The Whiteness Between Us: How Early Modern Theater Invented Racial Triangulation

In the 17th century, the stage functioned as a space for racial wish fulfillment, enabling participants to imagine and work towards a whiter future. In this era, Europeans were profoundly divided along religious and ethnic lines they could easily translate into racial difference, and their sovereignty was threatened by the Ottoman Empire. European theater became an important tool for whiteness to imagine itself at the top of an aspirational structure of power relations. It was to strengthen this emerging consciousness of racial whiteness that European drama engaged in a form of racial triangulation, fitting myriad characters— Muslim, Jewish, Indigenous, Romani, and Asian—into a spurious Black/white racial binary. Noémie Ndiaye (English, The University of Chicago) draws from her new book, The Whiteness Between Us, to show how English, Spanish, and French plays became a crucial tool to position not only Black people, but any non-white community, in the new racial architecture that white supremacy sought to build.  

This event is part of The Thirsty Scholar, a series that brings together our community of the curious for a glass, a chat, and a lecture. Come learn with us! 

This is the Crotty Lecture.