‘Diverse Progenies and Lineages’: Race before Race in Renaissance France

This talk discusses how French encounters with the people of West Africa and the Americas shaped French understandings of human nature and the meanings of human difference during the sixteenth century. It emphasizes the inconsistent, opportunistic, and contested nature of these ideas and reveals how non-Europeans themselves challenged claims of European superiority and sovereignty. 

Brett Rushforth is Editor in Chief of the Huntington Library Quarterly and a faculty member (by courtesy) of the Van Hunnick Department of History at the University of Southern California. He is a scholar of the early modern Atlantic world interested in the intersections of the African Diaspora, the Indigenous Americas, and French colonialism and empire. He is the author of Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (Omohundro Institute/UNC, 2012) and Beyond the Ocean: A New History of France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions (Oxford, 2025), which he co-authored with Christopher Hodson.

This hybrid event is hosted by Humanities Institute.

• For in-person attendees, refreshments and drinks will be provided.
• For online attendees, join by Zoom.

For a full listing of all the Humanities Institute events visit https://humanitiesinstitute.asu.edu/events