By Jonathan Hsy Jonathan Hsy is an Associate Professor of English at George Washington University, and his teaching and research interests span medieval literature, translation studies, and disability theory. He blogs at In The Middle (a group medieval studies blog) and co-directs the Global Chaucers project, a real-life and online community exploring Chaucer’s modern reception […]
In November 2015, English 291 students were asked to consider the history of physiognomy—the premodern science of deciphering a person’s character based on her appearance, including facial attributes, skin color, hair color, hairiness, motions, etc. For example, in the image above from Johann Caspar Lavater’s late 18th-century Essays on Physiognomy, Designed to Promote the Knowledge […]
Welcome to What Is Racial Difference? This is a site for asking what race consists of: is it color? culture? geography? This is a site for asking what race does: does it produce division and strife? define and maintain communities? create and uphold structures of inequality? provide a platform for passing down rituals and values? This is […]
