This chapter considers different metaphors for racial encounters in American Classics departments, and how they interact globally. Beginning with the APA ‘Minority Scholarship’ in the early 2000s, the chapter traces different approaches to diversifying the demographics of traditional Classics departments in the United States, and how the field has developed in new regions. How might the proliferation of Classics programs in Southeast Asia be read as diaspora, or be distinguished from a form of neo-colonialism? How do Classics programs in Asia or the Global South interact with local histories of race and colonisation? Combining historical and contemporary case studies, this chapter reflects on different potential models of ‘diversifying’ Classics in a variety of global contexts.

This chapter provides an overview of the entangled history between the discipline of Classics and the biological concept of race. Section I.1 outlines the emergence of problematic claims about the alleged White nature of Graeco-Roman antiquity from the modern era to the present day that have helped substantiate biological conceptions of race. Section I.2 examines scholarly work in critical race theory and early modern studies that offer more nuanced definitions of race beyond the biological. Section I.3 summarises work on the study of race in Classics, and Section I.4 discusses the contents of this Companion.

This chapter explores how considerations of private international law affected marriage and gender relations during the Mongol occupation of China, in the Yuan dynasty (1260–1368). I first address matters of jurisdiction and choice of law that arose in Yuan China and border areas when lawsuits involved non-Chinese. It demonstrates the willingness of Mongol Yuan officials to consider non-Chinese law in adjudication and how this process could be complicated by facts on the ground. The section reveals under Mongol rule a form of ‘transnational everyday life’, as other scholars have termed it, and the disadvantages that often accrued to women in these circumstances. Then I demonstrate how the Chinese encounter with Mongol rule and the resulting ‘foreign’ elements introduced into legal practice brought about changes in traditional, codified, Chinese marriage law. Finally, I address the Mongol use of strategic marriages in their interpolity relations both during the united world empire and in the Yuan dynasty. These interpolity marriage relations were crucial to Mongol successes during their conquests and in their efforts to maintain sovereignty over conquered peoples.

This chapter deals with the demography of race and ethnicity. It is mainly concerned with demographic issues pertaining to race and ethnicity, their implications and consequences. The chapter first discusses why demographers are interested in race and ethnicity. Next reviewed is the history of categorizing people according to race and ethnicity, and then how in the United States the statistical concepts of race and ethnicity evolved over time, from the 1790 census to the 2020 census. Current patterns of race and ethnicity in the United States are next examined, and it is shown how these groups differ in terms of the basic demographic processes, in particular, fertility and mortality. These topics are significant because the United States is approaching a time when there will no longer be any numerical majority racial or ethnic group.

This chapter explores how Messianics in Gambella understood their own Nuer ‘ethnic’ identity in relation to biblical genealogies. Some Messianics argued that Nuer are descendants of the biblical Cushite nation, while others insisted that they are descendants of one of the ‘lost tribes’ of Israel. The chapter explores this debate in light of longer processes of change in the conceptualisation of Nuer identity. The chapter shows how Nuer Zionists reinterpreted Nuer identity, known for its permeability and constructivist nature, in light of contemporary premillennialist Zionist notions of peoplehood, which emphasise ethnic fixity and focus on lineages, exclusive bloodlines and biological descent. The chapter shows how these processes impacted the way Nuer Messianics imagined their own ‘true’ identity and place in history and in relation to nation states, as both Nuer and Christian. The chapter offers a new perspective on Israelite identities in Africa and on the influence of born-again Christianity on the construction of ethnic identities.

This chapter reviews the history and development of Māori and Pasifika Englishes in New Zealand, focusing on both segmental and suprasegmental aspects of their phonetics/phonology. We review evidence that Māori English has higher pitch and more syllable-timed rhythm than Pākehā English, and suggest that a distinctive Māori English voice quality is not yet well understood. L1-type and L2-type varieties of Pasifika English are distinguished, highlighting the role of transfer in the formation of these varieties. The differences between Pākehā, Māori and Pasifika Englishes in New Zealand are a matter of frequency of use, rather than of absolutes, both in terms of the linguistic features and the social variables with which they co-occur. We problematise any straight-forward description of these varieties as revolving solely around ethnicity, given the interconnectedness of ethnic identities in New Zealand.

The interpretation of semen analysis results has undergone significant changes with the release of the WHO sixth edition manual, which abandons traditional reference ranges based on the 5th percentile of fertile populations. Historically, clinicians relied heavily on fixed reference limits to classify semen parameters as normal or abnormal, directly influencing fertility assessments. However, this approach has been criticized for its lack of global representativeness, biological variability, and limited predictive power for fertility potential. This chapter discusses the rationale behind abandoning rigid reference limits, explores the current role and limitations of semen analysis, and proposes new frameworks for interpreting semen reports. These include the use of percentile-based sliding scales to reflect fertility gradients and correlations with time to pregnancy, which better capture male fertility potential. The chapter also examines geographic, ethnic, and biological variability in semen parameters and outlines potential decision limits to improve clinical utility. Finally, practical recommendations are offered for clinicians to apply these concepts in patient management, emphasizing the importance of a nuanced, evidence-based approach.

