Hall, Kim F. "Witnessing whiteness in the early modern world." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/witnessing-whiteness-in-the-early-modern-world. [Date accessed].
Witnessing whiteness in the early modern world
Encouraging students to see the work of whiteness so as to make the racism behind these ideas visible too.
Whiteness is not an empty or invisible signifier, and it is something we should be discussing when we talk about race in our classrooms. When we consider the role of Christianity in constructing views of whiteness as pure and good, we can see how racial hierarchies begin to take shape in the early modern period. This plays out in the portraiture of early modern England, and attending to this in our teaching allows us to broach important conversations about race, and whiteness in particular, in literary works like The Tragedy of Mariam, Othello, and Oroonoko.
Kim F. Hall explores the value and importance of discussing the role of whiteness not only within early modern literature and culture, but within her classroom as well.
Further learning
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Recommended
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Titus Andronicus as the gateway drug
Students believe they know what Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet or Macbeth mean, but rarely do those “meanings” stem from the students’ close engagements with the texts. Using Titus Andronicus at the beginning of any Shakespeare class forces students to experience Shakespeare anew.
Othello and Barbary's blues
Justin P. Shaw is interested in how appropriation can mean theft as well as “making something new.” Using a framework of Black music and the history of appropriation of the Blues to shed light on Desdemona’s memory of Barbary’s song in Shakespeare's Othello, Shaw asks the question: where is the line between tribute and theft?
