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

Erickson, Peter. Citing Shakespeare: The Reinterpretation of Race in Contemporary Literature and Art. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Investigates contemporary citations of Shakespeare’s work in Anglophone texts in order to excavate a nuanced set of citational praxes. The book argues that Shakespeare is invoked by contemporary authors not only to celebrate the underpinnings of Euro-American culture, but to subject cultural landscapes to a critical lens. To do so, it attends to specific literary maneuvers which are each embedded within specific literary and visual artifacts. The work engages conversations in literary theory and Shakespeare studies.

Early Modern
Literature

Espinosa, Ruben. Shakespeare on the Shades of Racism. New York: Routledge, 2021.

Examines Shakespeare through conversations that interrogate the vulnerability of Black and brown people under oppressive structures. The book draws attention to aspects of Shakespeare’s works that illustrate people’s ethical responsibilities in the face of brutal racism. It addresses issues like the murder of unarmed Black people, militarization of the U.S. Mexico border, anti-immigrant laws, and healthcare inequities.

Early Modern
Literature

Espinosa, Ruben. "Stranger Shakespeare." Shakespeare Quarterly 67, no. 1 (2016): 51–67.

Interrogates Mexican-American student engagement with the works of Shakespeare in contemporary classrooms in the United States, with specific reference to conceptualizations of the "foreign" and "strange." The essay analyzes contemporary cultural inscriptions of Shakespeare through various forms of media. It engages conversations in the fields of Shakespeare studies, Mexican-American cultural history, and otherness.

Early Modern
Literature

Fryer, Peter. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. London: Pluto Press, 1984.

Articulates the history of Black people in Britain from the third century BCE to the late 20th century as a way to upend the misconception that Black people immigrated to England in the modern era. This work draws on European archives to discuss Africans in Britain, the Atlantic slave trade, and scientific racism. This work also sheds light on writers, abolitionists, workers, and soldiers in the Black British community. Engages in African and British history, racialization, and the transatlantic slave trade.

Early Modern
History

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.

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

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. “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
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