This multidisciplinary collection interrogates how race, racial formation, and racism informed the intellectual landscape and social life of premodern Italy.
Reading race through an intersectional, decolonial, and critical lens, Mosaic of Difference probes how premodern Italians constructed notions of racial difference, envisioned race’s intersection with other markers of identity, and self-identified in relation to others. Contributions in a broad range of fields—including history, literary studies, archaeology, musicology, art history, and architectural history—place premodern Italy in dialogue with premodern critical race studies and explore topics such as the legacy of Roman identity in seventh-century Italy; representations of race in thirteenth-century Venetian mosaics and sixteenth-century papal villas; the papal Doctrine of Discovery in the Eastern Adriatic; the intersection of race and class in ducal Tuscany; white feminism and monstrosity in Italian epic; anti-Blackness in Italian drama and performance; race, religion, and ancient ancestry in views of the Ottomans; and race’s influence on periodization and the invention of Italian history. While shedding new light on how race and difference were articulated in the past across the Italian peninsula, this collection contributes to understanding the enduring impact of these dynamics in shaping modern discourses related to Western nationalism, imperialism, and racial capitalism.
