Race in Antiquity, with Denise McCoskey
Abstract
It cannot be said enough that the Greeks and Romans did not view race the way we do today. Most notably, they did not use skin colour as a basis for dividing people into racial categories. In this podcast, Shivaike Shah talks to Denise McCoskey, Associate Professor of Classics and Black World Studies at Miami University, about what race meant in the ancient world. How - and why - was race used as a concept in Greek and Roman times? And how do discussions about the Greeks and Romans help us to interrogate our own modern understanding of race?
Bibliography
Open-source
Nathanael Andrade, ‘Voices in the Margins: Classics’ Suppression of Ancient Roman Writers of Colour’, Eidolon (2019)
Douglas Boin, ‘Enlisted, Enslaved, Enthroned: Who Was Allowed to Call the Roman Empire Home?’, Aeon (2021)
Sarah Derbew, ‘An Investigation of Black Figures in Classical Greek Art’, Getty (2018)
Denise McCoskey, ‘What Would James Baldwin Do Now? Classics and the Dream of White Europe’, Eidolon (2017)
Spencer McDaniel, ‘Were the Ancient Greeks and Romans White?’ Tales of Time Forgotten (2020)
Dan-el Padilla Peralta, ‘Barbarians Inside the Gate, Part I: Fears of Immigration in Ancient Rome and Today’, Eidolon (2015)
Warwick Classics Network, ‘The Evidence for Diversity in Roman Britain’
Winds & Waves, blog with a variety of articles exploring race and ethnicity in antiquity
Paywalled
Denise McCoskey, Race: Antiquity and its Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)