Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages
Dublin Core
Title
Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages
Creator
Geraldine Heng
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Date
2018
Language
Engels
Type
Book
Zotero
Item Type
Book
ISBN
978-1-108-42278-9
Abstract Note
In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, Geraldine Heng questions the common assumption that the concepts of race and racisms only began in the modern era. Examining Europe's encounters with Jews, Muslims, Africans, Native Americans, Mongols, and the Romani ('Gypsies'), from the 12th through 15th centuries, she shows how racial thinking, racial law, racial practices, and racial phenomena existed in medieval Europe before a recognizable vocabulary of race emerged in the West. Analysing sources in a variety of media, including stories, maps, statuary, illustrations, architectural features, history, saints' lives, religious commentary, laws, political and social institutions, and literature, she argues that religion - so much in play again today - enabled the positing of fundamental differences among humans that created strategic essentialisms to mark off human groups and populations for racialized treatment. Her ground-breaking study also shows how race figured in the emergence of homo europaeus and the identity of Western Europe in this time.
Date
2018
Language
Engels
Num Pages
493
Place
Cambridge, United Kingdom
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Title
Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages
Collection
Citation
Geraldine Heng, “Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages,” Mondiale Middeleeuwen, accessed April 24, 2025, http://mondialemiddeleeuwen.web.rug.nl/items/show/411.