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.

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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

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Syllabus

Race in the premodern world

In this class, Mayte Green-Mercado guides students through premodern origins of the construction of race and the consequences it carries today.

Mayte Green-Mercado
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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
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Premodern race as a critical canon

Heng offers insight on approaches to teaching the traditional, canonized literature of premodern Europe through the lens of premodern critical race studies.

Geraldine Heng

Selected annotated bibliography