This blog is an introduction to the resource list which I’ve put together on behalf of the MEMOs editorial team, on critical scholarship in pre-modern race studies. The list includes a range of academic books and journal articles which examine the topic of race in the medieval and early modern periods. These resources explore ideas such as lineage, blood, blackness, whiteness, gender, class, nation, religion, commerce, encounters, violence, colonialism, and slavery. In curating this for our MEMOs audience, I have tried to focus particularly on work that deals with questions of race in contexts of encounter and engagement between England and the pre-modern Islamic world. With this in mind, it is important to note that this is not an exhaustive list but a selective one, which aims to provide anyone interested in MEMOs research with a relevant entry point into pre-modern race studies.

The dire need to continue and expand studies into the histories and legacies of race and racism needs little explanation. The sustained physical and mental violence enacted against the bodies and minds of Black people and other people of colour; the continued, institutionalised denial of the structural problems of racism, especially (but certainly not only) in Europe, the USA and other regions in the Global North; the policing of the bodies of minority ethnic groups; and the persistence of apartheid states that continue to devastatingly oppress large populations of innocent people, are sadly just a few of the long-standing and recent trends that emphasise the urgent need to interrogate the scales and histories of racial thought.

Why use race as a framework for studying pre-modern English and European representations of and encounters with Muslims?

Scholars have shown that there are many insights to be gained from exploring the role Muslims had in medieval and early modern English and European constructions of racial ideologies. Here are some examples of these:

(1) European and English writers often used racial strategies to organise people from the pre-modern Islamic world. Consider, for example, the romance narrative tradition of whitewashing ‘fair’ Muslim Princesses who fell in love with (and then converted for) Christian men. Geraldine Heng has shown that this literary strategy demonstrates how racial whiteness was imagined in medieval storytelling as a sign of superiority and a basis for inclusion into Christian, European society. Benedict Robinson and Katherine Gillen correspondingly illustrate how this technique was inherited and developed in the early modern period. This pre-modern strategy produced early models of what we now refer to as white supremacy.

(2) English views on Islamic religious identity played a role in shaping English logics of race in the early modern period. Dennis Austin Britton and Jane Hwang Degenhardt have demonstrated that English writers were interested in identifying ‘Islamic’ differences on a person’s body, especially on the bodies of Christians who converted to Islam. Writers often turned to physical, racialising features of clothing and circumcision in order to do this. At the same time, Kim F. Hall, Ania Loomba, Jack D’Amico, Jonathan Burton, Imtiaz Habib, Nabil Matar, and Ian Smith have explored how European prejudices against Islam worked hand-in-hand with anti-black racism in the early modern period.  This relationship is especially visible in the notion of the ‘Moor’, which was a term used by early modern English writers to refer to not only Muslims and North Africans, but also other ethnic groups such as Indians from the Subcontinent, or Native Americans in the so-called ‘New World’. Racism towards Black people might therefore be reinforced by anti-Muslim prejudice. The critical work of scholars like Ambereen Dadabhoy and Vanessa Corredera illustrates that early modern modes of discriminating against Black people and Muslims still exist in contemporary culture, as these identities of ‘otherness’ remain closely related.

(3)  Studying the formation of racist discourses in the context of early English and European encounters with the Muslim world provides us with the opportunity to explore racial structures that were present in Muslim societies. I deliberately use the label ‘Muslim’ here in order to separate these practices from the Islamic faith, which unequivocally denounces racism and advocates for social equality. However, Muslims themselves are not exempt from racist practices, and racism has been and remains a problem within many Muslim communities around the world. Studies of discrimination and social organisation in the Ottoman Empire, including those of Abdulhamit Arvas and Leslie Pierce, show that systems of race and racism were significant in parts of the pre-modern Muslim world too. 

What are some of the fields of study that are important to consider alongside pre-modern race studies?

 The studies mentioned in the resource list have benefitted from and contributed to the seminal work of intellectuals and activists from various disciplines who have sought to confront challenges of race and social injustice. I refer here to the work of those who have established and influenced scholarship in Postcolonial Studies (Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha); Critical Race Theory (Audre Lorde, Kimberle Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic, Barbara Fields, Karen Fields, Michael Omi, Howard Winant); Race and Diaspora (Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Henry Louis Gates Jr.); and Race, Gender and African-American Studies (Sojourner Truth, Cornel West, bell hooks, Angela Yvonne Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, Saidiya Hartman, Ibram X. Kendi).^[1] A comprehensive overview of the foundational work in race studies requires its own resource list and post (watch this space!). In addition to exploring the works included in the MEMOs resource list, readers might also want to consult the important literature by writers in these fields.

