Abstract: Scholars from a wide range of humanistic disciplines have recently taken up the task of investigating the long history of race in the premodern world. In doing so emerging subfields like Premodern Race Studies are providing alternative historical reconstructions to those offered by traditional historiography on race. Debates over the use (and disuse) of the term race in Classics and Early Christian Studies provide illustrative examples by which to analyze such debates. After examining some of these debates, this paper highlights the advantages of taking a genealogical approach to tracing the history of race. In particular, it makes an argument for excavating within certain early Christian texts the early layers of a history that would ultimately contribute to the production of Whiteness in the early modern period.
