Description
This first-ever CRS undergraduate workshop will explore how the history of the production and use of books before 1800 can shed important light on the development and persistent impact of race today. Though race is an artificial construct, racism has real impacts and consequences. Some of that artificial construct is evident in early artifacts and behaviors. Through a combination of presentations, discussion, and hands-on activities with rare books from the Newberry collections, students will learn how to “read” medieval and early modern books in ways that reveal the choices, assumptions, and practices that gradually made race into the system of power we know today. The goal of this workshop is for participants to make abstract history about race more tangible and concrete in their modern experience.
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