Description:
Race, in the early modern period, is a concept at the crossroads of a set of overlapping concerns of lineage, religion, and nation. Bad Humor charts how these concerns converged around a pseudoscientific system that confirmed the absolute difference between Protestants and Catholics and justified English colonial domination.
Review Quotes: "Uncovering how humoral theory entwines with philosophical and theological discussions of the relationship between body and soul, Kimberly Anne Coles makes clear that English Protestants rendered belief and non-belief heritable, and that this understanding of the heritable nature of belief was used to justify colonialism and the enslavement of Africans. Bad Humor provides important new insight into the racialization of religion in early modern English literature."-- "Dennis Austin Britton, The University of British Columbia"