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Race Before Race
In the late Middle Ages, Christian conversion could wash a black person's skin white--or at least that is what happens when a black sultan converts to Christianity in the English romance King of Tars. In Black Metaphors, Cord J. Whitaker examines the rhetorical and theological moves through which blackness and whiteness became metaphors for sin and purity in the English and European Middle Ages--metaphors that guided the development of notions of race in the centuries that followed. From a modern perspective, moments like the sultan's transformation present blackness and whiteness as opposites in which each condition is forever marked as a negative or positive attribute; medieval readers were instead encouraged to remember that things that are ostensibly and strikingly different are not so separate after all, but mutually construct one another. Indeed, Whitaker observes, for medieval scholars and writers, blackness and whiteness, and the sin and salvation they represent, were held in tension, forming a unified whole.
Whitaker asks not so much whether race mattered to the Middle Ages as how the Middle Ages matters to the study of race in our fraught times. Looking to the treatment of color and difference in works of rhetoric such as John of Garland's Synonyma, as well as in a range of vernacular theological and imaginative texts, including Robert Manning's Handlyng Synne, and such lesser known romances as The Turke and Sir Gawain, he illuminates the process by which one interpretation among many became established as the truth, and demonstrates how modern movements--from Black Lives Matter to the alt-right--are animated by the medieval origins of the black-white divide.
Race may dominate everyday speech, media headlines and public policy, yet still questions of racialized blackness and whiteness in Shakespeare are resisted. In his compelling new book Ian Smith addresses the influence of systemic whiteness on the interpretation of Shakespeare's plays. This far-reaching study shows that significant parts of Shakespeare's texts have been elided, misconstrued or otherwise rendered invisible by readers who have ignored the presence of race in early modern England. Bringing the Black American intellectual tradition into fruitful dialogue with European thought, this urgent interdisciplinary work offers a deep, revealing and incisive analysis of individual plays, including Othello, The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet. Demonstrating how racial illiteracy inhibits critical practice, Ian Smith provides a necessary anti-racist alternative that will transform the way you read Shakespeare.
Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the "New World." Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity?
In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanizing engagement with the "dark" continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not--as we are so often told, even today--Europe's yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa.
Creating a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history.
While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories--siloed and piecemeal--were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic "rise of the West" theories that have endured to this day.
"Capacious and compelling" (Laurent Dubois), Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton--and of the greatest "commodity" of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the "New World," whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race shows teachers and students how and why Shakespeare and race are inseparable. Moving well beyond Othello, the collection invites the reader to understand racialized discourses, rhetoric, and performances in all of Shakespeare's plays, including the comedies and histories. Race is presented through an intersectional approach with chapters that focus on the concepts of sexuality, lineage, nationality, and globalization. The collection helps students to grapple with the unique role performance plays in constructions of race by Shakespeare (and in Shakespearean performances), considering both historical and contemporary actors and directors. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race will be the first book that truly frames Shakespeare studies and early modern race studies for a non-specialist, student audience.
"Best Children's Picture Book Award" Honorable Mention, International Latino Book Awards
"Picks for the social Justice Curriculum and Classroom" - Rethinking Schools
"A must for every classroom, library, and home" - South Seattle Emerald
GIGANTIC LIES meet EMPOWERING TRUTHS in this masterfully written, family friendly book finally bringing children, parents, and educators the real history of Christopher Columbus. By scholar and educator, Dr. Siu.
"This book shifts the paradigm in elementary school curricula regarding Columbus and white settler colonialism. It's wonderful!" - Author of An Indigenous People's History of the United States
For teaching resources, visit the book's website at www.orielmariasiu.com/theogrecologre
Made by Americans of European, African, Native and Hispanic heritage, these quilts and bedcovers range from family heirlooms to acts of political protest, each with its own story to tell
A New York Magazine 2021 holiday gift guide pick
A mother stitches a few lines of prayer into a bedcover for her son serving in the Union army during the Civil War. A formerly enslaved African American woman creates a quilt populated by Biblical figures alongside celestial events. A quilted Lady Liberty, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln mark the resignation of Richard Nixon. These are just a few of the diverse and sometimes hidden stories of the American experience told by quilts and bedcovers from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Spanning more than 400 years, the 58 works of textile art in this book express the personal narratives of their makers and owners and connect to broader stories of global trade, immigration, industry, marginalization, and territorial and cultural expansion. Artists include: Faith Ringgold, Sanford Biggers, Irene Williams, Bisa Butler, Harry Tyler, Harriet Powers, Marie D. Webster, Marguerite Zorach, Dorothy Phillips Haagensen, Rachel Cary George, Florence Peto, Creola Pettway, Susan Hoffman, Molly Upton, Nancy Crasco, Agusta Agustsson, Edward Larson, Michael James, Virginia Jacobs and Carla Hemlock.
