The EDID Committee are currently putting together a roundtable on ‘Understanding Medieval Race-Making’ for the June 9-11 conference in Waterloo.
Until recently, texts written prior to the 16th century were often considered “before race.” It was popularly understood that the concept of ‘race’ began with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the discovery of the “New World” and the scientific Enlightenment’s interest in categorization. Scholars such as Stuart Hall, Matthew Vernon, Cord Whitaker, Geraldine Heng, and Dorothy Kim, among others, have worked to disrupt this misconception, expanding our understanding of race not only temporally and geographically, but to reconsider how it extends past skin colour to encompass a variety of social, physical, and cultural categories that human society has linked to race and race-making. Paradoxically, the idea that ‘race’ is a modern construction, however, reinforces the myths of the medieval period itself as an insular space without global or trans-national reach. These continued myths have spurred current white supremacist usage of the medieval in their justification and execution of violence (such as the attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand and Charlottesville, the Sons of Odin group, or the January Insurrection Attempt int the US).
This panel asks the following questions:
· What does race-making look like in the premodern?
· How did we understand the idea of race before modern discourses on imperialism and colonialism?
· How do modern discourse on imperialism, colonialism, and race help us understand medieval race?
· Alternatively, how do modern discourses on race shape how race-making or race is engaged with in medievalism?
· How did the premodern imagine alterity? How did they define themselves?
· How did the premodern understand the Indigenous vs the colonizer?
· We are open to any question that considers how race and race-making work in the Middle Ages and/or medievalism.
Roundtable presentations may be in either English or French and should be 6-8 minutes in length to allow ample time for discussion. It is a quick turnaround, so please let us know if you would be interested ASAP (February 15th if possible). We’d also be thrilled if you could forward any recommendations our way.
For Inquiries or Proposal Submissions, please contact Brenna Duperron at Brenna.duperron@dal.ca and include a title and brief (100 word) abstract of the proposed presentation (which does not identify the author) as well as a separate one-page curriculum vitae which includes the presentation’s title at the top.
**Scholars need not be members of the Canadian Society of Medievalists to submit proposals but, by the time of the conference, must be members in good standing and are expected to pay their 2024-25 annual membership fees to CSM / SCM by March 15, 2025 if they are not already members. For more information on our Society, visit https://canadianmedievalists.org/ and for more information on the Annual Conference and the general CFP, please visit: https://www.canadianmedievalists.org/Annual**
