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Why Bunnies Are A New Gateway To The Meaning Of The Past

Matthew Gabriele
Former Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
medieval history, nostalgia, apocalypse, pop culture
This article is more than 5 years old.
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If people think about bunnies and the European Middle Ages (if they think about bunnies and the Middle Ages at all), it probably has something to do with that one famous scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). The intrepid if incompetent King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table have to fight their way past a terrible guardian that turns out to be... a bunny. [Some fake blood in the clip below.]

Well, bunnies are back but in nowhere near such a gruesome way. Welcome to Twitter's #HistorianSignBunny.

The meme seems to have migrated to English-language Twitter from the French, begun specifically by user @reinemedievale with a text bunny holding a sign up with a note about the Middle Ages. Other scholars who study the past quickly latched onto it, first making it into the #lapinhistorien ("bunny historian"), before it made its way into English as #HistorianSignBunny with the following tweet:

The number of bunnies, as one might expect of their kind, then exploded. Although most of the tweeting has been related to the Middle Ages, spreading through the active community connected by the #MedievalTwitter hashtag, it's since infiltrated other areas as well, from the Americas to Africa to Asia. And, although never narrowly confined to professional "historians," you can now find comparable bunnies holding signs with information about religion, literature, and just about any other humanistic or social scientific field. So, searching through the hashtag now reveals a treasure trove of really interesting facts and analyses, many often considered rather self-evident by professionals but maybe unknown to the general public.

We learn (or are reminded) that witch hunts were never a medieval phenomenon, that Victorians didn't invent the vibrator, that the Salem witch trials were not caused by moldy bread and hallucinations, that the American Civil War was indeed about slavery, and so on. But maybe most importantly, what #HistorianSignBunny reveals is just how misguided we sometimes are about what professors do.

Although necessarily brief due to the nature of the medium, these tweets invite surprise, conversation, and even disagreement. But in almost every case, the scholars themselves are the ones there to answer a question, to respond to a statement, to engage with anyone and everyone who is willing to play in this sandbox in good faith.

Not simply fusty old white guys, locked in a proverbial "ivory tower" and cut off from the world, the rich and varied world of academic Twitter shows just what a modern scholar looks like. They want people to know about their scholarship, why it excites them, why it's important, and why the study of the past is not just the regurgitation of "facts." In other words, the statements on the bunnies' signs aren't "facts," they're knowledge that is created by an analysis of large numbers of facts, put in their proper context, then made to speak about their meaning (often in ways those "facts" don't want to).

So, in the case of #HistorianSignBunny, these sometimes funny analyses of the past are both a gateway to knowing something more about the past as well as understanding how scholars in the Humanities do their work. The statements might be short and pithy but they're only possible after years of training. That training takes time and skill and there are those out there who are better at it than others, and for that we can legitimately call them experts.

Social media can be a terrible place, manifesting our worst impulses as people, but it can also sometimes be pretty great. Academic twitter is no different. At least for the moment, these bunnies holding their signs show off how great social media can be, how eager many scholars are to talk to the public. And if you decide to engage, to follow professional historians (or any scholar on Twitter), the #HistorianSignBunny might also teach you a little something about bunnies themselves.

Check out my website. 
Matthew Gabriele
Matthew Gabriele