This essay examines the birth of French medieval studies in America as a product of the racial anxiety and cultural-linguistic precarity experienced by Creoles. It argues that the idea of the French Middle Ages in North America, the conceptual matrix through which it became thinkable and desirable as a coherent subject of study, was made possible through engagements with minoritized Francophones who were assumed to embody the deep past. Part 1 examines how scholars in France’s Second Empire became invested in patois as a marker of “primitive” French cultural expression thought to have been transmitted over hundreds of years by oral recitation. Part 2 turns to a specific instantiation of French scholars’ pursuit of dialect: collectors of creole stories and grammars in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and south Louisiana who analogized creole utterances to the first French vernaculars as they emerged from Latin. Part 3 focuses on the pursuit of creolité as evidence of medievality in south Louisiana, and considers the racial anxiety evident in local deployments of the term creole. It concludes by discussing historical methods informed by creolization and mixed temporalities, and by imagining how these methods might transform medieval studies.

Educators have become increasingly committed to social and emotional learning in schools. However, we know too little about the typical growth trajectories of the competencies that schools are striving to improve. We leverage data from the California Office to Reform Education, a consortium of districts in California serving over 1.5 million students, that administers annual surveys to students to measure social and emotional competencies (SECs). This article uses data from six cohorts of approximately 16,000 students each (51% male, 73% Latinx, 11% White, 10% Black, 24% with parents who did not complete high school) in Grades 4–12. Two questions are addressed. First, how much growth occurs in growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness from Grades 4 to 12? Second, do initial status and growth look different by parental educational attainment and gender? Using accelerated longitudinal design growth models, findings show distinct growth trends among the four SECs with growth mindset increasing, self-management mostly decreasing, and self-efficacy and social awareness decreasing and then increasing. The subgroup analyses show gaps between groups but patterns of growth that are more similar than different. Further, subgroup membership accounts for very little variation in growth or declines. Instead, initial levels of competencies predict growth. Also, variation within groups is greater than variation between groups. The findings have practical implications for educators and psychologists striving to improve SECs. If schools use student-report approaches, predicting steady and consistent positive growth in SECs is unrealistic. Instead, U-shaped patterns for some SECs appear to be normative with notable declines in the sixth grade, requiring new supports.