More Details

Summary:

"Devun CIP blurb The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of "hermaphrodites"-as individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender binaries were called-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 hermaphrodites. DeVun examines a host of thinkers-theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, poets, surgeons, and alchemists-who used ideas about hermaphrodites as conceptual tools to order their political, cultural, and natural worlds. She 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 hermaphroditism in early Christianity, its brutal erasure at the turn of the thirteenth century, and a new enthusiasm for hermaphroditic transformations at the dawn of the Renaissance. Along the way, DeVun explores beliefs that Adam and Jesus were hermaphrodites; images of "monstrous races" in encyclopedias, maps, and illuminated manuscripts; justifications for violence against purportedly hermaphroditic 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"-- [Provided by publisher]

Table of Contents:

• Intro
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction: Stories and Selves
• 1. The Perfect Sexes of Paradise
• 2. The Monstrous Races: Mapping the Borders of Sex
• 3. The Hyena's Unclean Sex: Beasts, Bestiaries, and Jewish Communities
• 4. Sex and Order in Natural Philosophy and Law
• 5. The Correction of Nature: Sex and the Science of Surgery
• 6. The Jesus Hermaphrodite: Alchemy in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance
• Conclusion: Tension and Tenses
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Color Plates

Author/Creator:

DeVun, Leah , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

The shape of sex: nonbinary gender from Genesis to the Renaissance [by DeVun, L.]

Other Related Resources:

Print version: The shape of sex [by DeVun, L.] (New York : Columbia University Press, [2021] — ISBN 9780231195508; LCCN 2020030685)

Subjects:

Intersex people — Europe — History

Sex — Europe — History

Gender nonconformity — Europe — History

Intersex people

Sex

Gender nonconformity

Europe

Genres:

History

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on: Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on May 18, 2021).

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

HQ78.2.E85 D49 2021eb

ISBNs:

0231551363 (electronic book)
9780231551366 (electronic book)
9780231195508 (hardcover) [Invalid]
9780231195515 (trade paperback) [Invalid]

Library of Congress Control Numbers:

2020030686

OCLC Numbers:

1269383348

Other Control Numbers:

EBC5763858 (source: MiAaPQ)
[Unknown Type]: ybp302067596