Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

The Color of Commerce: Racial Identity and Corporate Logic in Behn’s Oroonoko by Brandon Taylor

How did a seventeenth-century South American trading post become the blueprint for the prison system in the present-day United States?

Read "The Color of Commerce: Racial Identity and Corporate Logic in Behn’s Oroonoko"
by Brandon Taylor on The Sundial

medium.com/the-sundial-...

The Island of Hermaphrodites – Simple Book Publishing A scandal in its time and a revelation today, this fearless satire blends courtly decadence with political rebellion in an imagined world of unchecked power.

Happy pub day to The Island of Hermaphrodites, translated by Kathleen P. long.

Long offers new audiences a satirical romp through a world of absurdist power—one that feels politically salient today.

Access the full text for free online
asu.pressbooks.pub/the-island-o...

Throughlines — Race in the premodern classroom Created by field-leading scholars, Throughlines’ pedagogical approaches offer accessible and critical ways to incorporate discussions of race in the premodern studies classroom.

Tomorrow is August 🤯 is your syllabus ready??
Throughlines carries several exemplar syllabi to help inspire you for the semester ahead. We are also proud to announce new pedagogical resources from Patrica Akhimie and Geraldine Heng are now available. Start here: www.throughlines.org

"I work hard at not creating a narrative of totalizing war and despair." Geraldine Heng on teaching global premodern literature.
Be on the look out for more pedagogical resources from Heng coming soon from Throughlines.

Did you hear? Ayanna Thompson was elected as a fellow to the British Academy! Please join us in congratulating her on this accomplishment. www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/agm-wel...

👀 Is that our executive director Ayanna Thompson hanging out with the absolutely STACKED cast of The Public Theater's 12th Night??

Deep dive: Biopolitics and citizenship in Euripides' Ion

www.throughlines.org/suite-conten...

Who gets to be a citizen? How Euripides helps us think about birthright citizenship, reproductive labor, and race The legal battle to end birthright citizenship in the United States is more than a policy debate. It stands to r...

www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-ge...

One of the things that's at stake in the interweaving of citizenship and politics, in Athenian and Greek sources, is nothing less than the indexing of full civic identity to childbearing capacity:

If one cannot have children or chooses not to have children, can one even be a good citizen?

Birthright citizenship isn’t only a legal construct, but it’s also a reproductive issue. Any attempt to narrow who qualifies as a citizen necessarily burdens the women whose bodies become the contested sites of national identity. More from Dan-el Padilla Peralta on citizenship and biopolitics:

As I finished Shakespeare in Tongues in 2024, I could sense that my chapter on The Tempest and the 2012 outlawing of the Mexican American Studies curriculum in Tucson, AZ, would become increasingly relevant in this new era of epistemic violence, so I wrote a short piece about it for The Sundial.

Design and Discomfort What does it mean to teach Shakespeare in a world reckoning with racism and injustice? Explore new and innovative strategies for transforming discomfort into...

Happy pub day Design and Discomfort: Teaching Shakespeare and Race! Edited by Laura B. Turchi, this collection brings together educators and teaching artists who share innovative strategies for rethinking Shakespeare’s role in education. Published by ACMRS Press
acmrspress.com/978086698624...

What’s Past Is Prologue: Repression, Resistance, and the Present-Future by Kathryn Vomero Santos

"In giving voice to resistance in the face of dispossession and enslavement, Caliban disrupts the hierarchical, colonial world order that is invested in keeping him at the bottom and Prospero on top."

Read more from ‪@kathrynvsantos.bsky.social‬ new piece in The Sundial

June 6 is National Higher Education Day! With that in mind enjoy our dean Jeffrey J. Cohen on the importance of the humanities on a panel hosted by ACMRS and Higher Ed Dive titled, "Now More Than Ever: The Humanities of the Future"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXHt...

This ASU professor is adapting a 1688 novel written by a woman about abolition for the stage One of the Guggenheim Foundation's fellows is ASU professor Larissa Fasthorse, who is planning to use her fellowship to create a theatrical adaptation of one of the first English-language novels, "Oro...