In Figuring Racism in Medieval Christianity, M. Lindsay Kaplan expands the study of the history of racism through an analysis of the Christian concept of Jewish hereditary inferiority. Imagined as a figural slavery, this idea anticipates modern racial ideologies in creating a status of permanent, inherent subordination. Unlike other studies of early forms of racism, this book places theological discourses at the center of its analysis. It traces an intellectual history of the Christian doctrine of servitus Judaeorum, or Jewish enslavement, imposed as punishment for the crucifixion. This concept of hereditary inferiority, formulated in patristic and medieval exegesis through the figures of Cain, Ham, and Hagar, enters into canon law to enforce the spiritual, social, and economic subordination of Jews to Christians. Characterized as perpetual servitude, this status shapes the construction of Jews not only in canon law, but in medicine, natural philosophy, and visual art. By focusing on inferiority as a category of analysis, Kaplan sharpens our understanding of contemporary racism as well as its historical development. The damaging power of racism lies in the ascription of inferiority to a set of traits and not in bodily or cultural difference alone; in the medieval context, theological authority affirms discriminatory hierarchies as a reflection of divine will. Medieval theological discourses created a racial rationale of Jewish hereditary inferiority that also served to justify the servile status of Muslims and Africans. Kaplan's discussion of this history uncovers the ways in which racism circulated in pre-modernity and continues to do so in contemporary white supremacist discourses that similarly seek to subordinate these groups.
On a hot summer night in August of 1973, DJ Kool Herc and his sister, Cindy, put on a "back to school jam" in the rec room of their apartment block at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx. The rest is history. The birth of hip hop rippled out across the globe, influencing music and fashion for generations. Fresh Fly Fabulous: 50 Years of Hip Hop Style draws on the experiences and memories of those who were there, from a foreword by Slick Rick, to interviews with Disco Fever club owner Sal Abbatiello and designers Dapper Dan and April Walker, to chapters from Vibe stylist Emil Wilbekin and former editor of The Source Kim Osorio. Topics cover the range of hip hop's influential style over the past half century, tracing the evolution from early hip hop style, born of aspiration, individuality, and practicality to contemporary fashion steeped in luxury brands. Hip hop style is a local story, told through spotlights on Times Square as an early fashion space, as well as an international phenomenon, shown in the prominence of hip hop fashion leaders on red carpets. Inventiveness, the art of the remix, and a diverse set of influences are consistent themes in sections that examine hip hop style from hair and nails to shoes and sneakers. Fresh Fly Fabulous is the definitive source for hip hop style, brought to life by the groundbreaking photographers who captured it firsthand, including Janette Beckman, Jamel Shabazz, and Ernie Paniccioli.
A richly illustrated exploration of Black culture at its most wildly imaginative, artistically ambitious, and politically urgent. A richly illustrated exploration of Black culture at its most wildly imaginative and artistically ambitious, In the Black Fantastic assembles art and imagery from across the African diaspora. Embracing the mythic and the speculative, it recycles and reconfigures elements of fable, folklore, science fiction, spiritual traditions, ceremonial pageantry, and the legacies of Afrofuturism. In works that span photography, painting, sculpture, cinema, graphic arts, music and architecture, In the Black Fantastic shows how speculative fictions in Black art and culture are boldly reimagining perspectives on race, gender and identity. Standing apart from Western narratives of progress and modernity premised on the historical subjugation of people of color, In the Black Fantastic celebrates the ways that Black artists draw inspiration from African-originated myths, beliefs, and knowledge systems, confounding the Western dichotomy between the real and unreal, the scientific and the supernatural. Featuring more than 300 color illustrations, this beautifully designed book brings together works by leading artists such as Kara Walker, Chris Ofili, and Ellen Gallagher; explores groundbreaking films like Daughters of the Dust and Get Out; considers the radical politics of pan-Africanism and postcolonialism; and much more. Each section--"Invocation," "Migration," and "Liberation"--includes an