Black Lives Matter in the English Archives: Revisiting Imtiaz Habib
This RaceB4Race roundtable brings together scholars from different disciplinary perspectives to celebrate and discuss the legacy and futures of a landmark work by a groundbreaking scholar in the field of Premodern Critical Race Studies, "Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible," by the late Imtiaz Habib. A vital intervention in archival praxis, methodological innovation and disciplinary possibility, "Black Lives in the English Archives" radically redefines the scope of scholarly possibility. These scholars will reflect on the legacy and futures of Habib’s work for their own and for the commitments and approaches of our field.
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Black Lives in the English Archives
"Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible" by Imtiaz Habib was recently made available in paperback by Routledge.
Imtiaz Habib was a Professor of English at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, USA. His previous books include "Shakespeare and Race: Postcolonial Praxis in the Early Modern Period" (2000), and "Shakespeare's Pluralistic Concepts of Character: A Study in Dramatic Anamorphism" (1993).
About the speakers
Lisa Barksdale-Shaw is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University. She completed her law degree at the University of Michigan Law School and her doctoral degree from Michigan State University. In 2016, Dr. Barksdale-Shaw worked in-residence on a post-doctoral fellowship as the Erikson Scholar for the Erikson Institute for Education and Research at the Austen Riggs Center in Massachusetts. She has published in Routledge’s “Material Readings in Early Modern Culture” series (2018), "The Renaissance Quarterly" (2019) and the journal, "Shakespeare in Southern Africa" (2020). Her scholarly specialization examines the narrative of justice, by combining several disciplines, including law, literature and medicine.
Jean E. Howard is George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University where she teaches early modern literature and theater history. Her books include "Shakespeare’s Art of Orchestration" (Illinois, 1984); "The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England" (Routledge, 1994); "Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories" (Routledge, 1997), co-written with Phyllis Rackin; "Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy 1598-1642" (Pennsylvania, 2007) and "Marx and Shakespeare, co-written with Crystal Bartolovich" (Continuum, 2012). A co-editor of "The Norton Shakespeare" (third edition 2015), she is completing new books on "King Lear" and on the history play in contemporary Britain and America.
Marisa J. Fuentes is the Presidential Term Chair in African American History and Associate Professor of History and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. Her publications include "Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive" (2016) and is co-editor of "Scarlet and Black: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History, Volumes I, II, & III" (Rutgers University Press, 2016, 2020, 2021) and "History of the Present" special issue: “Slavery’s Archive” (2016). Her most recent work appears in "Small Axe, English Language Notes, and Diacritics." Fuentes’s new research focuses on the transatlantic slave trade, racial capitalism and black disposability.
Lehua Yim, PhD, JD, is an independent scholar in San Francisco, CA. Her research on water law and Elizabethan “nationalism” in Shakespeare’s history plays, Spenser’s poetry, and prose chorographies is the focus of a book in progress. Her work appears in the cartographic history journal "Imago Mundi," the "Journal of American Studies" (on Hawaiian Shakespeare) and is forthcoming in "Literature Compass." She has regularly presented papers on contemporary legal issues in Hawai‘i and other topics at the intersection of politics and Indigenous Studies, especially the need for Critical Indigenous Studies interlocution with Premodern Critical Race Studies.
About the hosts
Urvashi Chakravarty is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto and an Executive Board Member of RB4R. She works on early modern literature, critical race studies, queer studies and the history of slavery, and her first book, "Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England", is forthcoming from University of Pennsylvania Press. Her work appears in "English Literary Renaissance, Shakespeare Quarterly, JEMCS, postmedieval, Spenser Studies," "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race, Shakespeare/Sex, and Queering Childhood in Early Modern English Drama and Culture." With Ayanna Thompson, she is co-editing a special issue of "New Literary History" on “Race and Periodization.”
Kim F. Hall is Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard College where she teaches courses in Early Modern Studies, Black Feminist Studies, Critical Race Theory and Food Studies. She is the author of "Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, Othello: Texts and Contexts andThe Sweet Taste of Empire: Sugar, Gender and Material Culture in Seventeenth Century England" (under contract with UPenn Press). She was Wanamaker Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2018 and is currently working on the project: "'Othello Was My Grandfather': Shakespeare and Race in the African Diaspora."