The Black Middle Ages: Race and the Construction of the Middle Ages - Hardcover

by Matthew X. Vernon (Author)

Contributes timely research to join the fields of medieval studies and African American studies

Assembles an archive of texts to expand understandings of black studies

Promotes a transhistorical and comparative theoretical framework

Back Jacket

The Black Middle Ages examines the influence of medieval studies on African-American thought. Matthew X. Vernon focuses on nineteenth century uses of medieval texts to structure racial identity, but also considers the flexibility of medieval narratives more broadly in the medieval period, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book engages disparate discourses to reassess African-American positionalities in time and space. Utilizing a transhistorical framework, Vernon reflects on medieval studies as a discipline built upon a contended set of ideologies and acts of imaginative appropriation visible within source texts and their later mobilizations.

Author Biography

Matthew X. Vernon is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Davis, USA.