The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance - Couverture souple

DeVun, Leah

 
9780231195515: The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 0231195516 ISBN 13 : 9780231195515
Editeur : Columbia University Press, 2021

Synopsis

The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of nonbinary sex, focusing on ideas and individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender categories from 200-1400 C.E. Ranging widely across premodern European thought and culture, Leah DeVun reveals how and why efforts to define "the human" so often hinged on ideas about nonbinary sex.

The Shape of Sex examines a host of thinkers--theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, poets, surgeons, and alchemists--who used ideas about nonbinary sex as conceptual tools to order their political, cultural, and natural worlds. DeVun reconstructs the cultural landscape navigated by individuals whose sex or gender did not fit the binary alongside debates about animality, sexuality, race, religion, and human nature. The Shape of Sex charts an embrace of nonbinary sex in early Christianity, its brutal erasure at the turn of the thirteenth century, and a new enthusiasm for nonbinary transformations at the dawn of the Renaissance. Along the way, DeVun explores beliefs that Adam and Jesus were nonbinary-sexed; images of "monstrous races" in encyclopedias, maps, and illuminated manuscripts; justifications for violence against purportedly nonbinary outsiders such as Jews and Muslims; and the surgical "correction" of bodies that seemed to flout binary divisions.

In a moment when questions about sex, gender, and identity have become incredibly urgent, The Shape of Sex casts new light on a complex and often contradictory past. It shows how premodern thinkers created a system of sex and embodiment that both anticipates and challenges modern beliefs about what it means to be male, female--and human.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l?auteur

Leah DeVun is associate professor of history at Rutgers University. DeVun is the author of Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages (Columbia, 2009) and was coeditor of Trans*historicities (2018), an issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Columbia University Press
Date d'édition
2021
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
0231195516
ISBN 13 
9780231195515
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
336
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible

Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780231195508: The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0231195508 ISBN 13 :  9780231195508
Editeur : Columbia University Press, 2021
Couverture rigide