Selected annotated bibliography

Chapman, Matthieu and Wainwright, Anna, eds. Teaching Race in the European Renaissance: A Classroom Guide. Tempe: ACMRS Press, 2023.

Compendium of pedagogical resources to facilitate teaching on race in early modern European contexts, with a focus on the “Renaissance” era in England, France, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Americas. The volume brings together engagements with a variety of material including dramas, fairy tales, visual arts, poetry, and historical writing. The chapters consider a variety of fields including performance studies, art history, literature, and digital humanities.

Cohen, Jeffrey J. "Race." In A Handbook of Middle English Studies, edited by Marion Turner, 109–122. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

Investigates theories of race in medieval English works. Through analysis of complex literary events, such as the battle between the knight Guy and the giant Colbrond in Guy of Warwick, the essay encapsulates the significance of “religion, descent, custom, law, language, monstrosity, geographical origin, and species” in addition to somatic markers in medieval English constructions of race. In addition, the essay provides a historiographical overview of contemporary thinking on race and medieval studies. Engages conversations in historiography, literature, embodiment, and religious studies.

Cohen, Jeffrey J., ed. The Postcolonial Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2000.

A compendium of essays addressing multifaceted temporalities of the medieval and its possible resonances today, with particular attention to postcolonial hermeneutics of medieval materials. The essays range across themes such as Richard the Lionheart, statues of Dante and Joan of Arc in Malcolm X Park, Chaucer, Prester John, and others. The volume engages conversations in the fields of postcolonial theory, historiography, and temporality.

Coles, Kimberly A., and Dorothy Kim, eds. A Cultural History of Race in the Renaissance and Early Modern Age (1350–1550). London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.

A compendium of essays reimagining European history between 1350 and 1550 through the experiences of "Black Africans, Asians, Jews, and Muslims." The essays explore the intersection of race with environment, religion, science, politics, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and more in a range of Renaissance and early modern European contexts.

Coodin, Sara. “Conversion Interrupted: Shame and the Demarcation of Jewish Women’s Difference in The Merchant of Venice.” In Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature, edited by Carol Mejia LaPerle. 79-98. Tempe: ACMRS Press, 2022.

An examination of constructing Jewish racial difference in Shakespeare's late 16th century play The Merchant of Venice. Coodin argues that the psychic and affective details placed onto a female Jewish character—namely, religious self-loathing and shame—are critical devices by which female Jews were racialized; and that these details were shown to be factors in Christian theorizations of conversion. The article engages conversations in the study of religion, Judaism, the history of emotion, and early modern Europe.

Corredera, Vanessa I. Reanimating Shakespeare’s Othello in Post-Racial America. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022.

Study of representations of Shakespeare’s Othello in the United States between 2008 and 2016. The book analyzes literary and audiovisual materials alongside performances to demonstrate how the new adaptations of the play accomplish both racist and antiracist ends. Of interest to students of English, Shakespeare studies, Black studies, and American history.

Dadabhoy, Ambereen. Shakespeare Through Islamic Worlds. Oxford: Routledge, 2024.

A study of the peripheralization of Islam and Muslims in the plays of Shakespeare, contrasted with the more evident presence of Islamic material in the works of Shakespeare’s contemporaries. The work argues that Shakespeare erases Islam to construct a fantasy of white, European, Christian dominance in the Mediterranean. Of interest to students of English, Shakespeare studies, and the study of the Mediterranean.

Dadabhoy, Ambereen. “‘Othello Was a Lie’: Wrestling with Shakespeare’s Othello.” In Shakespeare and Cultural Appropriation, eds. Vanessa I. Corredera, L. Monique Pittman, and Geoffrey Way, 94-111. London: Routledge, 2023.

A study of how Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North constructs relationships to Shakespeare’s Othello. The article showcases the novel’s “oppositional appropriation” of Othello by sharply delineating the limitations of the play, forcing readers to attend to persons and places not engaged by Shakespeare. Of interest to students of English, postcolonial studies, Shakespeare studies, and Middle Eastern studies.

Dadabhoy, Ambereen and Nedda Mehdizadeh. Anti-Racist Shakespeare. Cambridge Elements Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Investigates a spectrum of possible techniques regarding how to teach the early modern English plays of Shakespeare with an attention to racial formation. The work excavates relationships between past and present Anglophone discourses on race to argue for a need to embed such a consciousness about race within pedagogical praxes today. By doing so, this work sits at the intersection of early modern studies, Shakespeare studies, and the study of Anglophone literature more generally.

Das, Nandini, João Vicente Melo, Haig Z. Smith, and Lauren Working. Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021.

A critical lexicon of terminology used to configure racial difference in the context of early modern English. The entries provide historicizations of key concepts such as Alien, Moor, Citizen, Convert, Denizen, Exile, Foreigner, Heathen, Indian, Jew, Mahometan, Pagan, Savage, Turk, and Vagrant. The work thus participates in a broad range of fields including study of early modern England, cultural history, and the English language.

