The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2018) argues that the medieval period was not a pre-political, pre-racial era. Religion then (and now) – as much as science, in later eras – was selectively deployed to identify differences among humans that were essentialized as absolute and fundamental, distributing positions and powers differentially to human groups in practices that we would today call acts of race. The book has won numerous prizes including the 2019 PROSE prize in Global History, the 2019 Robert W. Hamilton Grand Prize, the 2019 Academy of American Religion prize in Historical Studies, and the 2020 Otto Gründler Prize.

Geraldine Heng is Perceval Professor at the University of Texas in Austin, and Founder and Director of the Global Middle Ages Projects (G-MAP): http://www.globalmiddleages.org Heng co-edits the University of Pennsylvania Press’s new book series, RaceB4Race: Critical Studies of the Premodern, and Cambridge University Press’s 40-title Elements series on The Global Middle Ages. She is also the editor of a forthcoming volume in the Modern Language Association of America’s Options for Teaching series, entitled The Global Middle Ages. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2018) is Professor Heng’s second book. Her third book is England and the Jews: How Religion and Violence Created the First Racial State in the West (Cambridge, 2019). Her new title for Cambridge, The Global Middle Ages: An Introduction, will appear in 2021. Heng is currently researching and writing a fifth book, Early Globalities: The Interconnected World, 500-1500 CE.

Free book copies are available to UConn faculty, staff, and graduate students.

Email Professor Fred Lee for book copies or WebEx links.

Sponsored by Indigeneity Race Ethnicity Politics/Political Science, Medieval Studies, and the Humanities Institute at the University of Connecticut.

Please join us for the digital campus visit of University of Texas Professor Geraldine Heng. The focus of the talk will be her recent book.

Her book, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, (Cambridge, 2018) argues that the medieval period was not a pre-political, pre-racial era. Religion then (and now) – as much as science, in later eras – was selectively deployed to identify differences among humans that were essentialized as absolute and fundamental, distributing positions and powers differentially to human groups in practices that we would today call acts of race. The book has won numerous prizes including the 2019 PROSE prize in Global History, the 2019 Robert W. Hamilton Grand Prize, the 2019 Academy of American Religion prize in Historical Studies, and the 2020 Otto Gründler Prize.

Geraldine Heng is Perceval Professor at the University of Texas in Austin, and Founder and Director of the Global Middle Ages Projects (G-MAP): http://www.globalmiddleages.org Heng co-edits the University of Pennsylvania Press’s new book series, RaceB4Race: Critical Studies of the Premodern, and Cambridge University Press’s 40-title Elements series on The Global Middle Ages. She is also the editor of a forthcoming volume in the Modern Language Association of America’s Options for Teaching series, entitled The Global Middle Ages. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2018) is Professor Heng’s second book. Her third book is England and the Jews: How Religion and Violence Created the First Racial State in the West (Cambridge, 2019). Her new title for Cambridge, The Global Middle Ages: An Introduction, will appear in 2021. Heng is currently researching and writing a fifth book, Early Globalities: The Interconnected World, 500-1500 CE.

Free copies of her book are available to UConn faculty, staff, and graduate students.

Contact Professor Fred Lee for book copies and/or WebEx links.

This event is sponsored by Indigeneity Race Ethnicity Politics/Political Science, Medieval Studies, and the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.

Topic TBD

Please join us for the third, and final, UConn History Department Foreign Policy Seminar of the Spring 2021 semester. Our latest meeting will be Friday, April 16. The speaker that evening will be sociologist Christy Thornton.

Thornton is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and a core faculty member for the Latin America in a Globalizing World Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. She also is the author of the new book, "Revolution in Development:
Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy." Professor Thornton's talk will discuss her book.

The seminar will start at 5 PM EST. A Q&A will immediately follow. It will be held on Zoom and here is the registration link:

https://tinyurl.com/FPS-Thornton

The United Nations has called the Rohingya “the most persecuted people on earth.” They have been stripped of their citizenship since 1982 and they are deprived of all human rights. The recent military coup and violent protests are killing civilians daily. Come and join the discussion with Dr. Ellen Kennedy to learn about key economic and geopolitical factors in the conflict as well as the legal efforts to prevent future violence.