Selected annotated 
bibliography of PCRS

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.

Offers narratives of contemporary secondary and higher education classroom practices where Shakespeare studies eschew Bardolatry and engage students in intentional if sometimes uncomfortable dialogues on race and identity. The essays include frameworks for study and lesson plans that combine designs for close textual work and anti-racist considerations. The book will interest teacher educators, teaching artists, curriculum designers, and practitioners of performance-infused teaching.

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.

Traces racial discourse in 16^th and 17th-century literature in England and Spain. Weissbourd outlines trans-Iberian links between Spanish ideas of “pure blood” (limpieza de sangre) and English representations of Blackness and whiteness. The book considers racialized religious difference and argues that this context of the Atlantic slave trade is central to understanding race in early modern Spanish and English literature. Areas of study include purity of blood, slavery, drama, and Anglo-Iberian exchange.

Investigates theories of racial difference in 18th-century Britain and argues that skin color became the dominate marker of difference in the late 18th century. Wheeler traces the ways cultural signs such as clothing and religion were part of identifying human variety prior to the 18th century. This work engages in discussions of racialization, literary history, religion, and enlightenment thought.

Explores the uses of Blackness in 14th century English literature. It argues that the medieval reception of classical rhetoric is central to medieval race-thinking and the construction of what would later become modern racial ideology. The book makes the case that while in modernity the elements of race have coalesced and congealed, in the Middle Ages race is still under construction. It examines the relation between race and religion in metaphors deploying Blackness.

Surveys societies across Africa, Asia and Europe from the 5th to 15th centuries for a themed journal issue. The essays present medieval discourses and practices as not ‘pre-racial’ but instead participating in race-making and identity formation. The introduction argues that race-thinking shaped periodization, connectivity, and scholarly frameworks. The volume engages in studies of race-making, identity, global Middle Ages, and periodization.

Explores the dense engagement with Milton in the works of a Phillis Wheatley in the 18th century United States. Wilburn places this engagement within wider Black literary and Africanist discursive traditions. The article engages conversations on U.S. history, Milton, and captivity and enslavement.

Examines the presence and influence of John Milton within the early 17th century in a variety of early African American writing. Wilburn examines Milton’s presence in early African Americans’ rhetorical affiliations and his satanic epic for messianic purposes of freedom and racial uplift. Wilburn contends that African Americans executed a refusal to rhetorical incompetence by reinventing writing styles, themes, symbolism, imagery, and key figures in Milton’s writings to connect to the religious or scriptural significance in his texts.

Tells the story of Renaissance Europe’s first Black poet, Juan Latino, during the 16th century. His publication Austrias Carmen (Song of John of Austria) recounts the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Wright analyzes Juan Latino’s life through discourses on race, religion, and blood purity practices.

Considers the usages of Shakespeare as an appropriation of colonial text by colonized persons in English and Hawaiian newspapers at the end of the 19th century, in the context of the 1893 overthrow and the United States’ annexation of Hawai’i. The essay highlights invocations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the figure of Banquo’s ghost. The scholarship is of interest to students of Shakespeare, American studies, and postcolonial studies.

‍

A collection of essays exploring medieval English representations of Jews in literature and visual arts prior to the Norman conquest of 1066. The essays range in theme from studies of scriptural commentaries to images found in Christian manuscripts, excavating as a whole the deep history of English anti-Semitism. The book engages the study of medieval England, anti-Semitism, and Christianity.

Examines records of daily interactions of women and enslaved domestic servants in the city of Florence during the 15th century. Zhang explores how archival records of foundlings reveal emerging racialized hierarchies within Tuscan society. Zhang argues for an intersectional approach to studies of enslavement because gendered labor, hereditary racialization, and epidermal descriptors played a key role in early race-thinking.

Compendium of essays about how the “East” was conceptualized and materially represented in early modern English dramas. The essays focus on staging conventions related to plays such as The Tempest, The Historie of Orlando Furioso,A Christian Turned Turk, and others. Of interest to students of English, performance studies, and material culture.