Ndiaye, Noémie. "Race and transnational theater." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/race-and-transnational-theater. [Date accessed].

Race and transnational theater

Unseen networks of texts and racial narratives

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Noémie Ndiaye
The University of Chicago

Early modern racial thinking was shaped not within a single nation but through the constant circulation of stories, performances, and ideas across Europe. From transnational plotlines linking French, Italian, Spanish, and English plays to the spread of racial impersonation techniques in music and theater, these cultural exchanges reveal how racial narratives took shape through a shared artistic ecosystem.

Further learning

Video

Race and early modern performance culture

Early modern European theater, as a widely accessible mass medium, played a major role in shaping and circulating emerging ideas about race. Noémie Ndiaye discusses how some of these racial narratives still shape world today.

Noémie Ndiaye
Activity

Mini exhibition

This assignment engages students in digital research and curation by having them create and analyze their own mini exhibition.

Noémie Ndiaye
Syllabus

Race in early modern drama

This course asks students to read plays and masques from early modern England, Spain, and France to understand how race was crafted through perfomrace and culture.

Noémie Ndiaye

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Syllabus

Mediterranean crossings

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Reading list

Teaching racialized genders

Early modern Turk plays, travel narratives, medical writings, and drama are rich sources of this history of racialization. This reading list compiled by Abdulhamit Arvas offers useful excerpts and critical analysis to include in your syllabus.

Abdulhamit Arvas
Video

Othello and the epithet of "Moor"

Ambereen Dadabhoy uses Shakespeare’s Othello as a text through which students can think about contemporary Islamophobia.

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Selected annotated bibliography