The Quiet Arts: Silence, Shadow, and Alternative Archives for Recovering Women’s Silenced Histories

This article explores how silenced and invisible women in Marco Polo’s The Travels of Marco Polo can be reimagined through innovative methods that move beyond traditional historical writing. Drawing on Black feminism, Black theology, historical fabulation, and poetic inquiry, it argues that silence itself holds meaning. With close attention to visual arts made by women in medieval Mongolia and China, painting, devotional handscrolls, and embroidery can serve as alternative archives for recovering the women’s lives. These ‘quiet arts’ counterbalance Polo’s instrumentalized depictions, offering resilient testimonies that his writings largely ignore. As a contemporary interpretation, bringing Kara Walker’s silhouettes into dialogue with these premodern archives underscores continuity between historical erasures and present-day acts of recovery. The result is a methodological model for fuller, more inclusive historical writing that integrates scholarship and creative practice. By connecting these women’s erasures to the experiences of enslaved Black women and to African American artistic traditions, the study highlights parallels in gendered oppression while also offering additional tools in efforts to dismantle historical silencing. The article ultimately proposes a transdisciplinary approach that integrates art, theology, and feminist scholarship to construct fuller, more nuanced accounts of women’s lives.