Race et racisme dans l'Angleterre médiévale

Race, Racism & Medieval England

Call for papers

The French Journal of Medieval English Studies Études Médiévales Anglaises is seeking submissions for its 96th issue focusing on the notion of “race”. The papers, written in French or English, should be submitted to Elise Louviot by November 30th, 2019 (see more information below). Authors who wish to submit a paper are advised to get in touch and submit a title with a brief description of content as soon as convenient.

Popular representations of Medieval England (and of the European Middle Ages more widely) tend to promote an overly simplified idea of race. The Middle Ages are typically either painted as uniformly white or as a time of conflict between white Christianity and dark Muslims. Such representations are extremely problematic, not only because they distort the truth – though that is a problem in itself – but also because they have an impact on the world we live in today and what happens in it: myths about “the Anglo-Saxon race”, the crusades and chivalry (among many other topics) have been used and continue being used to push white supremacist and nationalist agendas on both sides of the Atlantic.

Scholarly writings on Medieval England have not always been entirely blameless in this issue.

At times, medievalists have themselves promoted racist and/or nationalist conceptions of Medieval England. Even more often, they have simply focused on the deeds of white men, obscuring the existence and contribution of others. In recent years, however, a growing number of scholarly works have started to address the issue and provide a more nuanced and more accurate picture of the Middle Ages as regards race.

Those works have demonstrated the physical presence in Medieval England of people that would not be considered “white” today, and, to an even greater degree, their cultural importance in literature, science and iconography. Crucially, they have also shown that race is a cultural construct, which can therefore take different meanings over time. Thus, while the “scientific” conception of race that is most familiar to us was not prevalent in Medieval England, race itself, as a “tendency... to demarcate human beings through differences among humans that are selectively identified as absolute and fundamental, so as to distribute positions and powers differentially to human groups” (Heng 2018) very much existed in Medieval England and affected various groups, including the Jews and the Irish.

For this issue of Etudes Médiévales Anglaises, we welcome papers on all aspects of race and racism in connection to Medieval England. Possible topics include (but are not restricted to):
- the presence and role of racialized people in society and culture;
- racist practices and representations;
- how race was understood at the time;
- racist representations in scholarly and popular representations of Medieval England;
- how issues of race and racism can be addressed in the classroom or in museum exhibitions on
Medieval England.

The papers, written in English or in French, must be sent before November 30th, 2019 to Elise
Louviot (elise.louviot@univ-reims.fr). Etudes Médiévales Anglaises uses double-blind peer
review. The stylesheet to be used may be found on our website: https://amaes.jimdo.com/submita-
paper/

Selected readings:
This selection is largely based on the bibliography compiled by Medievalists of Color; a more
complete list is available on their website https://medievalistsofcolor.com
Akbari, Suzanne C. Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100-
1450 (Cornell University Press, 2009).
Bartlett, Robert. “Medieval and Modern Concepts of Race and Ethnicity.” Journal of Medieval and
Early Modern Studies 31 (2001), 39-55.
Beckett, Katherine Scarfe. Anglo-Saxon Perceptions of the Islamic World. Cambridge Studies in
Anglo-Saxon England 33 (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Cohen, Jeffrey J. “Race.” A Handbook of Middle English Studies, ed. Marion Turner (Chichester:
Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 109-122.
Eliav-Feldon, Miriam, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler, eds. The Origins of Racism in the West
(Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Goldberg, David. “The Development of the Idea of Race: Classical Paradigms and Medieval
Elaborations.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 5 (1999), 561–70.
Green, Monica H. “The Diversity of Human Kind,” in A Cultural History of the Human Body in
the Middle Ages (Oxford: Berg, 2010), 173-90 (notes, 268-71).
Hahn, Thomas. “The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race Before the Modern
World.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, no. 1 (2001), 1–37.
Harris, Stephen J. Race and Ethnicity in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Routledge, 2004).
Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press,
2018).
Jordan, William C. “Why ‘Race’?” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31, 1 (2001),
165-173.
Lavezzo, Kathy. The Accommodated Jew: English Antisemitism from Bede to Milton (Cornell
University Press, 2016).
Mittman, Asa S. 2015, “Are the Monstrous ‘Races’ Races?” Special Issue: “Making Race Matter
in the Middle Ages” ed. Cord Whitaker. postmedieval 6:1 (2015), 36-51.
Public Medievalist, special series on Race, Racism and The Middle Ages (2017-2018),
https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-racism-middle-ages-toc/
Ramey, Lynn T., Black Legacies: Race and the European Middle Ages (University Press of Florida,
2014).
Weeda, Claire. “Characteristics of Bodies and Ethnicity c. 900-1200”, Medieval Worlds 5 (2017),
95-112.
Young, Helen. “Time and Place: Medievalism and Making Race.” Special Issue: Medievalism Now, The Year’s Work in Medievalism 28 (2013), 2-6.