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

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. “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.

Hall, Kim F. “‘These bastard signs of fair’: Literary Whiteness in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” In Post-Colonial Shakespeares, edited by Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin, 64-83. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Firmly focused on the aggrandizement of whiteness within early modern poetry, and Shakespeare’s sonnets in particular, this essay considers how these literary works perpetuate the racialization of fairness. In reading fairness as an emergent ideology of white supremacy, Hall makes a sharp connection between whiteness and the trope of privilege that endures far past the early modern period.

Hendricks, Margo. "‘Obscured by Dreams’: Race, Empire, and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream." Shakespeare Quarterly 47, no. 1 (1996): 37–60.

Interrogates the “Indian Boy” in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The article argues that Shakespeare’s comedy continues the racial discourse of travel narratives by representing India as an exotic territory to be conquered and occupied. Yet the text constitutes race as an ideological fissure creating a dichotomy between race as genealogy and race as ethnicity. The article addresses issues of mestizaje and representations of the other suitable to imperial projects.

Early Modern
Literature

Hendricks, Margo. Race & Romance: Coloring the Past. Tempe: ACMRS Press, 2022.

This study brings together race and the literary tradition of romance. It explores the literary and cultural genealogy of colorism, white passing, and white presenting in the romance genre in 15th-17th century England. Hendricks engages with the racecraft of “passing,” the instability of racial identity and its formation from the premodern to the present.

Early Modern
Literature

Hendricks, Margo, and Patricia Parker, eds. Women, "Race," and Writing in the Early Modern Period. New York: Routledge, 1994.

A collection of essays investigating literary inscriptions of women and race in predominantly European contexts between the 16th and 18th centuries. The essays are grouped into four overarching themes: defining differences, male writing, female authorship, and the interrelations between European and colonial contexts. The work engages discussions in gender theory, postcolonial studies, and the studies of various European literatures.

Early Modern
Literature

Heng, Geraldine. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

A study that interprets medieval romance in the context of European encounters with Muslim communities through travel, crusade, and empire formation. The book offers definitions of “race” and “nation” applicable to medieval Europe and focuses on the emergence of England as a nation and the emerging vocabulary of racial classification that arose with it. Chapters focus on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, several vernacular English romances, and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

Medieval
Literature

Heng, Geraldine. England and the Jews: How Religion and Violence Created the First Racial State in the West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

A study on the ramifications of the religious violence carried out against the Jewish diaspora in the Latin West. It argues that attacks against Jewish bodies and Jewish lives led to the creation of the first racial state in the history of the West. This book applies postcolonial and race studies in the study of religion to illustrate how medieval England became a racial state.

Medieval
Literature

Heng, Geraldine, ed. Teaching the Global Middle Ages. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2022.

The essays in this volume address pedagogy highlighting early forms of globalism during the Middle Ages. Contributions address topics across various disciplines including music, theater, religion, ecology, museums, and literature. The volume includes proposed syllabi, digital resources, classroom activities, and discussion questions.

Medieval

Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

A broad study on race in Europe from the 12th through the 15th centuries. The book examines racialization in various cultural and geographic contexts. It explores the relationship between race and religion, empire and colonization, enslavement, and epidermal race.

Medieval

Hsy, Jonathan. Antiracist Medievalisms: From "Yellow Peril" to Black Lives Matter. Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2021.

A study on modern usages of medievalisms by distinct communities of color. The book argues that through “restorying,” racialized minorities have long appropriated the medieval past to build solidarity and fight for justice. It puts materials from African American and Asian American studies in dialogue with medieval studies.

Medieval
Literature

Irigoyen-Garcia, Javier. Moors Dressed as Moors: Clothing, Social Distinction and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.

Investigates the intersection of clothing and racial difference in early modern Iberia. Beginning from the context of bans on Muslims wearing clothes coded as "Moorish," Irigoyen-Garcia shows how sartorial praxes and epistemologies configured the construction of a Christian ruling class in 16th and 17th century Iberia, while simultaneously becoming a key part of a racializing code for forcibly converted Muslims and their descendants (Muslim and Christian alike). The book considers conversations in the history of clothing, cultural history, public ritual, and Iberia.