Students who are interested in exploring intersections between race and Islam in the pre-modern world might also find useful ideas in the work of critics assessing the racialisation of Islam, and Islamophobia as a racism, in contemporary contexts. This includes the scholarship of Tariq Modood, Saher Selod, Louise Canker, Zareena Grewal, Nasar Meer, Steve Garner, Junaid Rana, Gabeba Baderoon and others. I also believe that this fields of inquiry could gain productive insights by turning to early representations of Muslims through a framework of pre-modern race studies.

Accessible resources:

Structural, economic and social barriers to education can sometimes make obtaining resources a difficult feat. Thankfully, there are a range of accessible, multimedia platforms that are helping to make the critical conversations taking place in pre-modern race studies widely available to all. Some notable platforms include:

The Sundial - An edited digital publication from the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS)

The TIDE Project - ‘Travel, Transculturality, and Identity in England 1550-1700’, a digital platform with blogs and exhibitions funded by the European Research Council (see especially the TIDE Keywords).

Critical Race Conversations - Online sessions (with recordings available) from the Folger Shakespeare Library.

#SuchStuff - The Podcast from Shakespeare’s Globe (see especially Season 6 on Whiteness and Decolonising Shakespeare).

The John Blanke Project - A project exploring John Blanke, a Black trumpeter in the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII.

ACMRS YouTube Channel – See in particular the RaceB4Race™ playlists

Other Lists: 

In addition to using this MEMOrients list, you may also benefit from consulting the following excellent resource compilations available online:

The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) Race and the Middle East Reading List

The Centre for Middle Eastern Studies Harvard University Reading List on Race, Slavery and the Middle East

The Race in the Pre-Modern (Arabo-Muslim) Middle East Resource List

‘The Islamophobia is Racism’ Resource Website - See especially the page, Race, Empire, Islam

If you are aware of other platforms that make similar material widely available, please feel free to reach out and let us know, and we can add them to this post.

In closing, I want to take this opportunity, on behalf of the MEMOs editorial team, to acknowledge and pay tribute to the work of the many women of colour, whose ground-breaking scholarship and consistent efforts have enabled race studies to grow dynamically in the fields of medieval, early modern, Renaissance and Shakespeare studies. In sharing this resource list, we hope to build on their initiatives by promoting anti-racist research in the study of early English and European encounters with medieval and early modern Orients.

Pre-Modern Race Theory and Islam - An Introductory Bibliography

This list is also available on our Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Bibliography pages.

1. Akhimie, Patricia. Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World. New York: Routledge, 2018.

1. Andrea, Bernadette. The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature and Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.

1. Archer, John M. Old Worlds: Egypt, Southwest Asia, India, and Russia in Early Modern English Writing. California: Stanford University Press, 2001.

1. Arvas, Abdulhamit. "Early Modern Eunuchs and the Transing of Gender and Race". Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19.4 (2019): 116-136.

1. Ballaster, Ros. Fabulous Orients: Fictions of the East in England 1662–1785. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

1. Bartels, Emily C. Speaking of the Moor: From" Alcazar" to" Othello". Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

1. Barthelemy, Anthony G. Black Face, Maligned Race: the Representation of Blacks in English Drama from Shakespeare to Southerne. Louisiana: LSU Press, 1987.

1. Bovilsky, Lara. Barbarous Play: Race on the English Renaissance Stage. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

1. Britton, Dennis A. Becoming Christian: Race, Reformation, and Early Modern English Romance. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.

1. Britton, Dennis A.,“Muslim Conversion and Circumcision as Theatre” in Religion and Drama in Early Modern England: The Performance of Religion on the Renaissance Stage ed. Jane Hwang Degenhardt and Elizabeth Williamson. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2011. 71-86.

1. Brown, David Sterling.“Remixing the Family: Blackness and Domesticity in Titus Andronicus,” in Titus Andronicus: The State of Play, ed. Farah Karim-Cooper. London: Arden, 2019. 111-133.

1. Burton, Jonathan. Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1579-1624. Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 2005.

1. Chakravarty, Urvashi. "More Than Kin, Less Than Kind: Similitude, Strangeness, and Early Modern English Homonationalisms." Shakespeare Quarterly 67.1 (2016): 14-29.

1. Corredera, Vanessa. "“Not a Moor exactly”: Shakespeare, Serial, and Modern Constructions of Race." Shakespeare Quarterly 67.1 (2016): 30-50.

1.  d'Amico, Jack. The Moor in English Renaissance Drama. Florida: University of Florida Press, 1991.

1. Dadabhoy, Ambereen. "The Moor of America: Approaching the Crisis of Race and Religion in the Renaissance and the Twenty-First Century." Teaching Medieval and Early Modern Cross-Cultural Encounters. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2014. 123-140.

1. Dadabhoy, Ambereen. “Two-Faced: the Problem of Othello’s Visage.” in Othello: The State of Play ed. Lena Cowen Orlin. London: Arden, 2014. 121-47.

