Selected annotated 
bibliography of PCRS

This bibliography represents a selection of foundational texts in the field of premodern critical race studies (PCRS). It focuses on secondary sources examining premodern race and how constructions of difference in the past continue to reverberate today. While these entries treat a variety of sociohistorical and linguistic contexts, the studies themselves covered here are all produced in English. This is a continuously expanding document created by the ACMRS Postdoctoral Research Scholars in collaboration with the RaceB4Race Executive Board.

Period
Discipline

Fuchs, Barbara. Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.

Explores the postcolonial concept of hybridity within the construction of Iberia and its identity during the late 15th-17th centuries. Fuchs discusses the paradoxes in the cultural construction of Spain in relation to its "Moorish" heritage through an analysis of Spanish literature, costume, language, chivalric practices, and architecture. Fuchs argues that Spanish Iberian identity is obsessed with the “Moorish” form and the idea of maurophilia.

Fuentes, Marisa J. Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

This book explores the perspectives of enslaved women in the urban Caribbean, specifically Bridgetown, Barbados, in the eighteenth century. Each chapter focuses on an enslaved woman in the Caribbean and uses archival fragments to discuss systems of enslavement in Barbados. The text interrogates how knowledge is created through archives and historical accounts. This work engages with topics of archives, race, gender, and sexuality.

18th Century
History

GhaneaBassiri, Kambiz. A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

A reassessment of U.S. history with reference to Muslims in the regions that would become the United States. The first two chapters, "Islam in the 'New World'" and "Islamic Beliefs and Practice in Colonial and Antebellum America," explore premodern contexts with specific regard to how Muslims were conceptualized within a European Christian project of mercantile capitalism, and how Muslims experienced the American project themselves. The work is of interest to the study of U.S. history, religion, and colonialism, among other fields.

Early Modern
Religious Studies

Gillen, Katherine, Kathryn Vomero Santos, and Adrianna M. Santos, eds. “Shakespeare and Borderlands Cultura,” Borrowers and Lenders 17, no. 2 (2026).

This special issue gathers essays that examine Shakespeare plays and multilingual adaptations as texts crossing cultural, linguistic, and political borders. The editors argue for the necessity of interdisciplinary studies to understand the hybrid arts and cultures along the US-Mexico border. It advances the claim that borderlands function as sites of negotiation where race, identity, and adaptation are continually reconfigured.

Early Modern
Literature
Shakespeare

Goldberg, David. “The Development of the Idea of Race: Classical Paradigms and Medieval Elaborations.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 5, no. 4 (1999): 561–70.

A review essay analyzing Ivan Hannaford’s Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Goldberg’s essay critiques Hannaford’s book by arguing that the latter does not adequately consider the impact of Hellenic notions from antiquity on the modern development of race, or the transmission of racial ideas from medieval North Africa and the Middle East.

Ancient
History

Green, Monica. “Bodily Essences: Bodies as Categories of Difference.” In A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Medieval Age, edited by Linda Kalof, 141–62. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.

This chapter discusses “marked bodies” in the Middle Ages. The chapter considers how the sex of the body is regarded as a marked difference through analysis of disease and disability. The chapter gives particular attention to the “internal” versus “external” body, and physiology compared to anatomy in the Middle Ages. The text also discusses how perceptions of religion changed ideas of the body. This work covers topics in science, gender, sex, religion, and disability studies.

Medieval
History

Green-Mercado, Mayte. Visions of Deliverance: Moriscos and the Politics of Prophecy in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019.

Interrogates the production and circulation of prophecies among Muslims in the early modern Mediterranean, with specific attention to Morisco materials. The book attends to how prophecy and apocalypticism were key tools in Moriscos' resistance to forced conversion and assimilative programs, while simultaneously embedding them in a cross-cultural network of religious thought spanning the breadth of the Mediterranean. To do so, it takes up conversations in the study of religion, the Mediterranean, and apocalypticism.

Early Modern
Religious Studies

Greenwood, Emily. Afro-Greeks: Dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Analyzes the reception of Greco-Roman classics in the anglophone Caribbean between 1920 to the turn of the 21st century. The work explores the works of several authors—including Kamau Brathwaite, Austin Clarke, John Figueroa, C. L. R. James, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, and Eric Williams—to demonstrate how Caribbean writers claimed the Greco-Roman classics for themselves in a process of identity formation. The work engages conversations in the study of the classics, the Caribbean, and literary history.

Ancient

Greenwood, Emily. “Re-rooting the classical tradition: New Directions in Black Classicism.” Classical Receptions Journal 1.1 (2009): 87–103.

A review essay surveying several works in the field of Black classicism published between 2005 and 2008. The publications are marshalled to gesture toward new directions in the field of Black classicism which bridges Greco-Roman antiquity with more contemporary histories. The focus is on works which relate to Black American receptions of Greco-Roman antiquity, with an interest in how the field of Black classicism might expand further.

Ancient

Greenwood, Emily, ed. "Diversifying Classical Philology, Volume 1" special issue. American Journal of Philology 143, no. 2 (2022).

