SE17 – Resources for anti-racist scholarship and teaching for Early Modern French studies

The following list of resources for anti-racist teaching and research in the field of early modern studies is part of the Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies (SE17) concrete actions towards racial justice (see Statement & Resolutions). A heartfelt thanks to each and every contributor, and especially to Ashley Williard who provided a fair amount of the references displayed here.

This page represents the very beginnings of an ongoing work in progress. Please send resources and references for inclusion here by completing the form at the bottom of the page. Thank you for your contributions as we build this resource together!

List editors: Katherine Dauge-Roth & Christophe Schuwey

Articles, books and conferences (Criticism)

Aubert, Guillaume. “‘The Blood of France’: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World.” The William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2004): 439–78.

Aubert, Guillaume. “‘To Establish One Law and Definite Rules’: Race, Religion, and the Transatlantic Origins of the Louisiana Code Noir.” In Louisiana: Crossroads of the Atlantic World, edited by Cecile Vidal, 21–43.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Beasley, Faith E. Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal: François Bernier, Marguerite de la Sablière, and Enlightening Conversations in Seventeenth-Century France. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2018.

Boucher, Philip P. Cannibal Encounters: Europeans and Island Caribs, 1492-1763. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Boucher, Philip P. France and the American Tropics to 1700 : Tropics of Discontent? Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Boucheron, Patrick. Histoire mondiale de la France (2017) (trans. France in the World, 2019) – contextualizes colonialism and the slave trade in 17th century French history.

Boulle, Pierre H. “François Bernier and the Origins of the Modern Concept of Race.” In The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, edited by Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall, 11–27. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.

Boulle, Pierre H. Race et esclavage dans la France de l’Ancien Régime. Paris: Perrin, 2007.

Clark, Emily. Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727-1834. Williamsburg, Va. : Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture ; University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Cohen, William B. The French Encounter with Africans: White Response to Blacks, 1530-1880. Indiana University Press, 1980.

Curran, Andrew S. The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.

Coles, Kimberly Anne, Kim F. Hall, and Ayanna Thompson, "BlacKKKShakespearean: A Call to Action for Medieval and Early Modern Studies."

Dadabhoy, Amberdeen, and Nedda Mehdizadeh. “Cultivating an Anti-Racist Pedagogy,” Critical Race Conversations. Folger Institute, 9 Jul. 2020.

Daut, Marlene L. Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789-1865. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015.

Daut, Marlene L. Further publications: https://virginia.academia.edu/MarleneDaut

Daut, Marlene. L. Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Debate on Cervantes and Black Lives Matter: El Legado De Cervantes En El Espacio Público. Responding to: Cervantes y la materia de las vidas negras

Debbasch, Yvan. Couleur et liberté: le jeu de critère ethnique dans un ordre juridique esclavagiste. Paris: Dalloz, 1967.

Devyver, André. Le sang épuré: les préjugés de race chez les gentilshommes français de l’Ancien Régime, 1560-1720. Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1973.

Dieme, Joseph Claude. L'Inscription du Code noir dans la littérature coloniale et son évolution dans les littératures francophones de la diaspora. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences; 2007 Feb; 67(8): 2981. University of Iowa, 2006 Abstract no: DA3229655 UMI.

Dorlin, Elsa. La Matrice de la race : Généalogie sexuelle et coloniale de la nation française. Paris: La Découverte, 2006.

Doron, Claude-Olivier, L’Homme altéré. Races et dégénérescence (XVII-XIXe), Paris, Champ Vallon, 2016.

Dubois, Laurent. « Atlantic Freedoms. » https://aeon.co/essays/why-haiti-should-be-at-the-centre-of-the-age-of-revolution.

Dubois, Laurent. A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804. University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute, 2012.

Dubois, Laurent. Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. Metropolitan Books, 2012.

Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Harvard University Press, 2004.

Fleming, Crystal. Resurrecting Slavery: Racial Legacies and White Supremacy in France. Temple University Press, 2017.

Fouchard, Jean. Les marrons de la liberté. Paris: Éditions de l’École, 1972.

Eric Fougère, Les Îles malades: Léproseries et lazarets de Nouvelle-Calédonie, Guyane et Guadeloupe. Paris: Garnier, 2018.

