IMC 2017: Sessions
Session 1620: Hagiography beyond Gender Essentialism, I: Trans and Genderqueer Sanctity - Rethinking the Status Quo
Thursday 6 July 2017, 11.15-12.45
Sponsor: | Hagiography Society |
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Organiser: | Alicia Spencer-Hall, Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London |
Moderator/Chair: | Alicia Spencer-Hall, Institute of Advanced Studies, University College London |
Paper 1620-a | Medieval Trans Lives in Anamorphosis: A Pregnant Male Saint and Backward Birth (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Hagiography, Religious Life, Women's Studies |
Paper 1620-b | Imitating Saints' Transgressive Genders (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Hagiography, Religious Life, Women's Studies |
Paper 1620-c | Cistercian Nuns and Monks and the Limits on Gender Fluidity around the Year 1200 (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Hagiography, Religious Life, Theology |
Abstract | Hagiography is all too often assumed to be a place where gender essentialism festers, complete with claustrophobic gender roles. However, numerous scholars, such as Caroline Walker Bynum and Leslie Feinberg, have shown that saints routinely challenged the options offered to them by the gender binary. Saints could, and did, cross-dress; live as a gender other to which they were assigned at birth; and modulate their identity by blending traits traditionally coded as male and female. This panel seeks to develop the important work of these scholarly forebears, rethinking our current approaches to trans and genderqueer sanctity in the Middle Ages. |