WRITING RACE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC WORLD: MEDIEVAL TO MODERN; ED. BY PHILIP D. BEIDLER

This collection of original essays explores the origins of contemporary notions of race in the oceanic interculture of the Atlantic world in the early modern period. In doing so, it breaks down institutional boundaries between 'American' and 'British' literature in this early period, as well as between 'history' and 'literature'. Individual essays address the ways in which categories of 'race' - black brown, red and white, African American and Afro-Caribbean, Spanish and Jewish, English and Celtic, native American and Northern European, creole and mestizo - were constructed or adapted by early modern writers. The collection brings together a top collection of historians and literary critics specializing in early modern Britain and early America. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction: E Pluribus Verum....Pages 1-6 Front Matter....Pages 7-7 A Mirror Across the Water: Mimetic Racism, Hybridity, and Cultural Survival....Pages 9-26 Angells in America....Pages 27-50 Prehistoric Diasporas: Colonial Theories of the Origins of Native American Peoples....Pages 51-75 Front Matter....Pages 77-77 Michelangelo and the Curse of Ham: From a Typology of Jew-Hatred to a Genealogy of Racism....Pages 79-92 “Extravagant Viciousness”: Slavery and Gluttony in the Works of Thomas Tryon....Pages 93-111 “Working Like a Dog”: African Labor and Racing the Human-Animal Divide in Early Modern England....Pages 113-134 Front Matter....Pages 135-135 Fresh Produce....Pages 137-152 “Men to Monsters”: Civility, Barbarism, and “Race” in Early Modern Ireland....Pages 153-169 Mustapha Rub-a-Dub Keli Khan and Other Famous Early American Literary Mahometans....Pages 171-186 Back Matter....Pages 187-194 This study comprises a set of lively, diverse, and original investigations into contemporary notions of race in the oceanic interculture of the Atlantic during the early modern period. Working across institutional boundaries of "American" and "British" literature in this period, as well as between "history" and "literature", ten essays address the ways in which cultural categories of "race"--Brown, red, and white, African-American and Afro-Caribbean, Spanish and Jewish, English and Celtic, native American and northern European, creole and mestizo - were constructed and adapted by early modern writers IT is my contention that the complexities of race in the New World cannot be adequately understood without a concomitant understanding of metropolitan, European racism.