Erickson, Peter, and Kim F. Hall, “’A New Scholarly Song’: Re-Reading Early Modern Race,” Shakespeare Quarterly 67.1 (2016): 1-13.

Fracchia, Carmen. ‘Black but Human’: Slavery and Visual Art in Hapsburg Spain, 1480-1700. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Garraway, Doris Lorraine. The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

Gautier, Arlette. Les soeurs de Solitude: Femmes et esclavage aux Antilles du XVIIe au XIXe Siècle.Paris: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

Ghachem, Malick W. “Montesquieu in the Caribbean: The Colonial Enlightenment between Code noir and Code civil.” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques; 1999 Summer; 25(2): 183-210.

Gliozzi, Guiliano, Adam et le Nouveau Monde, La naissance de l'anthropologie comme idéologie coloniale : des généalogies bibliques aux théories raciales (1500-1700), Lecques, Théétète, 2000.

H-France Salon Vol 9-Issue 19, "Addressing Structural Racism in French History and French Historical Studies."

H-France Salons – Vol 11-Issue 2 and Vol 12-Issue-1. "Race, Racism, and the Study of France and the Francophone World"

Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness : Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Hall, Kim F. “Beauty and the Beast of Whiteness: Teaching Race and Gender.” Shakespeare Quarterly 47, no. 4 (1996): 461–75.

Harrigan, Michael. Frontiers of Servitude: Slavery in Narratives of the Early French Atlantic. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.

Harrigan, Michael. Frontiers of Servitude: Slavery in Narratives of the Early French Atlantic. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.

Heng, Geraldine. The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Hudson, Nicholas. “From "Nation to ‘Race’: The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century Thought.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 3 (1996): 247–64.

Jablonski, Nina G. “The Evolution of Human Skin and Skin Color.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 585-623.

Johnson, Sarah Jessica. “Bras-Coupé,” a French to English translation with introduction. Transition 117 (May 2015): 23-39. Reprinted as “Louis-Armand Garreau, ‘Bras Coupé’ (1856)” in The Life and Legend of Bras-Coupé edited by Bryan Wagner. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019.

Johnson, Sarah Jessica. “Translating the Revolution from Haiti to Louisiana” in Caribbean Literature in Transition, Volume One: 1800-1920 edited by Timothy Watson and Evelyn O’Callaghan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In press.

Jordan, Winthrop D. White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Jouanna, Arlette. “L’idée de race en France au XVIe siècle et au début du XVIIe siècle.” Université de Paris - Sorbonne, 1975.

Juall, Scott. “Of Cannibals, Credo, and Custom: Jean de Léry’s Calvinist view of Civilization in Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil (1578).” FLS vol.23 (2006): 51-68.

Keevak, Michael. Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking. Princeton University Press, 2011.

Koslofsky, Craig. “Knowing Skin in Early Modern Europe, c. 1450-1750.” History Compass 12, 10 (2014): 794-806.

Koslofsky, Craig. “Superficial Blackness? Johann Nicolas Pechlin’s De Habitu et Colore Aethiopum Qui Vulgo Nigritae (1677).” The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 18.1 (Winter 2018): 140-158.

Lafont, Anne. L’Art et la race: L’Africain (tout) contre l’oeil des Lumières. Paris: Presses du réel, 2019.

Lafont, Anne. “How Skin Color Became a Racial Marker: Art Historical Perspectives on Race.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 51.1 (Fall 2017): 89-113.

Lamotte, Mélanie.“Colour Prejudice in the Early Modern French Atlantic World,” The Atlantic World, D’Maris Coffman, Adrian Leonard and William O’Reilly eds. Routledge, 2014. 151-171.

Lestringant, Frank. “Guillaume Postel et l’obsession turque, » Guillaume Postel 1581-1981 Jean-Claude Margolin (ed.), (Paris : G. Trédaniel, 1985), pp. 265-298.

Marvin, Nathan. “The ‘Ambroise Affair’: White Women, Black Men, and the Limits of Métissage in Revolution-Era Réunion.” French History 32, no. 4 (2018): 493–510.

Melzer, Sara E. Colonizer or Colonized: The Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture. Philadelophia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.

