happened. And this is why we're here. And this is what we need to do, this is how to move forward, because you can't move forward if you don't understand how you got here. So that's been personally really empowering for me. If you take...and there are so many things to say about this, so I'll just kind of try to be...to just give you the gist of it, I guess. In Eastern Europe, in Romania, I'd say up to 98 per cent or 99 per cent of communities are settled. Growing up there, there's not much awareness of this history of nomadism that existed, even though it doesn't go that far back. So some, maybe two or three generations back, a lot of the communities would have been nomadic. Not all, because there's many subgroups. And that's a whole new complication. But many would have been nomadic, but their sense of the history of nomadism has suffered a cultural rupture. There's not much awareness of it. So for me, discovering the idea of the history of nomadism was really, really interesting and really empowering, just thinking about my community. So understanding the sort of historical measures, measures that were imposed to force settlement, is actually empowering now when we have discussions about some of the measures that are being implemented here in the UK, that are trying to achieve the same thing. So that's, again, knowledge is power. We understand what happened and we understand that this history has been wiped out across large,...basically areas of the continent. So how can we understand and learn from that history to prevent it from happening here, where there still is this tradition of nomadism that's alive. Equally, there's...almost nobody knows about the 500 years of chattel slavery that the Roma communities have suffered on the territory of present day Romania. So people talk about integration, which is a term I dislike. I think we should talk about inclusion, not integration, because to me, integration implies the erasure of remaining traditions and practices. People talk about integration or inclusion, and so you get this racist narrative that my community doesn't want to integrate, that we refuse to. But people don't look at that history of the 500 years of slavery, of the Romani Holocaust, the Romani genocide called the Porajmos, the generational poverty that has created some of the problems that we are facing today. And then, I think understanding this history...and for me, understanding the history of my people, understanding how as a culture and as a community we have come to be in this situation, has really helped me try and initiate dialogue. It's really helped me try and educate other people about this historical injustice, and think through ways of addressing it and moving forward and establishing dialogue, importantly, I think, between Romani communities and the non Roma.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, wow, I mean, it just can't be understated how important the work you're doing is,
Unknown:Thank you. And if I could just add, also just very, very quickly, in an English speaking space, just kind of understanding the history of the word gypsy itself. There's so much confusion between...people use gypsy, Roma, traveler, interchangeably. And this is extremely damaging, because what it's doing is lumping together communities that face their own challenges and have their own traditions and histories. And it's so flattening. And the term gypsy comes from the misunderstanding that the Roma come from Egypt. So it's a shortening of Egyptian. It's a very controversial term. Some people reclaim it, many people consider it a slur. So I think just this background of how the term originated, how it's been used, and who the Roma are...a North Indian diasporic community, really, that happened to be nomadic. So some of the challenges will be related to nomadism. But some of the challenges will be related to other forms of marginalization, and racism, and understanding that is absolutely crucial in designing policies that can help inclusion.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, I was curious, while you were talking about your own personal processes of like learning and understanding your history, so like, what sources have you been going to in this process?
Unknown:I mean, it's a mix of kind of oral history, written work, such as that by Professor Ian Hancock, as well, as currently for my book, I'm looking at a lot of historical documents as well. So we've been looking at some 17th century French documents about basically banishing the Roma. So it's just...it's just really a mix of sources. Yeah.
Bryony Armstrong:So speaking of your book, because the work...the work you're alluding to at the moment is taking the form of the fact that you're writing a book called The Roma, A Travelling History. Firstly, congratulations, wow. I saw the articles coming up in The Bookseller when I think there was an auction for the rights or something. So that must have been very exciting. And it says in the article about it, that it's to help readers understand a real history of a demonised and misunderstood group. So I'd love to ask you a couple of questions about it. But I was curious, in the context of why arts and humanities matters, how you personally feel that your humanities education kind of led you to this point of writing a book.
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, my whole life...especially well, kind of, post grad education, you know, PhD, and postdoc...has been books. You know, obviously, books are something that I consume, that I read both as, as, you know, as an academic, but also just as a reader. So I know the effects that books have had on me and I know that, growing up, I would have liked to have a book like what mine does. Um, there's almost nothing written by Romani people about this kind of broad history. There's a lot of sources about the Roma written by non Romani people that tend to exoticise us. And that tend to this, almost, like, anthropological take on it. So I think what I'm saying is that when I was growing up, I would have liked to have a role model of a Romani writer like this. And that wasn't there. So I think for me, just growing up as a Romani girl who liked reading and writing, to a certain extent that path is...it was inevitable, almost, that I came to write about this. But also just my humanities education has taught me how to write. And it has taught me what to read so that I can
Bryony Armstrong:Yes. write. And this taught me how to research, like, those 17th century French documents that I was just recently looking at, just knowing how to find them, knowing how to navigate them, knowing how to look for sources that this whole...because there's so much research that goes into a piece of writing. So you know, spending my...my time during my humanities education looking at secondary sources and archives and all that kind of, you know, that...that material that all PhD students will instantly recognize. I think that equips you, it certainly equipped me with just the tools, the intellectual tools, I need to be able to research so that I'm able to write. Yeah, I will never understand why those skills aren't held up as, like, crucial and brilliant skills for society, because the processes of finding and gathering information, and then structuring it and presenting it in a way that's readable and digestible. Just...there's so much in this world that really hangs on those skills, like journalism and the way we learn about current events, or...I don't know, even in like, a corporate environment, I'm sure a lot...I know, I have done an internship, that, like, all kinds of memos get sent out. And yeah, like these skills are pretty vital, but for some reason, they're just they're not valued in the same way that STEM skills are. And they're not...they're not given the funding at the moment to be encouraged to thrive, I think.
