Publication date: 24 April 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800088139
Number of illustrations: 4
Classics and Race
A historical reader
Sarah Derbew (Editor), Daniel Orrells (Editor), Phiroze Vasunia (Editor)
Classics and Race: A historical reader provides scholars and students with an exploratory intellectual history of the complex relationships between Classics and racist/anti-racist thought-systems. It collects together a series of readings of historical primary sources from the late medieval period until the mid-twentieth century, bringing to light how the classical tradition and post-ancient constructions of race have informed each other. Each reading is accompanied by an essay, written by a leading specialist who offers a discussion of the primary source.
The volume is arranged chronologically, from the late medieval period to the Renaissance, crucial for understanding classical humanism, and on to the eighteenth century with texts foundational to the modern emergence of classical studies as a discipline and its relationship to the transatlantic slave trade. The essays show how the classical tradition has continuously been structured by debates about race, racism and anti-racism. Including voices from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and North and South America, the essays demonstrate why the primary text is important for understanding this intellectual and cultural history, and the global reach of the classical tradition.
List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Sarah Derbew, Daniel Orrells and Phiroze Vasunia
Part I: Contestations of race
1 Kebra Nagast (Glory of the Kings, c. fourteenth century CE)
Sarah Derbew
2 Petrarch’s Africa (c. 1343)
Samuel Agbamu
3 Leo Africanus’ ‘Cosmographia de l’Affrica’ (Cosmography of Africa, 1526)
Oumelbanine Zhiri
4 Bartolomé de las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, 1552)
Christian Høgel
5 Juan Latino’s Ad Catholicum and Austriad (1573)
Mira Seo
6 The Florentine Codex (sixteenth century) edited by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún
David Tavárez
Part II: Race and the Enlightenment
7 Jacobus Elisa Johannes Capitein’s De servitute, libertati christianae non contraria (Is slavery compatible with Christian freedom or not?, 1742)
Grant Parker
8 Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (History of the art of antiquity, 1764)
Daniel Orrells
9 Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)
Tracey Walters
Part III: Naming histories of race
10 Jules Michelet’s Histoire Romaine (Roman history, 1831)
Mathilde Cazeaux Marty
11 Thomas Staunton St Clair’s A Soldier’s Recollections of the West Indies and America (1834) and Matthew Gregory Lewis’s Journal of a West-India Proprietor (1816–8)
Margaret Williamson
12 Luiz Gama’s Primeiras Trovas Burlescas de Getulino (First burlesque ballads by Gaetulian, 1861)
Andrea Kouklanakis
13 Anna Julia Cooper’s A Voice from the South (1892)
Shelley Haley
14 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Works (1894–1909)
Phiroze Vasunia
15 Pauline Hopkins’ Of One Blood: Or, the Hidden Self (1902–3)
Nicole A. Spigner
Part IV: Colonial and postcolonial meditations
16 Fanny Jackson Coppin’s Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching (1913)
Shelley Haley
17 Tenney Frank’s ‘Race Mixture in the Roman Empire’ (1916)
Denise Eileen McCoskey
18 Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem (1928) and Banjo (1929)
Justine McConnell
19 Nguyễn Mạnh Tường’s Sourires et larmes d’une jeunesse (Smiles and tears of youth, 1937)
Kelly Nguyen
20 Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (1939)
Richard Armstrong, Miriam Leonard, and Daniel Orrells
21 Mary Church Terrell’s A Colored Woman in a White World (1940)
Emily Greenwood
22 C.L.R. James’s Every Cook Can Govern: A Study of Democracy in Ancient Greece, Its Meaning for Today (1956)
Matthew Quest
23 Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Patrice Rankine
Afterword
Sarah Derbew
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781800088139
Number of illustrations: 4
Publication date: 24 April 2025
PDF ISBN: 9781800088139
EPUB ISBN: 9781800088146
Hardback ISBN: 9781800088108
Paperback ISBN: 9781800088122
‘An invaluable resource, thanks especially to its availability as open access [and] a recommended resource for those looking for primary sources in classical reception, as well as for those willing to broaden their teaching repertoire into an area that is sure to awaken students to the impossibility of understanding modern societies without appreciating the importance of the classical tradition.’
