Race in the Iberian Middle Ages: A Critical Roundtable

Geraldine Heng’s The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages(2018) is but a single intervention in a changing horizon of understanding of medieval race and racializing practices in the European Middle Ages. This roundtable, which convenedat the 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2023, sought to address some of the more vexing questions that have emerged of late as they relate specifically to the medieval Iberian context. Critical questions included but were not limited to: How accurately do emerging definitions of race reflect the complex historical specificity of medieval Iberia? What are the loci (whether conceptual, institutional or geographic) of racializing practices and how do they intersect? Are all modes for constructing difference (whether ethnic, religious, linguistic, etc.) constitutive of race? We also invited reflections on pedagogy: How does the material we teach intersect with contemporary racisms? What potential impact is there for students who are themselves experiencing racism? Does our own positionality matter, whether in the courses we teach or in the research we conduct? Should it?

The roundtable participants and respondent have generously shared written versions of their comments here. We hope their insights will encourage further thought, comment, and discussion among our Ibero-medieval community members.

-Gregory S. Hutcheson, roundtable organizer, University of Louisville

Participants’ Biographies

Anita Savo is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Boston University. Her research seeks to place Castilian literature in conversation with the other literary traditions of medieval Iberia, and her book on Don Juan Manuel’s approach to authorshipis forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press.

Rebecca De Souza is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University of Stirling, Scotland. She has published articles on masculinity and religion in medieval chronicles, and her current research focuses on representations of Castilian disempowerment and race in neomedievalist literature.

Juan Escourido is an Associate Professor of Spanish at East Carolina University. His primary areas of research include affects, religion, and aesthetics in relation to subject formation and cultures of play. More recently, he looks at questions of race and otherness in Alfonso X’s historiographic works.

Ana Gomez-Bravo is Professor of Spanish at the University of Washington. Her main research areas are theories of race, textual studies, food studies, and gender and sexuality studies. Most recent publications include “The Origins of Raza: Racializing Difference in Early Spanish.”

Luis Miguel dos Santos Vicente is Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Hamilton College. His research interrogates the construction of cultural difference in Castilian literature in light of ideas about translation, religious difference, racialization, and gender.

Ali Alsmadi is a doctoral student in the Spanish & Portuguese Department at Indiana University Bloomington. His research focuses on interfaith and identity in late Medieval and Early Modern Spain. His dissertation project focuses on the dynamics of Morisco identity and its place in the Iberian world.

Pamela A. Patton (respondent) is director of the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. Her research emphasizes the role of the image in articulating cultural identity and social dynamics among the multiethnic communities of the Iberian Peninsula. Her books include the edited volumeEnvisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America(2016).

Anita Savo, “Blackness as Wisdom in Exemplum 32 of the Conde Lucanor” (forthcoming in La corónica)

Rebecca de Souza, “Are There Limits to Globalising the Medieval?” Postmedieval, vol. 15, pp. 257–83, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-024-00309-2

Juan Escourido “Ca pues que moros son, todos son de Cam: otredad paradojica en las estorias alfonsies” (forthcoming in La corónica)

Ana M. Gomez-Bravo Gómez-Bravo Kalamazoo 2023

Luis Miguel dos Santos Dos Santos - Race in Iberia

Ali Alsmadi Alsmadi - Sexualized Construction of the Muslim Male

Pamela A. Patton, Respondent Patton Response for Kalamazoo roundtable 2023

Race in the Iberian Middle Ages: A Critical Roundtable