Monday, November 10, 2025
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. EST
Location: Online (4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. GMT)
November 10, 2025
The Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2): Herod and the Racial Conflation of Jews and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern England
Event Series: Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference
The Massacre of the Innocents episode from the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew has inspired numerous literary, visual, and musical adaptations across a range of continents and languages, from the medieval period to the twentieth century. In this talk, Georgetown University Professor M. Lindsay Kaplan will analyze the depiction of Herod in Matthew 2 and follow some of its various adaptations to demonstrate the surprising incorporation of Muslim identity in portrayals of the Jewish King Herod in medieval English images and drama. This tradition continues into an early modern English dramatic convention that portrays a coordinated racialized Muslim/Jewish identity through the figure of Herod, with particular focus on Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice and Elizabeth Cary’s adaptation, The Tragedy of Mariam, The Fair Queen of Jewry.
This event is sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project and the Georgetown Humanities Initiative at Georgetown University with Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. It is part of the series Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference.
Participants
M. Lindsay Kaplan
M. Lindsay Kaplan is a professor of English at Georgetown University where she teaches courses on medieval and early modern English literature, focusing on questions of race, sexuality, and gender. She is most recently author of Figuring Racism in Medieval Christianity (Oxford, 2019) and editor of The Merchant of Venice: The State of Play (Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury, 2020). Her current book project traces the racial coordination of Muslims and Jews in medieval visual images and drama to demonstrate its continued influence on early modern English drama.
Michael Scott
Michael Scott (moderator) is senior dean, fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, college advisor for postgraduate students, and a member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior advisor to the president of Georgetown University. Scott previously served as the pro-vice-chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice-chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University, where he is professor emeritus.