Selected annotated 
bibliography of PCRS

This work explores the literary figure of Imoinda from Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko; Or, The Royal Slave (1688) and Thomas Southerne’s 1696 adaptation, Oroonoko. Dominique argues that Imoinda and fictional African women in literary texts from 1759-1808 demonstrate a political moment when British writers are thinking about rebellion, antislavery rhetoric, and abolitionism. This text participates in conversations on the transatlantic slave trade, race, and gender.

A collection of essays surveying a broad range of topics pertaining to Black persons’ representations and experiences in Europe across the 15th and 16th centuries. The works are thematically joined through an exploration of how Black people were racialized within the cultural frameworks of early modern Europe, attending mostly to social and cultural history in Portugal, Spain, and Italy. The essays vary widely in content and the volume thus intersects with a broad range of academic conversations in social history, cultural history, art history, literature, and more.

A reflection on the "Racing the Classics" conference series between 2017 and the date of publication. The essay situates the history of the series within the nexus of countering white supremacy in academic studies of antiquity, offering both a roadmap for desired future outcomes and a series of techniques available to scholars and pedagogues.

Examines the history of slavery in Morocco from the beginning of the Islamic era through the reign of Mawlay Isma‘il in the 17th and 18th centuries. The book places special emphasis on the enslaved “Black army” and argues that, despite European travel narratives generally representing Morocco as free of racial prejudice, Black Moroccans were stigmatized and marginalized. It concludes with a profile of the Moroccan Gnawa, an ethnic group descended from enslaved Black people. The book analyzes slavery through the interplay of race, gender, and religion.

Study of medieval Arab Muslim views on the Byzantines. The work moves away from the dominant historiographical emphasis on conflict to demonstrate how Byzantium figured into the wider and deeper cultural imaginary of the Arab Muslim world. Of interest to students of history, Islamic studies, and Middle East Studies.

Study of how gender and sexuality constructed early medieval Muslim identities. The work argues that gender and sexuality were key to how Muslims in the Abbasid Caliphate constructed difference—with primary reference to pre-Islamic forerunners, female mourners, the Qaramita, and the Byzantines—feeding into the ways in which Muslim women were conceptualized. Of interest to students of history, gender & sexuality studies, Islamic studies, and Middle East studies.

A historiographical exploration of critical race theory within Shakespeare studies in the context of establishment attempts at disappearing the subject matter of race from the field. Following a brief survey of three prior phases relevant to the critical analysis of race in this scholarly context, the essay provides an expansive prescriptive argument for future directions in premodern critical race theory.

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.

This article uses close readings of portraiture of Black people and by Black artists from the early modern period through the contemporary moment. By resisting a linear or progressively positive trajectory, the text raises questions about the genre of portraiture, invisibility/visibility, and the limits of art’s ability to capture Black identity in cross-historical contexts. This work covers topics of art, portraiture, Black identity, and visuality.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book explores the perspectives of enslaved women in the urban Caribbean, specifically Bridgetown, Barbados, in the eighteenth century. Each chapter focuses on an enslaved woman in the Caribbean and uses archival fragments to discuss systems of enslavement in Barbados. The text interrogates how knowledge is created through archives and historical accounts. This work engages with topics of archives, race, gender, and sexuality.

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.

A review essay analyzing Ivan Hannaford’s Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). Goldberg’s essay critiques Hannaford’s book by arguing that the latter does not adequately consider the impact of Hellenic notions from antiquity on the modern development of race, or the transmission of racial ideas from medieval North Africa and the Middle East.

This chapter discusses “marked bodies” in the Middle Ages. The chapter considers how the sex of the body is regarded as a marked difference through analysis of disease and disability. The chapter gives particular attention to the “internal” versus “external” body, and physiology compared to anatomy in the Middle Ages. The text also discusses how perceptions of religion changed ideas of the body. This work covers topics in science, gender, sex, religion, and disability studies.

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.

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.

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.