Selected annotated 
bibliography of PCRS

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book offers a socio-historical account of Black Africans in the early Atlantic world in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. The text asks how literary and archival sources mediated encounters between Black Africans and Spain in the early Americas. The work engages with constructions of race, trans Atlanticism, and early American and African American literature.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A collection of essays which offer a reconceptualization of U.S. history from the early modern period to the present underpinned by Native history and sovereignty. The work is geared towards offering educators today a set of crucial pedagogical devices. The essays in this compendium engage the study of U.S. history, anticolonialism, and sovereignty among many other fields.

This chapter interrogates French representations of the Haudenosaunee in the 17th and 18th centuries. The essay examines the enduring stereotype of “savagery” created to demonize Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Stevens traces the stereotype from the legacy of Haudenosaunee ferocity from written and visual representations created by the French during their colonial project in North America.

A study on appropriations of Shakespeare and race in a 21st century U.S. context. The book questions the assumed universalism of Shakespeare and argues that theater practitioners should examine the semiotics of race in their productions. The book also addresses the use of Shakespeare in prison reform programs and argues for participant-centric programs that allow for appropriation and adaptation. It analyzes film adaptions, community theater, and the use of blackface.

A collection of essays discussing the racialized elements with which all of Shakespeare's works are invested. The essays draw upon a wide range of source materials from a variety of contexts to interrogate how race has been constructed through the prism of Shakespeare. The compendium as a whole engages conversations in the study of Shakespeare, global history, postcolonialism, performance studies, Blackness, and more.

Examines Shakespeare, race, and colorblind casting, drawing on a wide range of source materials in a variety of contexts. Thompson engages with the contemporary production history of Shakespeare and interrogates the widely held belief of Shakespeare’s universalism. The compendium discusses the study of Shakespeare, Blackness, performance studies, and more.

The book charts how African American medievalisms in the 19th and 20th century were used to speak against white contemporaries. Vernon attends carefully to the intersection between medieval studies and African American cultural studies as a framework for reading against a normative and dominant whiteness in both scholarly fields. In addition to the aforementioned fields, it engages discussions in cultural studies and literary studies more broadly.

A cultural history of pedagogy in Muslim West Africa reaching from the medieval and early modern periods into the present. Ware offers a ground-level exploration of how religious epistemology configured human corporeality in West Africa through the concept of the "walking Quran," and how this conceptualization played into revolutionary, abolitionist, and anticolonial movements without reliance upon Western discourses of the same. The work engages the study of religion, embodiment, Islam, West Africa, abolitionism, and anticolonialism.

Analyzes the figure of the so-called “Saracen” woman in medieval French literature in the 12th and 13th centuries. The book uses thematic patterns in the representation of these figures—such as the accented whiteness of crusader-abetting “Saracen” princesses, and the accented Blackness of those who resist the crusaders—to illuminate the intersection of racialization and imperial ambition in medieval French cultural contexts. The work thus explores discussions in the study of French literature, Blackness, conversion, and the crusades.