Critical Inquiry Critical Inquiry
Cord J. Whitaker works on the development of racial ideology and its intimate relationship with medieval rhetorical theory as well as the roles of popular and scholarly medievalisms in nineteenth- through twenty first-century racial politics. His Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) argues for the close relationship between race, medieval rhetoric, and modern politics. He is writing another book on African-American writers’ radical uses of medievalism and the Middle Ages in the Harlem Renaissance. Whitaker is also the editor of the award-winning postmedieval special issue Making Race Matter in the Middle Ages (6.1, 2015). He is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the Institute for Advanced Study, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among other organizations. He is Associate Professor of English at Wellesley College (E-mail: cord.whitaker@wellesley.edu).
