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In City of God, Saint Augustine takes the pagan claim that Christianity was the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire and flips it around, blaming instead the pagan’s moral and spiritual corruption as the cause of the downfall of the most powerful…

One proposed source of racial otherness that was relevant in the time period of Othello was the notion that the heat of the sun could “draw the blood to the outward parts” (Bacon 87). Because the sun is so much stronger in Africa than it is in most…

Knolles' The General Historie of the Turkes is important to the plot of Othello because it helps to explain the thin line that Othello is forced to walk throughout the play as a valued but marginalized character. The Turks were extremely feared and…

Visually, Theodor de Bry’s America perfectly encapsulates the innate racism of Othello’s time. Observers see armored Europeans, many of them on horses, holding guns and charging towards the indigenous population who are naked and armed with bows or…

Although the English slave trade was not really in full force until the 1640’s, it still plays a role in Othello due to Othello’s previous enslavement. Barker’s The Principal Navigations not only gives proof of the existence of slavery at the time to…