Classics and Race : A Historical Reader / Sarah Derbew, Daniel Orrells, Phiroze Vasunia, editors.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Derbew, Sarah F., editor.

Orrells, Daniel, editor.

Vasunia, Phiroze, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anti-racism in literature.

Literature--History and criticism.

Literature.

Race in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 490 pages)

Place of Publication:

London : UCL Press, 2025.

Summary:

Classics and Race: A historical reader provides scholars and students with an exploratory intellectual history of the complex relationships between Classics and racist/anti-racist thought-systems. It collects together a series of readings of historical primary sources from the late medieval period until the mid-twentieth century, bringing to light how the classical tradition and post-ancient constructions of race have informed each other. Each reading is accompanied by an essay, written by a leading specialist who offers a discussion of the primary source. The volume is arranged chronologically, from the late medieval period to the Renaissance, crucial for understanding classical humanism, and on to the eighteenth century with texts foundational to the modern emergence of classical studies as a discipline and its relationship to the transatlantic slave trade. The essays show how the classical tradition has continuously been structured by debates about race, racism and anti-racism. Including voices from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and North and South America, the essays demonstrate why the primary text is important for understanding this intellectual and cultural history, and the global reach of the classical tradition.

Contents:

Part I: Contestations of race. Kebra Nagast (Glory of the Kings, c. fourteenth century CE) / Sarah Derbew

Petrarch's Africa (c. 1343) / Samuel Agbamu

Leo Africanus' osmographia de l'Affrica (Cosmography of Africa, 1526) / Oumelbanine Zhiri

Bartolomé de las Casas's Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, 1552) / Christian Høgel

Juan Latino's Ad Catholicum and Austriad (1573) / J. Mira Seo

The Florentine Codex (sixteenth century) edited by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún / David Tavárez. Part II: Race and the Enlightenment. Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein's De servitute, libertati christianae non contraria (Is slavery compatible with Christian freedom or not?, 1742) / Grant Parker

Johann Joachim Winckelmann's Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (History of the art of antiquity, 1764) / Daniel Orrells

Phillis Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) / Tracey Walters. Part III: Naming histories of race. Jules Michelet's Histoire romaine (Roman history, 1831) / Mathilde Cazeaux

Thomas Staunton St Clair's A Soldier's Recollections of the West Indies and America (1834) and Matthew Gregory Lewis's Journal of a West-India Proprietor (1816-8) / Margaret Williamson

Luiz Gama's Primeiras Trovas Burlescas de Getulino (First burlesque ballads by Gaetulian, 1861) / Andrea Kouklanakis

Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice from the South (1892) / Shelley Haley

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's Works (1894-1909) / Phiroze Vasunia

Pauline Hopkins' Of One Blood: Or, the Hidden Self (1902-3) / Nicole A. Spigner. Part IV: Colonial and postcolonial meditations. Fanny Jackson Coppin's Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching (1913) / Shelley Haley

Tenney Frank's 'Race mixture in the Roman Empire' (1916) / Denise Eileen McCoskey

Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928) and Banjo (1929) / Justine McConnell

Nguyễn Mạnh Tường's Sourires et larmes d'une jeunesse (Smiles and tears of youth, 1937) / Kelly Nguyen

Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism (1939) / Richard Armstrong, Miriam Leonard and Daniel Orrells

Mary Church Terrell's A Colored Woman in a White World (1940) / Emily Greenwood

C. L. R. James's Every Cook Can Govern: A Study of Democracy in Ancient Greece, Its Meaning for Today (1956) / Matthew Quest

Martin Luther King, Jr's 'Letter from a Birmingham jail' (1963) / Patrice Rankine.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-80008-814-0