The Origins of Racism in the West

Miriam Eliav-Feldon is Professor of Early-Modern European History at Tel-Aviv University. Her previous publications include Realistic Utopias: The Ideal Imaginary Societies of the Renaissance (1982), The Protestant Reformation (1997) and The Printing Revolution (2000). Benjamin Isaac is Fred and Helen Lessing Professor of Ancient History at Tel-Aviv University. His books include The Limits of Empire: the Roman Army in the East (1990), The Near East under Roman Rule (1998) and The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (2004). Joseph Ziegler is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of General History, University of Haifa. He is the author of Medicine and Religion c. 1300: The Case of Arnau de Vilanova (1998).

• 1. Introduction Benjamin Isaac, Joseph Ziegler and Miriam Eliav-Feldon; 2. Racism: a rationalization of prejudice in Greece and Rome Benjamin Isaac; 3. The invention of Persia in classical Athens H. A. Shapiro; 4. Racism, color symbolism, and color prejudice David Goldenberg; 5. Early Christian universalism and modern forms of racism Denise Kimber Buell; 6. Illustrating ethnicity in the Middle Ages Robert Bartlett; 7. Proto-racial thought in medieval science Peter Biller; 8. Physiognomy, science, and proto-racism 1200–1500 Joseph Ziegler; 9. Noble dogs, noble blood: the invention of the concept of race in the late Middle Ages Charles de Miramon; 10. The carnal knowing of a coloured body. Sleeping with Arabs and Blacks in the European imagination, 1300–1550 Valentin Groebner; 11. Was there race before modernity? The example of 'Jewish' blood in late-medieval Spain David Nirenberg; 12. Religion and race: Protestant and Catholic discourses on Jewish conversions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Ronnie Po-chia Hsia; 13. Vagrants or vermin? Attitudes towards Gypsies in Early-Modern Europe Miriam Eliav-Feldon; 14. The peopling of the New World: ethnos, race and empire in the Early-Modern world Anthony Pagden; 15. Demons, stars, and the imagination: the Early-Modern body in the Tropics Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra.

Review of the hardback: 'The application of potentially anachronistic terms to pre-modern societies is the subject of ongoing debate; and the debate is at its most bloody when considering the interlinked concepts of ethnicity, identity and race. This new edited volume contributes greatly to both sides of the discussion, containing within its covers the full gamut of academic argument from detailed scholarly reasoning and masterful surveys of material to impassioned personal counter-attacks.' Bryn Mawr Classical Review