Over a half century of sociolinguistic work has addressed various aspects of the speech of African Americans, often called African American Language (AAL) or African American English (AAE). While linguists were studying AAL for educational and theoretical linguistic purposes, demographic changes in the United States, including the Great Migration of African Americans, in combination with long-standing segregation, were creating situations in urban environments that helped establish and fortify what we know of as AAL in twenty-first-century America. The current chapter focuses on the twentieth-century development of AAL, using evidence from the Corpus of Regional African American Language (CORAAL; Kendall and Farrington 2021), a publicly available corpus of conversational speech, with data from several African American communities, including the Lower East Side of New York City (Manhattan), Princeville, NC; Rochester, NY; Valdosta, GA; and Washington, DC, to highlight the influence of the Great Migration on AAL and the development of regional sound patterns.

This chapter examines Canadian English from a nationwide point of view, complementing the regional views of the following chapters in this part. It begins with a brief statement of the current demolinguistic status of Canadian English, then reviews the history of English-speaking settlement that led to its establishment, growth and geographic diffusion. This review supports a discussion of the relation between settlement history and the most important linguistic features of modern Canadian English, especially its phonetic and phonological characteristics. A particular focus is on the relative contributions of eighteenth-century American Loyalist settlement and early nineteenth-century British immigration, as well as the later diffusion of those features to Western Canada. Examples of regional variation in vocabulary and pronunciation are then briefly presented, before the chapter concludes with a selective review of previous research on Canadian English.

Western Canada is emerging as a site of rich linguistic variation. Lexical differences are long acknowledged (e.g. bunny hug, jam buster), but distinctions in other grammatical sectors are less frequently reported. More recent work uncovering phonetic differences in key vowel sets, however, suggests that the West Coast (British Columbia) and the Prairies (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba) are not monolithic. We review the predictions of settler colonialism in the context of westward expansion and the rhetoric of widespread dialectological homogeneity in the literature on Canadian English. Recent research reveals that synchronic variation is primarily ethnic (local) rather than strictly regional. We conclude by highlighting the pervasive effects of settler colonialism in dialectological outcomes, while also highlighting the gains to be made by exploring diversity within local varieties.

Chapter 2 tells the story of how ethnicity came to be known in Kenya through territory, providing an overview of the history of ethnic territorial boundary drawing from its inception with the first colonial administration, to today. The principal motivation for the earliest hard boundaries between purportedly homogenous ethnic groups was to free up land for white settlement and capital accumulation. After independence, the administrative boundaries of provinces and districts were deliberately retained, and ethnic patterns of land settlement were engineered. With multi-party elections in the 1990s, these established ‘ethnic territories’ motivated electoral gerrymandering, the most significant postcolonial driver of ethnic territorialisation. All these practices cemented a profound connection between land, boundaries, identity, rights, power, and security. I show how the 2010 constitution worked within this paradigm, too, but in novel ways that moved toward vagueness to manage the inflammatory, grievance-based politics tethered to boundary drawing in Kenya. In doing so, I show how ethnic territorial population concentration today is less certain than commonly imagined.

This concluding chapter offers some final reflections on the nature of knowledge about ethnicity in Kenya. I argue that if the nature of this knowledge is purposefully vague and makes ethnic categories polyvalent, then the best way to protect against problematic uses of ethnic knowledge is vigilance. This is far less satisfying and reassuring than law or rights as a framework for governing the risks of diversity, but it is far more appropriate, and I briefly consider what this might look like. Finally, I look forward to the digitisation of Kenya’s population register and aspirations to establish a population knowledge architecture so sophisticated that it could render numerous registers interoperable and ultimately replace even the census. I reflect on the nature of ethnic classification in such an architecture and argue that it would lose all the qualities that have made it amenable to solidaristic and pluralistic purposes thus far, while amplifying all its dangers.

The only form of knowledge about ethnicity that officially and permanently attaches to individuals in Kenya is the register of citizens kept by the National Registration Bureau, which issues ID cards. In this chapter, I briefly trace the history of the ID card in colonial labour control practices (not civil registration), but focus on the deeply ambiguous role of ethnicity in registration over recent years. I show how there is a disconnect between the lack of a place for ethnicity in law or regulation surrounding IDs, yet its continued presence in practice. I then examine several cases of minority ethnic community leaders engaged in what I call ‘code seeking’, where they successfully lobbied for recognition as ‘tribes of Kenya’ as a path to securing ID cards – de facto proof of citizenship for people otherwise stateless. However, I also show that other people, in this example, the Galje’el people, a sub-clan of Somalis, have not been and likely will not be successful with this strategy. This chapter draws our attention to the benefits of both classification and vagueness, while remaining vigilant about their risks.

This chapter introduces the supposed problem of ethnicity: that it undermines national cohesion, or is a colonial hangover with no appropriate place in political life. In contrast, I argue that ethnicity is neither inherently desirable nor undesirable; its political effects depend on how it is known and used, and our understanding of how it is known remains underdeveloped. I establish that there is no definitive list of Kenya’s ethnic groups, and we must stop taking for granted what we think we know about ethnicity. I offer the concept of cultivated vagueness – a widespread aversion to resolving the ambiguity of lists of Kenya’s ethnic groups – to understand how ethnic knowledge works and to contrast it with legibility and governmentality. Cultivated vagueness is the response from bureaucrats, civil society, citizens and the state to the conundrum that ethnic knowledge is both common sense and impossible to settle. It also explains how ethnic classifications serve both projects of division and of pluralism. I suggest that attention to the benefits of cultivated vagueness may facilitate the advancement of the latter over the former. The chapter outlines the book’s methodology and chapters.