Cord J. Whitaker, Graduate Student
Email Address: cord.whitaker@duke.edu
Specialties:
Medieval Literature
Education:
MA, Duke University, 2005
BA, Yale University, 2001
Research Categories: Chaucer; Medieval romance; Race, religion, and religious conversion in late medieval English literature; Writing by and for medieval women
Research Description: Cord's PhD dissertation, currently in progress, is entitled "Race and Conversion in Late Medieval England: Three Texts in British Library MS Cotton Vespasian E.16." Responding to scholars who have noted that race is subordinate to religious identity in the late Middle Ages, Cord argues that Christian conversion complicates a competitive relationship between religion and race. In some cases, conversion altogether disallows community formation on the basis of race while in others race is very much a contender for ideological dominance over religion. Cord argues that this is especially apparent in texts that seek to square English identity with the global outlook occasioned by the Crusades. In the dissertation, he explores three such texts that appear together in the fifteenth-century manuscript Cotton Vespasian E.16.
Highlight:
Cord examines religious and racial community formation in medieval English romance, paying particular attention to the ways in which religious and racial forms of identity converge and diverge in Middle English "cultural fantasies."