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

Nirenberg, David. "Was There Race Before Modernity? The Example of 'Jewish' Blood in Late Medieval Spain." In The Origins of Racism in the West, edited by Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler, 232–264. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Explores Christian attitudes towards Jews in medieval Castile and Aragon, with specific reference to the stakes of contemporary discourse about premodern race. The essay provides a historiographical argument about how contemporary knowledges about the Spanish context were produced through both deployments of and aversions to race as a heuristic, while also examining the emplotment of biological thinking about race in the 15th century with respect to Spanish Christian concerns about Jewish lineage. The essay regards conversations in the study of historiography, genealogy, anti-Semitism, and the history of race.

Medieval

Otaño Gracia, Nahir I. "Borders and the Global North Atlantic: Chaucer, Pilgrimage, and Crusade." English Language Notes 58, no. 2 (2020): 35-49.

Explores the conceptualization of Africa and Iberia within the medieval English works of Chaucer. The article illuminates the ways in which Chaucer deployed key concepts of pilgrimage and crusade to formulate a vision of European Christian military-commercial dominance over Muslim and non-Christian 'frontiers' and foreign lands. It engages the study of religion, English literature, and (proto)colonialism, among other fields.

Medieval
Literature

Piedra, José. "Literary Whiteness and the Afro-Hispanic Difference.” New Literary History 18, no.2 (1987): 303-332.

Analyzes how Antonio de Nebrija’s work during the 15th century became the grammatical endorsement for Spain’s ethnic assertion. He discusses how “writing white” was a tool to avoid racial identification and racialization in literary texts. Piedra traces the origins of Afro-Hispanic writings to factual and fictional differences within the model of literary whiteness.

Literature

Piedra, José. "The Black Stud's Spanish Birth.” Callaloo 16, no.4 (1993): 820-846.

Piedra argues that the birth of the Spanish nation comes from the libidinal implications under various faiths and cultures–Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and sub-Saharan Black culture. He theorizes that the figure of the Black stud is the "Black other" of the Afro-Islamic other for the Hispanic self’s fantasy in Spain during the 12th – 15th century. Piedra examines how Spain views itself as a dominant white self and any culture or faith outside of that as a Black other.

Early Modern
Literature

Rainey, Brian. Religion, Ethnicity and Xenophobia in the Bible: A Theoretical, Exegetical and Theological Survey. London: Routledge, 2012.

Investigates representations of “foreign” persons in Mesopotamian and Biblical literatures. The book argues that the authors of such texts conceptualized their society through notions of ethnic foreignness, which were themselves anchored by notions of common ancestry and territorial beginnings. It engages discussions in the study of Biblical hermeneutics, Mesopotamia, and otherness.

Ancient

Rajabzadeh, Shokoofeh. "The Depoliticized Saracen and Muslim Erasure." Literature Compass 6, no. 9-10 (2019).

Examines the use of the word “Saracen” in scholarship on the Middle Ages. Through an auto-ethnographic critique, the article argues that the word “Saracen” should be replaced with Muslim in scholarship on European representation of Muslims in the Middle Ages. It further argues that certain academic practices viewed as authoritative yield criticism that reproduces the racism and Islamophobia of the objects of study.

Medieval
Literature

Rankine, Patrice D. Aristotle and Black Drama: A Theater of Civil Disobedience. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013.

Rankine explores a theater of civil disobedience through Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s understanding of civil disobedience in the face of unjust laws. However, Rankine argues that the performance of civil disobedience is a deeply artistic practice that can be found in Black theater, where the Black body challenges the normative assumptions of classical texts and modes of creation. This book frames the theater of civil disobedience to challenge the hostility that still exists between theater and Black identity.

Ancient

Richardson, Kristina L. Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

Explores the construction of physical difference among Muslims in medieval Egyptian and Levantine contexts. Richardson's work presents a cultural landscape of Islamic disability and difference through a wide range of sources, providing evidence from both theoretical and representational sources, attending not only to societally normative perspectives but to those of stigmatized persons as well. This work engages conversations in the study of religion, embodiment, Islam, gender, and disability.

Medieval
History

Royster, Francesca T. Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Examines anglophone representations of Cleopatra between early modern Europe to the contemporary United States. The book demonstrates how the image of Cleopatra has been invested across contexts with concerns about racial ambiguity, sexual danger, and other cultural concerns. It engages conversations in performance studies, English literature, the study of Blackness, the study of gender, and the study of sexuality.

Early Modern
Literature

Samuels, T. "Herodotus and the Black Body: A Critical Race Theory Analysis." Journal of Black Studies 46, no. 7 (2015): 723-741.

Engages the conceptualization of Blackness in the 5th-century B.C.E. Greek work of Herodotus. The essay surveys prior approaches to racial thought among Greek and Roman thinkers in conjunction with an analysis of Herodotus' works, in order to pose a methodological critique of anti-Blackness as an emergent trend in the early modern period without any significant prior history. It engages conversations in the study of Greek literature and Blackness.

Early Modern
Literature

Scheil, Andrew. The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.

