Here’s a line-up of some recommended reading materials (some recently published/ coming soon!) which relate to the wider research areas of our team here at MEMOs. If they’re interesting to you too, check out their descriptions via the links below:

1. Diana Darke, Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe.

A revealing history of Islamic architectural influence on Europe’s cathedrals, palaces and monuments.

https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/stealing-from-the-saracens/

2. Patricia Akhimie, Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race and Conduct in the Early Modern World.

Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference reveals the relationship between racial discrimination and the struggle for upward social mobility in the early modern world. Now available in paperback!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeare-Cultivation-Difference-Conduct-Routledge/dp/0815356439

3. Olivette Otelie, African Europeans: An Untold History.

A dazzling history of African Europeans, revealing old and diverse links between the two continents.

https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/african-europeans/

4. Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible.

Imtiaz Habib collects the scattered references to black people from Africa, India and America in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, and arranges them into a systematic, chronological descriptive index.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Lives-English-Archives-1500-1677/dp/0754656950

5. Aske Laursen Brock and Misha Ewen, Women's Public Lives: Navigating the East India Company, Parliament and Courts in Early Modern England.

This paper explores how three seventeenth‐century women – Elizabeth Dale, Rebecka Duteil and Mary Goodal – challenged the company and navigated Parliament and the courts in London.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-0424.12484

Happy reading!