Melzer, Sara. “Une ‘Seconde France’? Re-penser le paradigme ‘classique’ à partir de l’histoire oubliée de la colonisation française.” in La littérature, le XVIIe siècle et nous: dialogue transatlantique, ed. Hélène Merlin-Kajman. Paris: Presse Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2008. 75-85.

Michel, Aurélia. Un monde en nègre et blanc: Enquête historique sur l’ordre racial. Paris: Seuil, 2020.

Miller, Christopher L. The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Trans. into French as Le triangle atlantique français: littérature et culture de la traite négrière. Trans. Thomas Van Ruymbeke. Bécherel: Les Perséides, 2011.

Miller, Christopher. « La traite des esclaves, la Françafrique et la mondialisation du français ». Dans French Global: Une nouvelle perspective sur l'histoire littéraire. Paris: Garnier, 2014. 365-87.

Mitchell, Robin. Vénus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France. University of Georgia Press, 2020.

Murphy, Tessa. “Kalinago Colonizers: Indigenous People and the Settlement of the Lesser Antilles,”.” InThe Torrid Zone: Caribbean Colonization and Cultural Interaction in the Long Seventeenth Century, edited by L.H. Roper, 17–30. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2018.

Ndiaye, Noémie. “‘Everyone Breeds in His Own Image’: Staging the Aethiopica across the Channel,”Renaissance Drama 44: 2 (2016)

Ndiaye, Noémie. “The African Ambassadors’ Travels: Playing Black in Late Seventeenth Century France and Spain”,Transnational Connections in Early Modern Theater, M.A. Katritzky and Pavel Drábek, eds. Manchester University Press. (In press)

Palmer, Jennifer L. Intimate Bonds: Family and Slavery in the French Atlantic. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Peabody, Sue. “‘A Dangerous Zeal’: Catholic Missions to Slaves in the French Antilles, 1635-1800.”French Historical Studies 25, no. 1 (2002): 53–90.

Peabody, Sue. “‘A Nation Born to Slavery’: Missionaries and Racial Discourse in Seventeenth-Century French Antilles.” Journal of Social History 38, no. 1 (2004): 113–26.

Peabody, Sue. Madeleine's Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets and Lies in France's Indian Ocean Colonies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Peabody, Sue. There Are No Slaves in France : The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancient Regime. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

PetitjeanR Roget, Jacques. La société d’habitation à la Martinique, un demi-siècle de formation. Lille : Service de reproduction des thèses, 1980.

Ramassamy, Diana. « Traditions orales aux Antilles Françaises. » https://montraykreyol.org

Regent, Frédéric. Libres et sans fers. Paroles d’esclaves. Fayard, 2015.

Rogers, Dominique, ed. Voix d’esclaves : Antilles, Guyane et Louisiane françaises, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles.Paris: Karthala, 2015.

Rushforth, Brett. Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France. Univ Of North Carolina Pr, 2014.

Sanders, Scott M. “Code Noir in Marivaux’s Theatre.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction; 2020 Winter; 32(2): 271-296.

Smith, Cassander L., Nick Jones, Miles Grier, editors. Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies. Palgrave 2018.

Spear, Jennifer M. Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

True, Micah. Masters and Students: Jesuit Mission Ethnography in Seventeenth-Century New France. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015.

White, Sophie. Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana. Illustrated Edition. Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

Willard, Ashley. Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, Forthcoming. https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/dllc/our_people/williard_ashley.php

Wood, Laurie M. Archipelago of Justice: Law in France’s Early Modern Empire. Yale University Press, 2020.

Conferences and Symposia

Race before Race in Early Modern Europe, symposium by Carmen Fracchia (author of Black but Human) in dialogue with Herman Bennett, whos publications include “African Kings and Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic,” sponsored by the Renaissance Skin working group, King’s College, London, September 18, 2019. https://renaissanceskin.ac.uk/events/race-race-early-modern-europe/

What’s Wrong with the Renaissance — Curriculum, Colonialism, and English?, a roundtable discussion with Shani Bans, Issa Islam, Farah Karim-Cooper, Wendy Lennon, Subha Mukherji, sponsored by the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, University of York, October 1, 2020 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/whats-wrong-with-the-renaissance-curriculum-colonialism-and-english-tickets-113082049454

Addressing Racism and Anti-Blackness in French and Francophone Studies, virtual symposium sponsored by the French Department at Wellesley College, September-November 2020 https://sites.google.com/wellesley.edu/addressing-antiblackness/schedule

Articles and books (Teaching)

Birkette, Mary Ellen and Christopher Rivers. Approaches to Teaching Duras’s Ourika. New York: Modern Languages Association, 2009.

