Strangeness: Early Modern European Women and the Invention of Whiteness

Abstract

The Afterword to this EMLS Special Issue “European Women in Early Modern English Drama" contextualizes this collection in light of our continued scholarly and social investigation into the invention of "whiteness" and of a pan-European identity. It argues that texturing the flat surface of "whiteness" and "Europeanness" can enable us to "estrange" -- that is, to critique and de-nature, existing stereotypes surrounding race, sexuality, and national origin. It concludes with a call to further research and writing about the material or phenomenological textures of individual women's lives, as we can imagine them through literature and history.