Early Modern
History

Jeong, Don Hyeon. "Simon the Tanner, Empires, and Assemblages: A New Materialist Asian American Reading of Acts 9:43." The Bible & Critical Theory 16, no. 1 (2021): 41–63.

Explores a counter-anthropocentric reading of premodern literary evidence through a passage in the New Testament. The essay situates the episode in question within the frameworks of premodern industry, with specific reference to tanning and the manufacture of leather, and contexts of colonization to challenge anthropocentric hermeneutics in readings of Biblical materials addressed to Asian American communities. The essay is situated within intellectual currents of new materialism and Biblical hermeneutics.

Ancient
Religious Studies

Junior, Nyasha. Reimagining Hagar: Blackness and Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Investigates the conceptualization of the Biblical figure of Hagar in 19th and 20th century American literature, with specific reference to portrayals of Hagar as Black. Following an overview of premodern portrayals of Hagar in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim contexts, the book uses contemporary treatments of Hagar as a marker for broader cultural conversations about gender, race, slavery, abolition, and other themes. It engages discussions in the study of Christianity, Black history, and literary history.

Ancient
Literature

Kabir, Ananya Jahanara and Deanne Williams, eds. Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

A collection of essays engaging the intersection between medieval and postcolonial studies. The essays build upon prior approaches to the same entanglement while shifting focus onto approaches in translation, codicology, and material culture across a range of medieval European contexts. The works together participate in a range of conversations, notably on the study of Orientalism, connected histories, and postcolonial studies.

Medieval
History

Kaplan, M. Lindsay. Figuring Racism in Medieval Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Examines the intersection of Christian theology and racial difference in medieval European Christian cultures. The book presents an argument about how the Christian notion of servitus Judaeorum (Jewish servitude) prefigured Christian dominance over racialized non-Christian others and teases out the linkages between premodern and contemporary forms of Christian racism. It engages arguments in the study of religion, embodiment, and anti-Semitism.

Medieval
Religious Studies

Karim-Cooper, Farah. “Emotions, Gesture, and Race in the Early Modern Playhouse.” In Playing and Playgoing in Early Modern England: Actor, Audience, and Performance, edited by Simon Smith and Emma Whipday, 57-76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Examines the kinetic exchanges between actors and audiences in Shakespeare’s work, with specific reference to early modern performances of Othello. The essay demonstrates how bodily movements, hand gestures, and facial expressions constitute significant loci for theorizing the relationship between audience and actors. It argues for an understanding of such phenomena through the lens of critical race theory. The work engages conversations in the study of Shakespeare, Blackness, and performance studies.

Early Modern
Literature

Kim, Dorothy ed. "Special Issue: Critical Race and the Middle Ages." Literature Compass 16, no. 9-10 (2019).

Special issue on medieval race scholarship that follows Margo Hendricks’ call for a premodern critical race scholarship that acknowledges its genealogies. The contributions examine academic practices in literature and history on the Middle Ages. They address racialization, Eurocentrism, representation, and settler colonialism.

Medieval

Kim, Dorothy and Ayanna Thompson, eds. "Special Issue: Race Before Race: Premodern Critical Race Studies." Literature Compass 18, no. 10 (2021).

This special issue stems from the inaugural RaceB4Race symposium in 2019. Employing a variety of theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical lenses, the essays in this volume critically examine how premodern critical race scholars function as activists in their fields and communities.

Literature

LaPerle, Carol Mejia, ed. Race and Affect in Early Modern English Literature. Tempe: ACMRS Press, 2022.

By putting critical race studies into conversation with affect theory, this collection addresses the emotional impacts of racial formation and racist ideologies in early modern literature. The collected essays analyze racial processes as visceral, affective experiences, reading and interpreting literary tradition, religion, gender, class, sexuality, and social identity through investigations of how race feels.

Early Modern
Literature
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