Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity

'Sarah Derbew's impressive first book is a carefully reflective study which is also provocative in the best sense, and a significant intervention in the field of classics. She untangles the vocabulary of race, ethnicity, skin colour and identity to let us see the vested interests and misrecognitions of modern scholarship - and offers a transformative vision of ancient Greek engagements with Africa.' Simon Goldhill, Professor of Greek Literature and Culture, University of Cambridge In Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, Sarah Derbew provides a radical and desperately needed reframing of Greek antiquity, weaving together a breathtaking range of ancient and modern sources to probe not only the complexity and richness of black presences in the ancient Greek world, but also the modern structures of thought, disciplinary training and even museum curation that have prevented us for far too long from seeing them.' Denise Eileen McCoskey, Professor and Affiliate in Black World Studies, Miami University, Ohio … ambitious and groundbreaking … Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity is proof that the future of classics is already here. It's simply waiting for everyone else to catch up.' Najee Olya, Los Angeles Review of Books '… an important and thoughtfully written book…' Jonas Scherr, H-Soz-Kult '[Derbew's] Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity (2022) is a sharp and sensitive exploration of the rootedness of our understandings in unexamined prejudices and - by means of a rich, ambitiously wide-ranging, and theoretically-engaged reading of black characters in Greek art and literature from the 5th c. BCE to the 4th c. CE - a powerful refutation of the invisibility, marginality, and inherent inferiority attributed to ancient black people by classical scholarship … An instant classic … [this book] is not just a book but a curriculum: its careful analysis of Greek art and literature … in dialogue with Black theory and literature offers the reader a pathway to disciplinary change which may be immediately implemented in a variety of pedagogical and scholarly contexts.' Hannah Čulík-Baird, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 'This is the first book-length study on Black people in the Greco-Roman world since Frank Snowden's works, which makes it a critical addition to the growing discourse on those racial dynamics.' Talawa Adodo, International Journal of the Classical Tradition