Davis, Kathleen, and Nadia Altschul, eds. Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of 'the Middle Ages' Outside Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

A collection of essays exploring the intersection of medievalism and postcolonialism. The work as a whole argues for the utility of the medieval/modern binary as a framing lens by which to deepen an understanding of postcolonial theory, as well as the various pertinences of postcolonial theory for understandings of “the medieval” situated outside Euro-American contexts. The essays consider sociohistorical sites in Africa, the Americas, East Asia, South Asia, and West Asia, and engage discussions in fields such as medieval history and postcolonial studies.

De Barros, Eric L. "'"Shakespeare” on His Lips’: Dreaming of the Shakespeare Center for Radical Thought and Transformative Action.” Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now, eds. Hillary Eklund and Wendy Beth Hyman. 206-214. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

Considers the pedagogical uses of Shakespeare in an effort to foster habits of linguistic complexity and creativity in the contemporary classroom. De Barros argues for the ways in which educators might draw upon Shakespeare’s language both to work against existing habits of language and ground necessary political thought. Of interest to students of English, Shakespeare studies, and pedagogy.

Derbew, Sarah F. Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Explores the representation of black skin in ancient Greek materials between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE. The book argues for a differentiation between the cultural attitudes of Greek antiquity and contemporary cultural overlays onto antique materials to execute an anti-racist historiography binding classical contexts to contemporary receptions. The work engages conversations in performance studies, material culture, and Blackness.

Dominique, Lyndon J. Imoinda’s Shade: Marriage and the African Woman in Eighteenth-Century British Literature 1759-1808. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012.

This work explores the literary figure of Imoinda from Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko; Or, The Royal Slave (1688) and Thomas Southerne’s 1696 adaptation, Oroonoko. Dominique argues that Imoinda and fictional African women in literary texts from 1759-1808 demonstrate a political moment when British writers are thinking about rebellion, antislavery rhetoric, and abolitionism. This text participates in conversations on the transatlantic slave trade, race, and gender.

Earle, Thomas Foster, and Kate J. P. Lowe. Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

A collection of essays surveying a broad range of topics pertaining to Black persons’ representations and experiences in Europe across the 15th and 16th centuries. The works are thematically joined through an exploration of how Black people were racialized within the cultural frameworks of early modern Europe, attending mostly to social and cultural history in Portugal, Spain, and Italy. The essays vary widely in content and the volume thus intersects with a broad range of academic conversations in social history, cultural history, art history, literature, and more.

Eccleston, Sasha-Mae, and Dan-el Padilla Peralta. "Racing the Classics: Ethos and Praxis." American Journal of Philology 143, no. 2 Special Issue: Diversifying Classical Philology vol. 1, edited by Emily Greenwood (2022): 199–218.

A reflection on the "Racing the Classics" conference series between 2017 and the date of publication. The essay situates the history of the series within the nexus of countering white supremacy in academic studies of antiquity, offering both a roadmap for desired future outcomes and a series of techniques available to scholars and pedagogues.

El Hamel, Chouki. Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Examines the history of slavery in Morocco from the beginning of the Islamic era through the reign of Mawlay Isma‘il in the 17th and 18th centuries. The book places special emphasis on the enslaved “Black army” and argues that, despite European travel narratives generally representing Morocco as free of racial prejudice, Black Moroccans were stigmatized and marginalized. It concludes with a profile of the Moroccan Gnawa, an ethnic group descended from enslaved Black people. The book analyzes slavery through the interplay of race, gender, and religion.

El-Cheikh, Nadia Maria. Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Study of medieval Arab Muslim views on the Byzantines. The work moves away from the dominant historiographical emphasis on conflict to demonstrate how Byzantium figured into the wider and deeper cultural imaginary of the Arab Muslim world. Of interest to students of history, Islamic studies, and Middle East Studies.

El-Cheikh, Nadia Maria. Women, Islam, and Abbasid Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Study of how gender and sexuality constructed early medieval Muslim identities. The work argues that gender and sexuality were key to how Muslims in the Abbasid Caliphate constructed difference—with primary reference to pre-Islamic forerunners, female mourners, the Qaramita, and the Byzantines—feeding into the ways in which Muslim women were conceptualized. Of interest to students of history, gender & sexuality studies, Islamic studies, and Middle East studies.

Erickson, Peter and Kim F. Hall, “'A New Scholarly Song': Re-Reading Early Modern Race,” Shakespeare Quarterly 67, no. 1 (2016) 1-13.

A historiographical exploration of critical race theory within Shakespeare studies in the context of establishment attempts at disappearing the subject matter of race from the field. Following a brief survey of three prior phases relevant to the critical analysis of race in this scholarly context, the essay provides an expansive prescriptive argument for future directions in premodern critical race theory.

Selected annotated bibliography of PCRS

Selected annotated  bibliography of PCRS