The Black Middle Ages: Race and the Construction of the Middle Ages By Matthew Vernon

The Black Middle Ages: Race and the Construction of the Middle Ages By Matthew Vernon

Tell us about your new book. What is its central project?

The book rethinks how the medieval is construed in terms of racial politics.

 

What got you started thinking about this set of problems in this way?

As a person of color who studies the Middle Ages, the question of racial politics as it informs our inquiry has always been apparent to me. This project allowed me to look at obscure and neglected material to present a counter-intuitive argument that upends many of our assumptions about a field of study.

 

If you could pair your book with one other text, what would you recommend? Why?

There are lots of books that I reference in this text that would be worth reading as a companion, but I have recently read W.E.B. Du Bois's Dark Princess, which is a fun entry point into the issues I raise. There is also a great new book out by UC Davis professor Mark Jerng called Racial Worldmaking that is excellent and explains a lot of the race and genre issues that are in the background of my book.

The Black Middle Ages will come out in September from Palgrave Macmillan. You can find it here.