Cultural History of Race in the Reformation and Enlightenment
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Nicholas Hudson is Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of Samuel Johnson and Eighteenth-Century Thought (1988), Writing and European Thought (1994), Samuel Johnson and the Making of Modern England (2001) and A Political Life of Samuel Johnson (2013). In the area of Race Studies, he has published ‘From “Nation” to “Race”: The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century Thought’ (1996), ‘“Hottentots” and the Evolution of European Racism’ (2004) and “The ‘Hottentots Venus’ and the Changing Aesthetics of Race, 1600– 1850’ (2008).The period between the 16th and 18th centuries witnessed the expansion of European travel, trade and colonization around the globe, resulting in greatly increased contact between Westerners and peoples throughout the rest of the world. With the rise of print and the commercial book market, Europeans avidly consumed reports of the outside world and its various peoples, often in distorted or fictional forms. With the consolidation of new empirical science and taxonomy, prejudice against peoples of different colours and cultures during the 16th and 17th centuries became more systematic, giving rise to the doctrines of race ‘science.’ Although humanitarianism and the idea of human rights also flourished, inspiring the campaign to abolish the slave trade, this movement did not hinder imperialist expansion and the belief that humans could be ranked in a hierarchy that authorized White domination.
The essays in this volume trace the complex pattern of intellectual and cultural change from popular bigotry in the Age of Shakespeare to the racial categories developed in the works of Buffon and Kant. These essays also link changes in racial thinking to other trends during this age. The development of modern ideas of race corresponded with emerging conceptions of the nation state; new acceptance of religious diversity became linked with speculations on racial diversity; transforming ideologies of gender and sexuality overlapped in crucial ways with developing racial attitudes. In many ways, the period between the Reformation and Enlightenment laid the foundations for modern racial thinking, generating issues and conflicts that still haunt us today.
List of Illustrations
General Editor’s Preface, Marius Turda
Introduction, Nicholas Hudson
1. Definitions and Representations of Race, Dennis Austin Britton
2. Race, Environment, Culture, Jean E. Feerick
3. Race and Religion, Robert Bernasconi
4. Race and Science, Suman Seth
5. Race and Politics, Matthew Bennett
6. Race and Ethnicity, Noémie Ndiaye
7. Race and Gender, Carl Plasa
8. Race and Sexuality, Nicholas Hudson
9. Anti-Race, Roxann Wheeler
Notes
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
The Cultural Histories are multi-volume sets that survey the social and cultural construction of specific subjects across six historical periods, broadly:
- Antiquity
- The Medieval Age
- The Early Modern Age
- The Age of Enlightenment
- The Age of Empire
- The Modern Age
The subjects covered range from Animals to Dress and Fashion, from Sport to Furniture, from Money to Fairy Tales. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters so that readers may gain an understanding of a period by reading an entire volume, or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Each six-volume set is illustrated.
Titles are available as printed sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).
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