Chávez, Alicia Fedelina and Susan Diana Longerbeam. Teaching across Cultural Strengths: A Guide to Balancing and Integrated and Individuated Cultural Frameworks in College Teaching. Stylus Publishing, 2016.

Daniels, Charlotte and Katherine Dauge-Roth. “Globalizing the Early Literature Survey: Challenges and Rewards.” French Review 93.1 (October 2019): 92-107 with syllabus available in accompanying on-line pedagogical dossier: https://frenchreview.frenchteachers.org/Dossiers.html

The authors would like to thank our colleague Hanétha Vété-Congolo for her tireless work over the course of many years to bring about the epistemic shift in our department’s approach. We thank both her and​ our colleague Meryem Belkaïd for their many contributions to curricular changes and course development. The course and the article would not have been possible without them.

H-France Salon, Vol 13, Issue 18 : “Race, Racism, and the Study of France and the Francophone World, Part III ” (on teaching).

Kingué, Angèle. "Aborder les questions raciales dans nos cours." The French review 94 (3): 81-86.

Conferences and symposia

Dadabhoy, Amberdeen and Nedda Mehdizadeh, “Cultivating an Anti-Racist Pedagogy,” Critical Race Conversations, Folger Institute, July 9, 2020.

Diversity, Decolonization, and the French Curriculum, virtual conference organized by Dr. Siham Bouamer (Sam Houston State University) and Dr. Loic Bourdeau (University of Louisiana, Lafayette), November 13-14, 2020 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/117350300909

Reading, Writing, and Teaching Black Life and Anti-Black Violence in the Early Modern World," TBA. With Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins University), with Cécile Fromont (Yale University) and Robin Mitchell (California State University Channel Islands)

Primary sources

Race Theories

Académie des sciences. Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences. Paris: Du Pont, 1702. 31–32.

Bernier, François. “Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l'habitent,” Journal des Sçavants (1684): 133–40.

Postel, Guillaume. De la république des Turcs. Poitiers : Enguibert de Marnes, 1560.

Renaudot, Théophraste. “Conférence CCXI: Des nègres.” Quatrième centurie des questions traitées ez conférences du Bureau d'Adresse. 321–24.

Riolan, Jean. Manuel anatomique et pathologique ou abregé de toute l’anatomie et des usages que l’on en peut tirer pour la connoissance et pour la guerison des Maladies. Lyon, France: Antoine Laurens, 1672. 106, 109.

Representations of Blackness

Anon., Tragédie française d’un more cruel

d‘Aranda, Emanuel. Relation de la captivité du sieur Emanuel d‘Aranda. Les captifs d‘Alger. Ed. Latifa Z‘Rari. Paris: Rocher, 1997.

d’Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine. “La biche au bois"

Belenus, René. L’esclave en Guadeloupe et en Martinique du XVIIe au XIXe siècle. Pointe à Pitre: Éditions Jasor, 1998. Collection of primary source documents.

[Bégon, et alii], Le Code Noir
1685, 1718, 1724: Gallica
1743: https://www.bnf.fr/fr/mediatheque/code-noir

Contes antillais of Compère Lapin such as:
« Comment Compère Lapin vient à bout de la balaine et de l’élephant. » Source: http://feeclochette.chez.com/Bryant/compere.html
« Compè Lapin et Compè Tigre. » Dans Cassius De Linval, Mon pays à travers les légendes, Contes martiniquais. Paris: Editions de la Revue Moderne, 1960.

Chrétien des Croix, Nicolas. Les Portugais infortunés [1608]. Théâtre de la cruauté et récits sanglants en France (XVIe-XVIIe siècle). Ed. Christian Biet et al. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2006. 711-804.

Corneille. « Argument », « Examen I », Andromède

Couderc, Frédéric. Prince ébène. Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 2003.

Duras, Claire de. Ourika: The Original French Text. Ed. Joan DeJean and Margaret Waller. MLA, 1994.

