Writing Race Across the Atlantic World

Philip Beidler is Professor of English at the University of Alabama and has written books on early American Culture and the literature of the Vietnam War. Gary Taylor is Professor of English and Director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at the University of Alabama. He is widely published and is one of the leading figures of the cutting edge early modern cultural studies.

This collection of original essays explores the origins of contemporary notions of race in the oceanic interculture of the Atlantic world in the early modern period.This collection of original essays explores the origins of contemporary notions of race in the oceanic interculture of the Atlantic world in the early modern period. In doing so, it breaks down institutional boundaries between 'American' and 'British' literature in this early period, as well as between 'history' and 'literature'. Individual essays address the ways in which categories of 'race' - black brown, red and white, African American and Afro-Caribbean, Spanish and Jewish, English and Celtic, native American and Northern European, creole and mestizo - were constructed or adapted by early modern writers. The collection brings together a top collection of historians and literary critics specializing in early modern Britain and early America.