The Difference the Middle Ages Makes: Color and Race before the Modern World

The motives for gathering the present cluster of essays stem, in part, from the session "Race in the Middle Ages" that took place during the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo in 1996. The event, sponsored by the Teachers for a Democratic Society, featured Michael Awkward, then Professor of English and Director of the Institute for African-American Studies at the University of Michigan, and included a brief response by me. 1 Professor Awkward, an Americanist with little professional interest in medieval studies, had nonetheless agreed to address this session on race, presenting the lecture "Going Public: Ruminations on the Black Public Sphere." This session, in prospect and panic, and in retrospect and reflection, urgently raised the question for me as a medievalist, What's race got to do with it? What, if anything, does medieval studies have to do with racial discourses?