Geraldine Heng - The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages

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Geraldine Heng 2018

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To Leah Marcus, David Theo Goldberg, and Susan Noakes compagnons de route

T he debts for The Invention of Race , twelve years in the making, are more numerous than for my first large book, Empire of Magic , and I can only hope to make a small dent here with my deep thanks. Long before I read a medieval manuscript or any race theory, when I was an eighteen-year-old freshman, Koh Tai Ann taught me how to read, taking me through William Empsons Missing Dates word by word, line by line. Across my undergraduate years, she inculcated practices of close attention and analysis that have made possible my academic career. Concomitantly, Edwin Thumboo stretched youthful horizons and made available crucial opportunities. Since The Invention of Race begins with a vignette from Singapore, it seems apposite to recognize here these two earliest influences in my academic life.

Later, Gene Vance, Pete Wetherbee, Jane Chance, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak generously stepped into the breach and wrote for me after the passing of my magister, Bob Kaske, thus ensuring that I would have a career.

Leah Marcus, David Theo Goldberg, and Susan Noakes to whom this book is dedicated patiently listened to early arguments that what we call race is already seen in premodernity, and provided critical support over the years. Hannah Wojciehowski, Matt Cohen, and Leah Marcus read early versions of chapters. Regenia Gagnier made the decision in 2011 to publish in Literature Compass my two-part article introducing premodern race, thus helping to win over the unconvinced on what was (and still may be?) considered by some a controversial subject. The article has since garnered some 25,000 document views on Academia.edu. Ellen Rooney and Elizabeth Weed ensured that an article on the Assassins and religious race (adapted from a section of ) in MLN . Cathy Davidson never failed to offer staunch support in creative ways.

Two residential workshops at the University of California Humanities Research Institute Theorizing Pre- and Early Modern Race, convened by Margo Hendricks and Karen Bassi, and Holy Wars Redux, convened by the unfailingly generous and illustrious John Ganim offered stimulating environments in which to develop hypotheses and draft chapters on early race. The Friedrich Solmsen Fellowship at the University of Wisconsins Institute for Research in the Humanities, two semester-long competitive leaves granted by the University of Texas, and the Winton Chair at the University of Minnesota also afforded important time to think and write among supportive colleagues.

Visiting lectures, keynote addresses, and conference plenaries created audiences for testing hypotheses and arguments. My warmest thanks to all who participated, especially the many wonderful graduate students Ive met, and also to (in chronological order): Carla Freccero and Sharon Kinoshita (UC Santa Cruz), Marc Schachter (Duke), Heather Love (Penn), Dan Donoghue and James Simpson (Harvard), Lawrence Wheeler (Portland State), Philomena Essed (UC Irvine), Leah Marcus (Vanderbilt), Kathy Lavezzo (Iowa), Julie Couch (Texas Tech), Tom Hahn, Alan Lupack, and Russell Peck (Rochester), Thomas Hanks (Baylor), Richard Firth Green and Ethan Knapp (Ohio State), Susan Noakes and Andy Scheil (Minnesota), Jonathan Boyarin (Kansas), Kathy Biddick (Temple), Jane Chance and Joe Campana (Rice), Suzanne Yeager and Nicholas Paul (Fordham), John Ganim (UC Riverside), Zrinka Stahuljak (UCLA), Bonnie Wheeler (SMU), Iain Higgins (Victoria), Donnalee Dox (TAMU), Neferti Tadiar and Chris Baswell (Barnard), Andrew Arnold and Andy Galloway (Cornell), Vincent Lloyd (Syracuse), Andrew Klein (Notre Dame), Elizabeth Voss (Virginia), Diane Wolfthal (Rice), Laura Doyle (Massachusetts), Sahar Amer and Hlne Sirantoine (Sydney), Chris Chism and Ali Behdad (UCLA), Nico Wey-Gomez (Caltech), Seth Lerer (English Institute), Gaurav Desai and Cathy Sanok (Michigan), and Christine Marie Pruden and Jillian Standish Patch (Medieval Institute).