Hendricks, Margo. "Coloring the Past, Rewriting Our Future: RaceB4Race." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/what-is-premodern-critical-race-studies. [Date accessed].

What is premodern critical race studies?

Margo Hendricks defines the "critical" in premodern critical race studies.

Download the transcript
Margo Hendricks
University of California, Santa Cruz (emerita)

In 2019 at Race and Periodization: A RaceB4Race Symposium, Margo Hendricks offered her insights on what exactly premodern critical race studies is (especially in comparison to premodern race studies), and what it means to be a practitioner within this field. Her working definition is a guide to the methodological and theoretical background of PCRS, as well as a rallying call to continue to expand understandings of the past.

Read the complete transcript and listen to her talk, archived by the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Further learning

Recommended

Video

How to talk about race in the classroom

Ayanna Thompson discusses how PCRS in the classroom starts with students and teachers being comfortable talking frankly about the reality of race in their lives as well as in the texts they encounter.

Ayanna Thompson
Video

Redefining the “foreign” in medieval and early modern texts

Making premodern texts relevant and accessible to students by creating contemporary connections and breaking down linguistic boundaries.

Alani Hicks-Bartlett
RaceB4Race Highlight

Defining race, periodizing race

In her 2019 RaceB4Race talk at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Geraldine Heng argues for thinking about race in transhistorical terms.

Geraldine Heng

Selected annotated bibliography