IMC 2024: Sessions
Session 1741: Gendering Legal Bequests and Donations in the Medieval World
Thursday 4 July 2024, 14:15-15:45
| Sponsor: | Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study (AMIAS) |
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| Organisers: | Esther Liberman Cuenca, Department of Political Science, Criminal Justice & History, University of Houston-Victoria, Texas Alicia Walker, Department of History of Art, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania |
| Moderator/Chair: | Esther Liberman Cuenca, Department of Political Science, Criminal Justice & History, University of Houston-Victoria, Texas |
| Paper 1741-a | The Inheritance of Silver: Gendered Possessions in the Digest of Justinian (Language: English) Index terms: Art History - General, Byzantine Studies, Law and Women's Studies |
| Paper 1741-b | Contested Inheritances and Gendered Property in a 12th-Century Chinese Legal Casebook (Language: English) Index terms: Gender Studies, Law, Political Thought and Women's Studies |
| Abstract | The question of women’s economic power relative to that of men looms large in scholarship on the economic and legal history of premodern women. Historians often reference the maze of inheritance customs, which governed the acquisition and bequests of moveable goods and property, to elucidate women’s agency, status, and familial networks in these practices. If women were to acquire inherited wealth or to have the ability to bequeath property and donate generously to churches, were they limited or empowered by the legal systems to which they were subjected? This session brings together scholars to share global comparisons of inheritance practices across time and space, covering such cases as sixth-century Byzantine women’s silver possessions, twelfth-century disputes in China involving women and intra-familial violence, and late medieval Ethiopian aristocratic women, whose religious donations were similar to those of their men. |