Cord Whitaker and Walter Pohl - Critical Approaches to Race and Ethnicity: Premodern Identities and the Trans-Atlantic Politics of Scholarship

Thursday, February 11
Cord Whitaker, Wellesley College
Walter Pohl, University of Vienna

Moderator: Michelle M. Sauer, University of North Dakota

The Medievalists of Color, the Program in Medieval Studies at Princeton University, the Division for Identity Studies at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study,  launch a new series of online seminars entitled “Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Middle Ages and Medieval Studies.” Funding has been provided by the Humanities Council at Princeton University.

The series of seminars convenes researchers based in North America and Europe in order to inspire and further establish reflections about race, race-thinking, and racialization among scholars of late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. A series of talks by Medievalists of Color will anchor what we hope will become a longer and wider conversation that spans various cultures and historiographies within Medieval Studies. The aim is to begin a discussion that will: 1) enrich scholarly debate about processes of racialization by bringing together approaches developed in the United States with those developed in other parts of the world; 2) move beyond simplistic either-or binaries (race/not race, race/religion, race/ethnicity, and even US/Europe) and promote the development of more nuanced paradigms for racialization and its interaction, overlap, and interdependence with other forms of social categorization; 3) reflect on the diversity of approaches to and salience of race, race-thinking and racialization in different parts of the world, and different fields of study; and 4) investigate how Critical Race Theory and other (critical) forms of Identity Studies can inspire and inform historical study.

While this conversation will begin with presentations by colleagues working in North America and Europe, we hope to widen the geographical scope still further. This series on “Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Middle Ages and Medieval Studies” strives to reach beyond disciplinary, geographic, and academic-cultural borderlines. Through intellectual exchange and nuanced multilateral criticism, we seek to develop a richer and more productive understanding of the medieval past as well as its legacy in our modern age.