1. Degenhardt, Jane H. Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010.

1. Erickson, Peter, and Clark Hulse, eds. Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race, and Empire in Renaissance England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

1. Erickson, Peter, and Kim F. Hall. "A New Scholarly Song”: Rereading Early Modern Race." Shakespeare Quarterly  67.1 (2016): 1-13.

1. Erickson, Peter. "Invisibility speaks: Servants and Portraits in Early Modern Visual Culture." Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 9.1 (2009): 23-61.

1. Espinosa, Ruben and David Ruiter eds. Shakespeare and Immigration. New York: Routledge, 2016.

1. Fuchs, Barbara. "The Spanish Race" in Rereading the Black Legend: the Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Rmpires eds. Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, & M.Quilligan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

1. Fuchs, Barbara. Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

1. Feerick, Jean E. Strangers in Blood: Relocating Race in the Renaissance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.

1. Floyd-Wilson, Mary. English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

1. Gillen, Katherine. Chaste Value: Economic Crisis, Female Chastity and the Production of Social Difference on Shakespeare's Stage. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

1. Habib, Imtiaz. Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible. Vermont: Ashgate, 2008.

1. Habib, Imtiaz. Shakespeare and Race: Postcolonial Praxis in the Early Modern Period. Maryland: University Press of America, 2000.

1. Hall, Kim F. “‘These Bastard Signs of Fair’: Literary Whiteness in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Post-Colonial Shakespeares. ed. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin. London: Routledge, 1998. 64-8.

1. Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. New York: Cornell University Press, 1995.

1. Hendricks, Margo, and Patricia Parker eds. Women,'Race' and Writing in the Early Modern Period. London: Routledge, 1994.

1. Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

1. Iyengar, Sujata. Shades of difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

1. Jacobson, Miriam. Barbarous Antiquity: Re-orienting the Past in the Poetry of Early Modern England. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

1. Johanyak, Debra and Walter S. H. Lim, eds. The English Renaissance, Orientalism, and the Idea of Asia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

1. Jones, Eldred D. Othello's Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama. Published on behalf of Fourah Bay College, the University College of Sierra Leone [by] Oxford University Press, 1965.

1. Jones, Eldred D. The Elizabethan Image of Africa. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1971.

1. Kaplan, Paul HD. "Black Turks: Venetian Artists and Perceptions of Ottoman Ethnicity.’’ in The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750: Visual Imagery before Orientalism  ed. James G. Harper. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. 41-66.

1. Karim-Cooper, Farah. Cosmetics in Shakespearean and Renaissance Drama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

2. Little, Arthur L., Jr. Shakespeare Jungle Fever: National-Imperial Re-Visions of Race, Rape, and Sacrifice. California: Stanford University Press, 2000.

1. Loomba, Ania. Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1989.

1. Loomba, Ania, and Jonathan Burton, eds. Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

1. MacDonald, Joyce G. Women and Race in Early Modern Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

1. Ndiaye, Noémie.  “Aaron’s Roots: Spaniards, Englishmen, and Blackamoors in Titus Andronicus,” Early Theatre 19:2 (2016): 59-80.

1. Pierce, Leslie. “An Imperial Caste: Inverted Racialization in the Architecture of Ottoman Sovereignty” in Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Racism in the Renaissance Empires eds. Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, & M.Quilligan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

1. Poitevin, Kimberly. “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race and Women in Early Modern England.” Journal For Early Modern Studies 11.1 (2011): 59-89.

1. Robinson, Benedict. Islam and Early Modern English Literature: The Politics of Romance from Spenser to Milton. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

1. Royster, Francesca T. Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

1. Shahani, Gitanjali G. Tasting Difference: Food, Race, and Cultural Encounters in Early Modern Literature. New York: Cornell University Press, 2020.

1. Singh, Jyotsna G. Colonial Narratives/Cultural Dialogues: “Discoveries” of India in the Language of Colonialism. New York: Routledge, 1996.

1. Smith, Cassander L, Nicholas Jones and Miles Grier, eds. Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies: A Critical Anthology. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

1. Smith, Ian. Race and Rhetoric in the Renaissance: Barbarian Errors. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

1. Smith, Ian. “We Are Othello: Speaking of Race in Early Modern Studies.” Shakespeare Quarterly 67.1 (2016): 104–24.

1. Thompson, Ayanna. Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage. New York: Routledge, 2013.

1. Thompson, Ayanna, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

1. Vaughan, Virginia Mason. Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

1. Whitaker, Cord J. Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.

1. Young, Sandra. The Early Modern Global South in Print: Textual Form and the Production of Human Difference as Knowledge. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.

Title Image: Paolo Veronese - Martirio di Santa Giustina, accessed here

^[1] It is important to note that these categories of study overlap significantly and that many of the critics I list produce work across these subject areas.