Digital Library of the Caribbean: https://www.dloc.com/

Du Tertre. Jean Baptiste. Histoire Générale des isles des Christophes, de la Guadeloupe, de la Martinique, et autres dans L’Amérique. Paris: Jacques Langois, 1654. Gallica.

Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste, Histoire générale (1654, 1667-1671)

Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste. Histoire Générale des Antilles habitées par les François. 2 vols. Paris: Jacques Langois, 1654. Gallica – Tome I – Tome II.

Exquemelin, Alexandre-Olivier. Histoire des aventuriers, flibustiers et boucaniers qui se sont signalés dans les Indes. Paris: 1699. Gallica.

The Haiti Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Eds. Laurent Dubois, Kaiama L. Glover, Nadève Ménard, Millery Polyné, Chantalle F. Verna. Duke University Press, 2020.

Histoire de Louis Anniaba, roi d’Essénie, Paris, 1740

Engraved portrait of Louis Anniaba (BnF Estampes)

Julia Prest’s editions of plays performed in Saint-Domingue. https://www.theatreinsaintdomingue.org

Labat, Jean-Baptiste. Nouveau Voyage aux Isles Françoises de l'Amérique. 6 vols. Paris: Guillaume Cavelier, 1722. Gallica.

Le Jeune, Paul. Relation de ce qui s'est passe en la Nouvelle-France en l'année 1634 (Paris: Sébastien Cramoisy, 1635). Monumenta Novae Francae. Vol. 2, Établissement à Québec, 1616-1634. Extraits dans l'éd. Lucien Campeau. Rome: Monumenta Hist. Soc. Jesus, 1967.

Pierre Le Moyne. Les Peintures morales (1640)

Marivaux, L’Île des esclaves (1725).

Online bibliography of fictions of the Haitian Revolution from 1787 to 1900 (by Madeleine Daut) http://haitianrevolutionaryfictions.com.

Opéra-comique: Le Code noir (1842). Music: Louis Clapisson. Libretto: Eugène Scribe. Based on a short story, Les Épaves, by Fanny Reybaud (1838).

Rochefort, Charles de. Histoire naturelle et morale des iles Antilles de l’Amérique. Roterdam: Arnould Leers, 1658. Gallica.

Témoignages enregistrés et transcrits: Bilé, Serge, Daniel Sainte-Rose et Alain Romain. Paroles d’esclavage. Les derniers témoignages. Saint-Malo: Pascal Galodé, 2011. 25-83 [extraits] et vidéo (39 minutes).

Tragédie française d’un more cruel envers son seigneur nommé Riviery, gentilhomme espagnol, sa damoiselle et ses enfants. [c. 1610]. Ed. Christian Biet et al. Théâtre de la cruauté et récits sanglants en France (XVIe-XVIIe siècle). Paris: Laffont, 2006. 555-591.

Voltaire, Candide [1759], ch. 19 [extrait], paired with Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations [1756] Édition numérique. Éd. Jean-Marie Tremblay et Jean-Marc Simonet. Chicoutimi, Québec: Bibliothèque Paul-Émile-Boulet de l’Université de Québec à Chicoutimi, 2001. [Extraits]: « Des îles françaises, et des flibustiers », tome III, ch. 152, p. 342 et « Des différentes races d’hommes », tome I, Introduction, ch. 2, p. 19-20.

Media, films and performances

“Esclavages et post-esclavages.” Le Monde, December 20, 2019.

"About Race" (Podcast): The antiracist renaissance

Rameau, Les Indes galantes, Opéra Bastille, 2019 Clément Cogitore et Bintou Dembélé, https://www.operadeparis.fr/saison-19-20/opera/les-indes-galantes.

Le passage du milieu de Guy Deslauriers (85 minutes), Les Films du Raphia, 2001, narré par Maka Kotto, texte de Claude Chonville et Patrick Chamoiseau.

Syllabi

Early Literature Survey, created by Bowdoin College Francophone Studies Section (Meryem Belkaïd, Charlotte Daniels, Katherine Dauge-Roth, Hanétha Vété-Congolo), available here.

Johnson, Antoine S., Elise A. Mitchell, Ayah Nuriddin. “Syllabus: A History of Anti-Black Racism in Medicine” Black Perspectives, August 12, 2020. https://www.aaihs.org/syllabus-a-history-of-anti-black-racism-in-medicine/

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