Heng, Geraldine. "Premodern race as a critical canon." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/premodern-race-as-a-critical-canon. [Date accessed].

Premodern race as a critical canon

When did you first become aware of race?

Download the transcript
Geraldine Heng
University of Texas, Austin

Geraldine Heng is an influential, field-crossing scholar and one of the founding theorists of premodern critical race studies. Her classes on premodern European literature offer a critical understanding of the histories of race-making, all while supporting students to conduct interdisciplinary research that interrogates the social and cultural mechanisms of race in their everyday lives. Here, Heng offers a glimpse into the texts she teaches and her collaborative approach to student assignments. She identifies a new path forward for premodern European literature—one that is a provocation for our world today.

Further learning

Video

Teaching early global literatures

Teaching global literatures rooted in the premodern world challenges the fantasies about the past many of our students have inherited.

Geraldine Heng
Activity

Collaborative student research

A multidisciplinary and student-centered approach for early modern professors, inspired by Geraldine Heng’s Teaching Early Global Literatures and Cultures.

Geraldine Heng

Recommended

Video

Premodern critical race studies and classics

Premodern critical race studies in the classics traces the historical, literary, and cultural effects of race inherited from imperial projects in the ancient world.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta
RaceB4Race Highlight

Milton and anti-lynching reform

Reginald A. Wilburn analyzes James Weldon Johnson’s anti-lynching poem “Brothers – American Drama” (1916) and its intertextual references to Milton.

Reginald A. Wilburn
Video

Teaching the medieval epic

Teaching The Epic of Sunjata alongside La Chanson de Roland and El Poema de Mio Cid helps students decenter Euorpe and gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of the medieval world.

Adam Miyashiro