@article{855737,
      recid = {855737},
      author = {Heng, Geraldine,},
      title = {The invention of race in the European Middle Ages /},
      pages = {xiii, 493 pages :},
      abstract = {In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages,  Geraldine Heng questions the common assumption that the  concepts of race and racisms only began in the modern era.  Examining Europe's encounters with Jews, Muslims, Africans,  Native Americans, Mongols, and the Romani ('Gypsies'), from  the 12th through 15th centuries, she shows how racial  thinking, racial law, racial practices, and racial  phenomena existed in medieval Europe before a recognizable  vocabulary of race emerged in the West. Analysing sources  in a variety of media, including stories, maps, statuary,  illustrations, architectural features, history, saints'  lives, religious commentary, laws, political and social  institutions, and literature, she argues that religion - so  much in play again today - enabled the positing of  fundamental differences among humans that created strategic  essentialisms to mark off human groups and populations for  racialized treatment. Her ground-breaking study also shows  how race figured in the emergence of homo europaeus and the  identity of Western Europe in this time.--Publisher  description.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/855737},
}