A Cultural History of Race in the Renaissance and Early Modern Age

The past is always an interpretive act from the lens of the present. Through the lens of critical race theory, the essays collected here explore new analytical models, theoretical frameworks, and methodological approaches in attempting to reimagine the European Renaissance and early modern periods in terms of global expansion, awareness, and participation. Centering race in these periods requires that we acknowledge the people against whom social hierarchies and differential treatment were directed. This collection takes Europe as its focus, but White Europeans are not centred in it and the experiences of Black Africans, Asians, Jews and Muslims are not relegated to the margins of a shared history. Situating Europe within a global context forces the reconsideration of the violence that attends the interaction of peoples both across cultures and enmired within them. The less we are attentive to the cultural interactions, cross- cultural migrations and global dimensions of the late medieval and early modern periods, the less we are forced to recognize the violence, intolerance, power struggles and enforced suppressions that attend them.