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IMC 2026: Sessions

Session 211: Shaping Time, Shaping Self: Medieval Identities and Temporalities

Monday 6 July 2026, 14:15-15:45

Organiser:IMC Programming Committee
Moderator/Chair:Caitlín Kane, University College London
Paper 211-aBeguines, Cross-Dressing Saints, and a Stylite: Gender Transgression as Religious Devotion and Queer Temporalities in Oxford, St John's College, MS 182
(Language: English)
Joseph George Akl, Département d'histoire, Université de Montréal
Index terms: Hagiography, Lay Piety, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Monasticism
Paper 211-bCrusader Fragments and Archaeological Representation
(Language: English)
Megan Boomer, Art & Visual Culture Department, Bates College, Maine
Index terms: Archaeology - Sites, Architecture - Religious, Crusades
Abstract

Paper 211-a:

Hagiography expands the time and place in which a saint can exist. Oxford, St John’s College, 182 provides a unique lens through which to examine queer temporalities and sainthood. This codex groups the hagiographies of three thirteenth century beguines saints, two early medieval cross-dressing (some may say trans) saints, two gender-norm-challenging late antique saints, finishing with two short apocalyptic texts.

Examining the texts together in the codex unveils a strong narrative: while each vita alone might attempt to 'solve' the gender of the saint, together, they express a queer temporality – which uses the transgression of gender as a preparation for the End of Days. Examining these texts from disparate time periods through the lens of Queer Temporalities allows for a fruitful discussion on the interplay between the roles of the hagiographer and the codex’s compiler in regards to the text's audiences.

Paper 211-b:

In the 1870s, the nation of France and the Carmelite Order acquired rival claimants to the biblical site of Emmaus. Each had a twelfth-century church on the site, and the structures in Abu Ghosh and ‘Amwas showed how masons in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem presented a sanctified architectural past. Architectural and archaeological publications on Abu Ghosh configured the church’s “Frankishness” as a celebration of France’s colonial antecedents. This paper focuses on Abu Ghosh while comparing its medieval and modern temporal structuring to the rejection of ‘Amwas’ layered histories.