Unknown:Exactly. And I think particularly also in this, kind of, era of social media and fake news, I think this idea of, do your own research, know how to chase things up, know how to gather information, and how to understand and think through that information is so crucial. Because only look at how much damage the whole fake media, fake news phenomenon has caused. It's mind boggling. And it's mind boggling that not just, as you say...people who work in these fields, like you know, journalism, having to research...but also, whatever domain you might work in, the idea of research should help you think about how you consume the information that you're being given. And once again, that's empowering. That's a sense of empowerment. Question things.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah.
Madeline Potter:For example, I remember there was an article I remember seeing that. that's...a sense in which the right wing media are trying to stir up this idea that universities are cancelling books.
Unknown:Yeah. And I remember seeing that on Twitter and being quite surprised by how many people were taking it at face value, even though the information presented was incorrect. It was...it was about a module that changes yearly. Right? So obviously, if a module changes yearly, they're going to have different books on that particular module every year. And that was presented as cancelling books, although it's essentially a rotation, to enable students to just get the most out of that module in a particular set of circumstances. And I remember that people involved with that module were saying on Twitter, this is a lie. This is information that is not correct. This is what's happening. But many, many members of the public were just taking it at face value.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah.
Madeline Potter:So, yeah, I think that's where this idea of research is...is important. Presented with a piece of information, research it.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, yeah. And really thinking about what research is, because research isn't just Googling something and seeing a headline and taking it as fact. I think...I think in the...I think we're thinking about the same article that the headline said something like, Jane Austen is being cancelled from university.
Madeline Potter:That was it.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah. As you say, what it was, is that this yearly rotating course about novels happened to teach Toni Morrison that particular year and not Jane Austen.
Madeline Potter:Yeah.
Bryony Armstrong:And yet everyone took it as...and I know people who did just take it at face value. And I remember in that case, just being so baffled and thinking like why...why is it people are so...well, we know why, because of racism...but people are so incensed that Jane Austen is being apparently cancelled, but wouldn't have the same feeling if Toni Morrison was taken off the reading list. Like that wouldn't be read in the same way...
Madeline Potter:Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Bryony Armstrong:Just that whole thing was terrible.
Unknown:Absolutely, not to mention that Jane Austen was being taught on the degree, just changed on that particular module. So students would have read Jane Austen on the degree. So that was just double misinformation.
Bryony Armstrong:Right. It was an incredibly misleading headline. And yeah, like, especially I suppose in your case of, really the important thing to do often is to go right to the source, especially if you're reading about people who have been misrepresented in media and fiction and nonfiction written by people who aren't part of that community.
Unknown:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I...I work...most of my research is in the field of Victorian Gothic literature. And it's such a...the Romani are so often almost a trope of the Victorian Gothic and just really exoticised and mystified and, yeah.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, I think I saw you tweeting about that a couple days ago, it was interesting. So your book, I mean, you touched on this before, but kind of like what value do you hope that this book and other books like this can sort of bring beyond what...what you have described as kind of the language of profit? Because that's, that's not just what value is. And it's such a shame if that's the only way we see value, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Unknown:Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So I think what you just said is making me think of Ruskin and his distinction between value and cost and price, which is really important. And he's...he's cautioning us not to think about value as cost or price. But yeah, to answer your question, I think this idea, again...I would have really wanted a book like this when I was growing up. So thinking about Romani children growing up, I want this to help them. I want this to give them the confidence to be proud and happy of and with who they are. I want them to empower them inthat way. I want them to help them navigate the world and our history, so it's really wanting to to give the Romani children growing up now that...that something that was missing for me. And also, I want it to establish dialogue with the wider community. Because again, not just due to the Gothic but due to so many various erroneous narratives, people don't know who the Roma are. People don't know our history, and stereotypes often do stem from this misunderstanding, because then you fill in the gaps with your own information. So I want to push against that. And I want to give this history as it is, this is our real history. We are people. We're not, we're not stereotypes, we're not mythical creatures. We are a group that originated from Northern India that has migrated through Europe, and that has faced this particular set of challenges and that has this culture. Because the book is not just a book of the historical injustices that we've suffered, but also a celebration of our survival and a celebration of our culture and traditions.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah, you can't put a price on...on happiness as well and a feeling of empowerment.
Unknown:Yeah. And just changing...changing attitudes and changing the way there's...if you take curricula, there's almost nothing about the Roma on curricula in schools. There's...I know that the Roma holocaust, that genocide, has been taught in some schools, but it's not widely known. And just more broadly, Romani history is not being taught widely. So what I'm hoping that I can do is open up these spaces of discussion and dialogue about how we teach this history as well and why we need to teach it.
Bryony Armstrong:That is such an incredible goal. And yeah, I definitely at school did not...did not learn any Romani history. And I can't wait to read this book when it comes out, which I believe is in 2025. Is that correct?
Madeline Potter:That's the plan, yeah. Yeah, that's the plan.
Bryony Armstrong:Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you so much for bringing your time and expertise to this podcast today. I'm so grateful that you've come on to talk.
Unknown:Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm so thrilled to to be part of it.
Bryony Armstrong:Thank you for listening to What's the Point. If you enjoyed this podcast don't forget to subscribe. You can also find us on Twitter at wtppod underscore and send us a DM if you want to get in touch. We'll see you next time with a brand new episode.
