Selected annotated 
bibliography of PCRS

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.