The first of two collections of essays which redraw the boundaries of classical philology as a discipline through a broad range of studies. Throughout, these collections deploy a practice of “intramural counter-philology” to produce critical reflections on classical philology as a discipline in North American contexts. The essays here engage ongoing conversations in the study of classics, North America, and race.

Ancient
Literature

Greenwood, Emily, ed. "Diversifying Classical Philology, Volume 2" special issue. American Journal of Philology 143, no. 4 (2022).

The second of two collections of essays which redraw the boundaries of classical philology as a discipline through a broad range of studies. Throughout, these collections deploy a practice of “intramural counter-philology” to produce critical reflections on classical philology as a discipline in North American contexts. The essays here engage ongoing conversations in the study of classics, North America, and race.

Ancient
Literature

Habib, Imtiaz H. Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008.

An expansive and detailed study of African, Native, and Indian persons whose lives are documented in the archives of 16th and 17th century England. The work provides both a chronological assessment of Black lives in early modern English contexts as well as arguments about the theoretical reconsiderations of the early modern period which these lives demand. Habib's work engages debates in the study of historiography, England, and captivity and enslavement.

Early Modern
Literature

Habib, Imtiaz H. Shakespeare and Race: Postcolonial Praxis in the Early Modern Period. Latham: University Press of America, 2002.

Explores the racializing projects specific to Shakespeare's context of 16th-century England, with special reference to captives and enslaved persons. Habib's project illuminates the connections between the race-making projects held on Elizabethan stages at the beginnings of English colonialism, as well as the impact of Black persons in England on Shakespeare's plays themselves. The work engages conversations in the study of England, English literature, Shakespeare, and colonialism.

Early Modern
History

Hahn, Thomas, ed. A Cultural History of Race in the Middle Ages. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.

A broad survey on how people enacted and experienced racializing differences from the 5th through the 16th centuries. The volume offers multi-disciplinary analysis of materials from across Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, including literature in Hebrew, Latin, Arabic, and European vernaculars as well as visual artifacts and maps.

Medieval

Haley, Shelley P. "Be Not Afraid of the Dark: Critical Race Theory and Classical Studies." In Prejudice and Christian Beginnings: Investigating Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Early Christian Studies, edited by Laura Nasrallah and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. 27-49 Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009.

Interrogates the uses of contemporary heuristics of race and racism in the study of ancient Greek sociocultural contexts, in order to excavate racializing intellectual structures among contemporary analysts of the past. To do so, the essay explores themes in somatic and affective markers in Roman literatures while charting contemporary interpretations of the same. The work engages conversations in the study of Roman literature and embodiment.

Ancient

Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Interrogates images of Blackness in 16th and 17th century England. The book argues that constructions of Blackness, which are malleable, are key in establishing a sense the proper organization of Western gender relations, nationalism, imperialism, and colonial organization. The opposition of Blackness to whiteness reveals anxieties about race, gender, sexuality, and commerce. Drawing on a broad set of texts, the book discusses issues of travel, cosmetics, Christian rhetoric, class, and slavery.

Early Modern
Literature

Hall, Kim F. “I Can’t Love this the Way You Want Me to: Archival Blackness.” postmedieval: a journal of medieval multicultural studies 11, no. 2–3 (2020): 171–79.

This article discusses the experience of looking in the archive for an enslaved Black man named ‘Othello.’ The text interweaves personal experience and narrative form with archival findings from the New York Public Library. Othello is among the “alleged multi-racial conspirators” in the 1741 New York Conspiracy. This text interrogates the category of “property” and imagines the life of Othello and other enslaved Black people. Engages in issues of archival absences, Shakespeare, and contemporary politics.

Early Modern
Literature

Cahill, Patricia A., and Kim F. Hall, editors. Journal of American Studies, 54, no. 1 (2020).

This special issue discusses the role of Shakespeare in Black culture in America. The cluster features twelve essays that originated at the Shakespeare Association of America’s seminar, “Shakespeare in Black America.” The essays consider Shakespeare’s role in pedagogy, scholarship, and culture. This special issue engages in discussions of performance histories, ethical scholarly methodologies, language, and various other topics.

Early Modern
Literature

Hall, Kim F. The Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Mastery, and Pleasure in the Anglo Caribbean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025.

Examines the commodity of sugar in England and the Caribbean during the 17th century. Hall outlines sugar’s transformation from royal luxury to household staple and the links between Caribbean plantation production and English national identity and domestic life. Hall argues that literary and culinary expressions of sweetness masked racialized labor and created a discourse of white innocence. The work engages in the study of global trade, the Caribbean, agrarian fantasy, and anti-slavery efforts.

18th Century
History
Black Atlantic

Hall, Kim F. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Colonization and Miscegenation in The Merchant of Venice.” Renaissance Drama 23 (1992): 87-111.

Using The Merchant of Venice as a vehicle to consider England’s concurrent desire to expand via colonization and anxieties about cross-cultural exchange, this article considers how the fear of miscegenation functions within early modern economic exchange. With pointed attention to Blackness, immigration, and antisemitism, Hall demonstrates how Shakespeare’s play explores the role of racial difference in England’s emerging national and imperial designs.

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