Description
This virtual symposium will highlight the research of emerging scholars working on race and race-making before 1800. Speakers will include graduate students and early career scholars from a variety of disciplines who will share their work on the development and influence of race from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, and explore how their research can inform our experience of race in the present.
Schedule
Friday, December 6
9:45 Welcoming Remarks
Lia Markey (Newberry Library)
Yasmine Hachimi (UC Santa Barbara/Newberry Library)
10:00-11:15 Theorizing Premodern Race
Chair: Christopher Fletcher (Newberry Library)
Dontay M. Givens II (New York University), “Hegel’s Vision for Hegel:” The Anachronic and Fabricated Hl. Mauritius
Jonathan Correa Reyes (Clemson University), Towards a Medieval Theory of the Human
Soojung Choe (CUNY Graduate Center), Oriental Beauties and Ornamental Whiteness in Medieval Romance
Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan (University of Wisconsin Madison), Theorizing Crypto-Visuality: A New Lens for Deciphering Premodern Racialization
11:15-11:45am Break
11:45am-1:15pm Making Race in European Texts and Ephemera
Chair: Yasmine Hachimi (UC Santa Barbara/Newberry Library)
Alexandra Montero Peters (Texas State University), A New Approach to Reading and Seeing Black Characters in the Text and Illuminations of Castilian Manuscripts
Laura Francis (National University of Ireland in Maynooth), The Translation of Race in the Early Modern Irish-Iberian Diaspora
Margaux Delanay (Cornell University), The Stigma of Print: Race, Female Chastity, and the Poetry of Complaint
Ana Roda Sanchez (Queen Mary University), Racialized attitudes against Jewish converts in Toledo
Linnea Ripenberg (Stockholm University), Courts and the Making of Race in the European Hinterland: Representations of Blackness in Festivals of Scandinavia and the Holy Roman Empire
1:15-2:00pm Break
2:00-3:15pm Premodern Race in the Classroom
Chair: Noèmie Ndiaye (University of Chicago)
Joanna Huh (University of Cincinnati), foul blue earth: Sycorax in Two Acts
Willnide Lindor (SUNY Cortland), Student-Centered Pedagogical Approaches to Race and Empire in Shakespeare
Montse Li (Cornell University), Invisible Cloth and Threads of Race: A Teaching Moment in Juan Manuel’s El conde Lucanor
3:15-3:45pm Break
3:45-5:00pm Colonial Bodies and Mapping
Chair: David Weimer (Newberry Library)
Arianna Ray (Northwestern University) Etching Enslavement: Colonial Cartography, Black Bodies, and Caspar Barlaeu’s Rerum per octennium in Brasilia
Elisa Palomino (University of the Arts London), Mapping Race Through Indigenous Arctic FishSkin Artefacts: Exploration, Assimilation and Ethnic Negation
Brandon Dunlevy (Princeton University), Passing Across Empires: Colonial Politics of Racial Ambiguity in the 1572 Interrogation of Diego Indio
Myriam Iuorio (University of Toronto), “With his deformed face and black skin”: disability and race-making in Italian missionary accounts from West Central Africa
Saturday, December 7
10:00-11:15am Race on the Premodern Stage
Chair: Elizabeth Neary (Newberry Library)
Tamara Mahadin (Ohio State University), Early Modern Physiognomies of Race and Gender in Elizabeth Carey’s The Tragedy of Mariam
Emily MacLeod (Penn State Harrisburg), Sweet Faces & White Hands: Tricky Constructions of Race in Ben Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels
Lydia Valentine (King's College London), Bastardizing Race: Illegitimate Kinship and Racial Mixing in The Winter’s Tale and Lust’s Dominion
11:15-11:45am Break
11:45am-1:00pm Racialized Art and Identity
Chair: Lia Markey
Amber Burbidge (European University Institute), Race making and gender in early modern material culture: an intersectional explanation of racialised representations in the Jeu de la Géographie
Niyanta Sangal (University of Maryland and College Park), Tracing Gendered Third Spaces in Dryden’s Aureng-zebe through Mughal Art
Ronique Gillis (Western University), Vibrant Interactions: Bisa Butler’s Quilted Portraits Confronts John Singleton Copley's Black Neoclassical Body
Laura Lopez Zunzunegui (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), The (re)construction of the concept of Race in art exhibitions and the influence of national identities
1:00pm-1:45pm Break
2:45-4:00pm Race on the Premodern Stage II
Chair: Yasmine Hachimi
Yujin Jang (University of Pittsburgh), The Formation of “Temperate” Race: Music and Early Modern Ideology of Cultivation
Senan Carkaci (University of California Santa Barbara), When the Turk Turns: The Turks as a Mediator of Racial Difference in Othello and The Courageous Turk
Adare Smith (University of Iowa) Equiano's ethos of reclamation, religious joy, and Othello
Jared Nabhan (Columbia University), Colonialism and Race in Marlowe’s Dido
4:00-5:00pm Concluding Remarks and Discussion
Virtual Webinar Access
This virtual event is free and open to the public via Zoom webinars. Links to the webinars will be posted closer to the date of the event.