"It makes me nuts that, so often Black and brown folks have to put their name next to Shakespeare's or another great white man to be considered, you know, legitimate, and you've made it. And I just didn't want that to happen."

www.kjzz.org/the-show/202...

From Shakespeare to Steve Carell: The life of a dramaturg | ASU News The smile on Ayanna Thompson’s face is a giveaway for the words that follow.“I have the best job in the world,” said Thompson, a Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, the executive...

“I have the best job in the world,” said Thompson, a Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, the executive director for the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and a theater consultant.

news.asu.edu/20250530-art...

Want to participate in the RaceB4Race Mentorship Network? Get your application in now! Deadline extended to 5/25.

forms.gle/EKwB26DGq7Md...

Don't forget to apply for the RaceB4Race Mentorship Network! Mentees visit with expert scholars in PCRS over two semesters to discuss career development, work-life balance, writing, publishing, and cutting-edge research happening within PCRS.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief Brilliantly Recontextualized by New Staging of Hamlet: Review A modern British production of Shakespeare’s immortal tale of madness and revenge brings out the underlying themes of Radiohead's most “political” album with the blessing of Thom Yorke himself.

"This project really doesn’t have any right to... make quite as much sense as it does. But it is an absorbing, heart-racing, and thrilling production that gracefully utilizes this music to co-exist within powerful dramatic depictions of grief, fear, madness, and death." pitchfork.com/thepitch/rad...

"False narrative framings in our culture have consequences." Watch Reframing the refugee narrative from Mayte Green Mercado on throughlines.org

www.throughlines.org/suite-conten...

Sagas and Sovereignty in Kalaallit Nunaat, Grænland, and Red, White, and Blueland by Basil Arnould Price

"What interests me about the scramble for Kalaallit Nunaat is not so much ahistorical appropriations of the Viking Age for right-wing nationalist politics ...but rather how the recent 'scramble' for Kalaallit Nunaat conjures the specter of medieval colonialism."

medium.com/@acmrs/76721...

False narratives about migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are nothing new. Teaching premodern migration histories can
contextualize the present anti-immigrant rhetoric. Find Mayte Green-Mercado's full talk and exemplar syllabi on Throughlines.

www.throughlines.org/suite-conten...

Immigration and Henry V

Happy Birthday, Shakespeare 🎉
In honor of the Bard check out Ruben Espinosa's thoughts on Henry V, immigration, and legacy as he asks, "Why should Shakespeare matter to us?"

www.throughlines.org/suite-conten...

The @acmrs.bsky.social RaceB4Race Mentorship Network was transformative for me last year - apply by May 15 to be part of the Fall 2025 cohort: acmrs.asu.edu/RaceB4Race/m...

Are you an early career scholar? Apply for the RaceB4Race Mentorship Network. 2-3 mentees are matched with expert scholars in premodern critical race studies. Discuss career development, collaboration, and publishing in the field of PCRS. Apps close 5/15

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Been working on something with ACMRS Press that will be unveiled at SAA (is that cryptic enough?!). Thoroughly recommend them for their ethical publishing principles and…well…just for being lovely people to work with generally!

Who's going to SAA? Stop by the ACMRS table to chat all things Throughlines and ACMRS Press.

Do you have a project you'd like to pitch directly to the press? Email editor and publisher Jonathan Hope at jrhope1@asu.edu to connect during the conference.

See you

Ruben Espinosa (left) a professor of English and director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, participates in a Q&A session with author Tommy Orange during the keynote lecture of the two-day RaceB4Race: Indigeneity event in Carson Ballroom at Old Main on ASU's Tempe campus. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU News

Last week, ASU English professor @ruben-espinosa.bsky.social facilitated a Q&A session with author Tommy Orange, who discussed writing & historical research at the two-day RaceB4Race: Indigeneity event at ASU.

Learn more: ow.ly/iA2V50V2oPr #ASUHumanities
CC: @acmrs.bsky.social

Ambereen Dadabhoy challenges students to read premodern portrayals of Muslim people and compare how those portrayals speak to contemporary anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racist rhetoric.

View her full video here on Throughlines:
www.throughlines.org/suite-conten...

So thrilled to have been asked by ACMRS to talk about early modern representations of Islam in English texts.