introductory text by Ekow Eshun and longer essays by Eshun, Kameelah L. Martin, and Michelle D. Commander. Artists featured Larry Achiampong, Jim Adams, Djeneba Aduayom, Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, John Akomfrah, David Alabo, Edgar Arceneaux, Marc Asekhame, Belkis Ayón, Radcliffe Bailey, Raphaël Barontini, Beddo, Sanford Biggers, Nuotama Bodomo, Nick Cave, Sedrick Chisom, Jacek Chyrosz, Coldefy, Raffaele Contigiani, Damon Davis, Cristina de Middel, Imani Dennison, Jeff Donaldson, Kimathi Donkor, Aaron Douglas, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Curtis Essel, Minnie Evans, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Ali Fao, Raymond Thomas Farah, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Heinz Fenchel, Ellen Gallagher, Rico Gatson, Maïmouna Guerresi, Prince Gyasi, Lauren Halsey, Allison Janae Hamilton, Thomas Heatherwick, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Kordae Jatafa Henry, David Huffman, Juliana Huxtable, Zas Ieluhee, Alex Jackson, Ayana V. Jackson, Fabiola Jean-Louis, Shintaro Kago, Kéré Architecture, Black Kirby, Victoria Kovios, Wole Lagunju, Wifredo Lam, Jean François Lamoureux, Thomas Leitersdorf, Namsa Leuba, Hew Locke, Michael MacGarry, Gerald Machona, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jean-Louis Marin, Markn, Kerry James Marshall, Moshel Mayer, Mohau Modisakeng, Puleng Mongale, Fabrice Monteiro, Ronald Moody, Kristin-Lee Moolman, Jean-Claude Moschetti, Aïda Muluneh, Wangechi Mutu, Gustavo Nazareno, Rashaad Newsome, Daniel Obasi, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Chris Ofili, Ruby Okoro, Rinaldo Olivieri, Yaoundé Olu, Zohra Opoku, Tasha Orlova, Frida Orupabo, Gordon Parks, Jordan Peele, James Phillips, Naudline Pierre, Keith Piper, Robert Pruitt, Umar Rashid, Robert Reed, Tabita Rezaire, Stacey Robinson, Athi-Patra Ruga, Stanislaw Rymaszewski, Alison Saar, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Ignace Sawadogo, Devan Shimoyama, Yinka Shonibare, Mary Sibande, Lorna Simpson, Cauleen Smith, Tavares Strachan, Mickalene Thomas, Bob Thompson, Wilfred Ukpong, David Uzochukwu, Lina Iris Viktor, William Villalongo, Hannsjörg Voth, Kara Walker, Gerald Williams, Kandis Williams, Peter Williams, Saya Woolfalk, Alisha B. Wormsley, Zaha Hadid Architects
The first Europeans to arrive in North America's various regions relied on Native women to help them navigate unfamiliar customs and places. This study of three well-known and legendary female cultural intermediaries, Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea, examines their initial contact with Euro-Americans, their negotiation of multinational frontiers, and their symbolic representation over time. Well before their first contact with Europeans or Anglo-Americans, the three women's societies of origin--the Aztecs of Central Mexico (Malinche), the Powhatans of the mid-Atlantic coast (Pocahontas), and the Shoshones of the northern Rocky Mountains (Sacagawea)--were already dealing with complex ethnic tensions and social change. Using wit and diplomacy learned in their Native cultures and often assigned to women, all three individuals hoped to benefit their own communities by engaging with the new arrivals. But as historian Rebecca Kay Jager points out, Europeans and white Americans misunderstood female expertise in diplomacy and interpreted indigenous women's cooperation as proof of their attraction to Euro-American men and culture. This confusion has created a historical misrepresentation of Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea as gracious Indian princesses, giving far too little credit to their skills as intermediaries. Examining their initial contact with Europeans and their work on multinational frontiers, Jager removes these three famous icons from the realm of mythology and cultural fantasy and situates each woman's behavior in her own cultural context. Drawing on history, anthropology, ethnohistory, and oral tradition, Jager demonstrates their shrewd use of diplomacy and fulfillment of social roles and responsibilities in pursuit of their communities' future advantage. Jager then goes on to delineate the symbolic roles that Malinche, Pocahontas, and Sacagawea came to play in national creation stories. Mexico and the United States have molded their legends to justify European colonization and condemn it, to explain Indian defeat and celebrate indigenous prehistory. After hundreds of years, Malinche, Pocahontas and Sacagawea are still relevant. They are the symbolic mothers of the Americas, but more than that, they fulfilled crucial roles in times of pivotal and enduring historical change. Understanding their stories brings us closer to understanding our own histories.