Cord Whitaker

Cord Whitaker

Wellesley College

Medieval History and African American Studies

Statement: I currently research 19th- and 20th-century African American medievalism--in literature, history, and other disciplines--for my monograph The Harlem Middle Ages: Color, Time, and Harlem Renaissance Medievalism. W. E. B. Du Bois writes in 1903 that 'the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa [and] America….' My work aims to show that the modern racial color-line is also a time-line that defines yet transcends the divide between the Middle Ages and modernity—and one that Harlem Renaissance authors used to advance their clarion call for blacks’ equal claim to America’s cultural heritage, including its medieval literary and cultural past.

cwhitaker@ias.edu

While at IAS: Office: W-112 Phone: 609-734-8114

Member in Residence for: Year