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ENGL 411: Premodern Gender & Sexuality

This course explores Medieval and Early Renaissance constructions of gender and sexuality, seeking to locate both continuities and discontinuities with modern conceptions and practices. While labels such as “gay,” “genderqueer,” “transgender” did not exist in premodernity, people imagined and engaged in types of gender shifting and polymorphous modes of desire that help us to understand the necessity for labile terminology to describe premodern gendered and sexual practices. Examining traditions from Medieval and Early Modern Europe but with some exploration of the Islamic Middle East, this course considers how various aspects of premodern culture, such as religion, celibacy, knighthood, courtly and tribal culture, marriage and family, class hierarchy, crossdressing, etc. shaped notions of gender and sexuality. Though examining theological, medical, and legal writings, moral guidebooks, chronicles, visual images, and literary works, this course will engage material from the early Middle Ages to early Renaissance period in dialogue with contemporary theoretical writing to articulate specificities of the premodern sex/gender system.