Investigates early medieval Anglo-Saxon thought regarding Jews in England up through the 10th century. The book surveys a variety of sources to extract key themes such as Christian prefigurations of the self with respect to Jews, the conceptualization of England as Israel, and anti-Semitic Christian pieties. The book engages the study of Christianity, anti-Semitism, and medieval England.

Medieval

Sévère, Richard ed. "Special Issue: Race and Arthurian Legend." Arthuriana 31, no. 2 (2021).

Special issue on race in Arthurian legends that invites recognition that race is malleable and critically interrogates “racial practices” ranging from religious discrimination to “environmental terrorism.” Its essays demonstrate that analysis of Arthurian-themed subject matters often reveals contemporary identity constructions entrenched in historical racism and colonialism. Several contributions juxtapose medieval Arthurian texts with modern adaptations.

Medieval

Sherman, William E.B. Singing with the Mountains: The Language of God in the Afghan Highlands. New York: Fordham University Press, 2023.

Interrogates the interplay between race and religion through studying a 16th century messianic movement in the Afghan highlands. The book shows us how Mughal and British theories of Afghan beginnings have generated an over-reliance upon a predetermined heuristic of Afghan ethnicity. Sherman then turns to self-understandings of the messianic movement in question (the Roshaniyya) to show how collective striving for “the language of God” deconstructs prevailing colonial parameters for understanding Afghan history. Beyond the context of Afghanistan, this book provides a framework for thinking through the interplay between race, religion, apocalypse, and language.

Early Modern
Religious Studies

Smith, Ian. Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Explores narratological and historiographical patterns of resistance to studying the works of Shakespeare with reference to race. The book parses ways in which early modern English audiences worked with preexisting racial concepts in order to make sense of the details in Shakespeare's work. The book engages discussions in the study of Shakespeare, Blackness, and performance.

Early Modern
Literature

Smith, Ian. “Othello’s Black Handkerchief.” Shakespeare Quarterly 64, no. 1 (2013): 1–25.

Interrogates the construction of Black subjectivity in Shakespeare's Othello with reference to a handkerchief deployed in the play as a critical plot device. The essay poses an argument regarding the use of black cloth as a metonymic code for Blackness on the Elizabethan stage as well as the broader cultural landscape within which Othello's handkerchief functioned. The essay engages conversations in performance studies, cultural history, and the study of Shakespeare.

Early Modern
Literature

Smith, Ian. Race and Rhetoric in the Renaissance: Barbarian Errors. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.

Analyzes the ways in which 16th century English texts deployed the figure of the "barbarous" African for the sake of an English civilizational project. The book focuses on how English discourses fixated upon presumed linguistic errors in speech made by "foreign" speakers in order to buttress a sense of English belonging and displace anxieties about English itself being a barbarous idiom. It regards discussions in the fields of Renaissance studies, language, and English history.

Early Modern
Literature

Smith, Cassander L., et al. "Introduction: The Contours of a Field." In Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies: A Critical Anthology, edited by Cassander L. Smith, Nicholas R. Jones, and Miles P. Grier, 1-12. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018.

This book engages disparate fields—Black Studies, Early American Studies and Early Modern Studies (15th century to 19th century)—to converse with one another about how material and visual culture informed and misinformed constitutions of the African continent, slave trading and slavery, and the racial difference of Black Africans. The anthology places Black life at the center of analysis and critical inquiry to access voices and subversive acts. It uncovers the power of Blackness as a cultural, ideological, and structural category that affirms Black life and identity.

Early Modern
Literature

Stevens, Scott Manning. "New World Contacts and the Trope of the 'Naked Savage.'" In Sensible Flesh: On Touch in Early Modern Culture, edited by Elizabeth D. Harvey, 125-140. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.

Stevens examines the encounter between the inhabitants of the Old World and New during the early modern period through Walter Ong’s visual metaphors and tropes. He explores the naked body as a problematic signifier since a recurring figure within the many narrative accounts of the New World encounters is that of the “naked savage.” This article traces the discourse of self and the naked body of the Native as trope to understand that the signification of this body did not always imply a person.

Early Modern

Stevens, Scott Manning. “The Historiography of New France and the Legacy of Iroquois Internationalism.” Comparative American Studies 11, no. 2 (2013): 148–165.

This article examines the French portrayal of Haudenosaunee culture and politics established by Jesuits writers in 17th century New France. Stevens explores the generic shifts that occur in the writings associated with Indigenous and French encounters during the early modern period. Stevens argues that over the centuries the Haudenosaunee embraced the notion of ongoing resistance to colonialism and their role as spokespeople in Indigenous affairs throughout the Americas.

Early Modern
Literature

Stevens, Scott Manning. "Tomahawk: Materiality and Depictions of the Haudenosaunee." Early American Literature 53, no. 2 (2018): 475-511.

This article investigates the enduring stereotype of the warlike Iroquois in early American writings and visual representations in the 18th and 19th centuries. Stevens traces the material culture of the tomahawk and its associations in portrayals of the Haudenosaunee people. Through a triangulated research paradigm, this article examines the Haudenosaunee culture and its representations by European settlers.

Early Modern
Literature
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