HIS 303 The Queer Middle Ages

Prerequisite: GSTR 210

This course examines how European, Byzantine, and Islamic societies conceptualized gender, sex, and sexuality during the medieval period (roughly 500-1500). Drawing on a variety of sources, we shall interrogate how norms of sexual behavior and gender expression were established, enforced, but also transgressed. Topics will include, but not be limited to, ancient and medieval scientific understandings of gender differences, religious responses to sexual behavior, medieval understandings of identity, and queer lives in the medieval world. In addition to examining what everyday experience in the medieval world might have been like from the perspective of social history, we will also be exploring larger structures and how to apply queer theory to medieval studies. Western History Perspective. African Americans’, Appalachians’, Women’s+ (AAAW+) Perspective. Noncredit for students who completed HIS 386 The Queer Middle Ages.