Description: Panelists take up questions of “race before race,” asking what has been, and what should be, the role of the premodern in the transhistorical study of race. Presentations interrogate Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s entanglements in the history of racialization, excavating and confronting the roles these hypercanonical authors have played in the development of racial thinking.

Speakers

Katherine Gillen, Texas A&M U, San Antonio

Kyle Grady, U of California, Irvine

Dorothy Kim, Brandeis U

Shokoofeh Rajabzadeh, U of California, Berkeley

Presider

Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Northwestern U

Respondent

Geraldine Heng, U of Texas, Austin