Selected annotated 
bibliography of PCRS

Analyzes the reception of Greco-Roman classics in the anglophone Caribbean between 1920 to the turn of the 21st century. The work explores the works of several authors—including Kamau Brathwaite, Austin Clarke, John Figueroa, C. L. R. James, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, and Eric Williams—to demonstrate how Caribbean writers claimed the Greco-Roman classics for themselves in a process of identity formation. The work engages conversations in the study of the classics, the Caribbean, and literary history.

A review essay surveying several works in the field of Black classicism published between 2005 and 2008. The publications are marshalled to gesture toward new directions in the field of Black classicism which bridges Greco-Roman antiquity with more contemporary histories. The focus is on works which relate to Black American receptions of Greco-Roman antiquity, with an interest in how the field of Black classicism might expand further.

The first of two collections of essays which redraw the boundaries of classical philology as a discipline through a broad range of studies. Throughout, these collections deploy a practice of “intramural counter-philology” to produce critical reflections on classical philology as a discipline in North American contexts. The essays here engage ongoing conversations in the study of classics, North America, and race.

The second of two collections of essays which redraw the boundaries of classical philology as a discipline through a broad range of studies. Throughout, these collections deploy a practice of “intramural counter-philology” to produce critical reflections on classical philology as a discipline in North American contexts. The essays here engage ongoing conversations in the study of classics, North America, and race.

An expansive and detailed study of African, Native, and Indian persons whose lives are documented in the archives of 16th and 17th century England. The work provides both a chronological assessment of Black lives in early modern English contexts as well as arguments about the theoretical reconsiderations of the early modern period which these lives demand. Habib's work engages debates in the study of historiography, England, and captivity and enslavement.

Explores the racializing projects specific to Shakespeare's context of 16th-century England, with special reference to captives and enslaved persons. Habib's project illuminates the connections between the race-making projects held on Elizabethan stages at the beginnings of English colonialism, as well as the impact of Black persons in England on Shakespeare's plays themselves. The work engages conversations in the study of England, English literature, Shakespeare, and colonialism.

A broad survey on how people enacted and experienced racializing differences from the 5th through the 16th centuries. The volume offers multi-disciplinary analysis of materials from across Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, including literature in Hebrew, Latin, Arabic, and European vernaculars as well as visual artifacts and maps.

Interrogates the uses of contemporary heuristics of race and racism in the study of ancient Greek sociocultural contexts, in order to excavate racializing intellectual structures among contemporary analysts of the past. To do so, the essay explores themes in somatic and affective markers in Roman literatures while charting contemporary interpretations of the same. The work engages conversations in the study of Roman literature and embodiment.

Interrogates images of Blackness in 16th and 17th century England. The book argues that constructions of Blackness, which are malleable, are key in establishing a sense the proper organization of Western gender relations, nationalism, imperialism, and colonial organization. The opposition of Blackness to whiteness reveals anxieties about race, gender, sexuality, and commerce. Drawing on a broad set of texts, the book discusses issues of travel, cosmetics, Christian rhetoric, class, and slavery.

This special issue discusses the role of Shakespeare in Black culture in America. The cluster features twelve essays that originated at the Shakespeare Association of America’s seminar, “Shakespeare in Black America.” The essays consider Shakespeare’s role in pedagogy, scholarship, and culture. This special issue engages in discussions of performance histories, ethical scholarly methodologies, language, and various other topics.

Examines the commodity of sugar in England and the Caribbean during the 17th century. Hall outlines sugar’s transformation from royal luxury to household staple and the links between Caribbean plantation production and English national identity and domestic life. Hall argues that literary and culinary expressions of sweetness masked racialized labor and created a discourse of white innocence. The work engages in the study of global trade, the Caribbean, agrarian fantasy, and anti-slavery efforts.

This article discusses the experience of looking in the archive for an enslaved Black man named ‘Othello.’ The text interweaves personal experience and narrative form with archival findings from the New York Public Library. Othello is among the “alleged multi-racial conspirators” in the 1741 New York Conspiracy. This text interrogates the category of “property” and imagines the life of Othello and other enslaved Black people. Engages in issues of archival absences, Shakespeare, and contemporary politics.

Using The Merchant of Venice as a vehicle to consider England’s concurrent desire to expand via colonization and anxieties about cross-cultural exchange, this article considers how the fear of miscegenation functions within early modern economic exchange. With pointed attention to Blackness, immigration, and antisemitism, Hall demonstrates how Shakespeare’s play explores the role of racial difference in England’s emerging national and imperial designs.

Firmly focused on the aggrandizement of whiteness within early modern poetry, and Shakespeare’s sonnets in particular, this essay considers how these literary works perpetuate the racialization of fairness. In reading fairness as an emergent ideology of white supremacy, Hall makes a sharp connection between whiteness and the trope of privilege that endures far past the early modern period.

Interrogates the “Indian Boy” in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The article argues that Shakespeare’s comedy continues the racial discourse of travel narratives by representing India as an exotic territory to be conquered and occupied. Yet the text constitutes race as an ideological fissure creating a dichotomy between race as genealogy and race as ethnicity. The article addresses issues of mestizaje and representations of the other suitable to imperial projects.

This study brings together race and the literary tradition of romance. It explores the literary and cultural genealogy of colorism, white passing, and white presenting in the romance genre in 15th-17th century England. Hendricks engages with the racecraft of “passing,” the instability of racial identity and its formation from the premodern to the present.

This chapter offers an overview of the philological history of the word “race” in English and discusses the Renaissance theory of “generation.” The article argues for the use of philology and Renaissance medicine rather than skin color to emphasize this concept's fluidity. This text engages with issues of medicine, genealogy, families, and socioeconomics in the early modern period.

A collection of essays investigating literary inscriptions of women and race in predominantly European contexts between the 16th and 18th centuries. The essays are grouped into four overarching themes: defining differences, male writing, female authorship, and the interrelations between European and colonial contexts. The work engages discussions in gender theory, postcolonial studies, and the studies of various European literatures.

A study that interprets medieval romance in the context of European encounters with Muslim communities through travel, crusade, and empire formation. The book offers definitions of “race” and “nation” applicable to medieval Europe and focuses on the emergence of England as a nation and the emerging vocabulary of racial classification that arose with it. Chapters focus on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, several vernacular English romances, and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

A study on the ramifications of the religious violence carried out against the Jewish diaspora in the Latin West. It argues that attacks against Jewish bodies and Jewish lives led to the creation of the first racial state in the history of the West. This book applies postcolonial and race studies in the study of religion to illustrate how medieval England became a racial state.