Until fairly recently, most scholars distinguished the concepts of race and racism as strictly modern phenomena. Today, however, the study of the long pre-modern history of the emergence of “race” is a central focus in medieval and early modern studies. This seminar will explore the emergence of race in the Middle Ages alongside and in conversation with other categories of alterity, such as ethnicity, gender, and monstrosity. We will read texts such as Gerald of Wales, Topography of Ireland; The King of Tars; Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales; and Matthew Paris’s accounts of the Mongol invasions.