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
‘Classics and Race *deserves commendation. Not only because the work brings together scholars like S. Halley, P. Rankine, E. Greenwood and Nguyen, as well as the editors, who all have been working towards theorisations of race and Classics throughout their careers. The Reader also includes contributions from people outside of the field of Classics, leading to an enriching assortment of literature, sources and commentaries. Quest, N.A. Spigner, D. Tavárez, T. Walters and O. Zhiri, coming in from the fields of Literature, African American Studies and Anthropology showcase the importance of looking beyond Classics and the inter-disciplinary nature that can flourish. Finally, the book’s open-access nature means that its use is not limited to the classroom. Instead, it is very easy to see how a course in any of the fields listed could assign an assortment of sources and commentaries from the Reader and be all the better for it’
*The Classical Review
‘Sarah Derbew, Daniel Orrells and Phiroze Vasunia have curated an indispensable multilingual anthology of primary sources that brilliantly maps the contested terrain of the classical tradition, modern race-making and anti-racist resistance. For scholars and educators committed to understanding the relevance of the discipline of classics to modern race-making and to tracing the genealogies of Black classicisms, this volume is nothing short of transformative.’
International Journal of the Classical Tradition
Hosts, Hospitals and Hospitalities
Susana Araújo, Catarina Nunes de Almeida, Santiago Pérez Isasi,
27 July 2026
Creative Critical Interventions for Social Justice
Natasha Tanna, Abeyamí Ortega Domínguez, Hakan Sandal-Wilson,
04 February 2026
Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza, Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza, Tomás Espino Barrera, Tomás Espino Barrera,
06 October 2025
Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Short Fiction
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva, Julio Ludemir, Maria Aparecida Andrade Salgueiro,
03 September 2024
Gabriel Harvey and the History of Reading
Anthony Grafton, Nicholas Popper, William H. Sherman,
08 January 2024
Júlia Lopes de Almeida, Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva, Cintia Kozonoi Vezzani, Jason Rhys Parry,
17 July 2023
Drama, Poetry and Music in Late-Renaissance Italy
Virginia Cox, Lisa Sampson, Anna Wainwright,
08 June 2023
Classics and Race
A historical reader
Publication date: April 24, 2025
Open Access PDF ISBN: 9781800088139
Paperback ISBN: 9781800088122
Hardback ISBN: 9781800088108
Trim size (hardback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
Trim size (paperback): 23.4cm x 15.6cm
Classics and Race: A historical reader provides scholars and students with an exploratory intellectual history of the complex relationships between Classics and racist/anti-racist thought-systems. It collects together a series of readings of historical primary sources from the late medieval period until the mid-twentieth century, bringing to light how the classical tradition and post-ancient constructions of race have informed each other. Each reading is accompanied by an essay, written by a leading specialist who offers a discussion of the primary source.
The volume is arranged chronologically, from the late medieval period to the Renaissance, crucial for understanding classical humanism, and on to the eighteenth century with texts foundational to the modern emergence of classical studies as a discipline and its relationship to the transatlantic slave trade. The essays show how the classical tradition has continuously been structured by debates about race, racism and anti-racism. Including voices from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and North and South America, the essays demonstrate why the primary text is important for understanding this intellectual and cultural history, and the global reach of the classical tradition.
‘An invaluable resource, thanks especially to its availability as open access [and] a recommended resource for those looking for primary sources in classical reception, as well as for those willing to broaden their teaching repertoire into an area that is sure to awaken students to the impossibility of understanding modern societies without appreciating the importance of the classical tradition.’
Bryn Mawr Classical Review
‘Classics and Race *deserves commendation. Not only because the work brings together scholars like S. Halley, P. Rankine, E. Greenwood and Nguyen, as well as the editors, who all have been working towards theorisations of race and Classics throughout their careers. The Reader also includes contributions from people outside of the field of Classics, leading to an enriching assortment of literature, sources and commentaries. Quest, N.A. Spigner, D. Tavárez, T. Walters and O. Zhiri, coming in from the fields of Literature, African American Studies and Anthropology showcase the importance of looking beyond Classics and the inter-disciplinary nature that can flourish. Finally, the book’s open-access nature means that its use is not limited to the classroom. Instead, it is very easy to see how a course in any of the fields listed could assign an assortment of sources and commentaries from the Reader and be all the better for it’
*The Classical Review
‘Sarah Derbew, Daniel Orrells and Phiroze Vasunia have curated an indispensable multilingual anthology of primary sources that brilliantly maps the contested terrain of the classical tradition, modern race-making and anti-racist resistance. For scholars and educators committed to understanding the relevance of the discipline of classics to modern race-making and to tracing the genealogies of Black classicisms, this volume is nothing short of transformative.’
International Journal of the Classical Tradition
