Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

Wingard, Tess. "The Trans Middle Ages: Incorporating Transgender and Intersex Studies into the History of Medieval Sexuality." English Historical Review 138, 593 (2023): 933-951. Available open access: https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cead214

Abstract: "This article reviews recent work on trans and intersex history in the European Middle Ages, locating it within the established historiography on medieval gender and sexuality. It begins by surveying the three overarching themes in prior historical research on medieval gender and sexuality: identity, community and repression. Then, it introduces the context of the transgender turn in medieval studies, beginning in the late 2010s, by charting the origin of this sub-field and its rapid growth since 2020. It then outlines three key theoretical concepts underpinning its methodology: 1) gender is socially constructed and historically contingent; 2) likewise, biological sex is socially constructed and historically contingent; 3) all societies include people who transition away from their assigned gender, and, while these identities are no less contingent, they nevertheless constitute a valid subject for long histories of transness. Lastly, it argues that medieval trans and intersex studies contributes new perspectives and methodological approaches to each of the overarching research themes: 1) the lives and experiences of queer historical subjects such as Eleanor Rykener and Joseph of Schönau can be productively read through a trans lens, and trans historians’ focus on questions of agency and subjectivity provides a model for exploring queerness in the medieval archive; 2) trans historians’ arguments around community and mutual aid within trans case-studies revive the otherwise neglected historiographical topic of medieval queer networks; 3) trans historians demonstrate that medieval discourses around sexuality, gender and race are mutually constitutive, and significantly shape subsequent early modern European interactions with Black and indigenous societies." — [Reproduced from the article page on the Oxford Academic Journals website.]

Carns, Paula Mae. " Making and Unmaking Love in the Macclesfield Psalter." Gesta 62, 1 (2023): 3-19.

Abstract: "The fourteenth-century English Psalter known as the Macclesfield Psalter (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 1–2005) features numerous love scenes in the bas-de-page. Most appear at standard psalm openings below elaborate historiated initials, which usually frame scenes from the life of King David. This essay argues that these amatory motifs work in tandem with the adjacent biblical iconography to make pointed statements about the dangers of unsanctioned sex and lustful behavior. They achieve this through the choice of biblical event, new iconographic interpretations—of both the biblical and secular material—and various pictorial strategies. A comparison between the manuscript’s innovative love designs and stock motifs, such as on Gothic ivories and in manuscript illumination, reveals not only the inventiveness of the book’s designer but also an intention to manipulate this visual tradition for a specific purpose. Neither the book’s commissioner nor intended audience is known. This essay argues that an as-yet-unidentified woman in the orbit of the earls of Arundel and Surrey might have requested the book for a young man and that she worked with a Dominican advisor to create the book’s lavish visual cycle." — [Reproduced from the article page on the University of Chicago Press Journals website.]

Davis-Secord, Sarah. " In Battle and in Bed: Wanton Women and Women Warriors in Muslim and Christian Crusade Narratives." Gender & History 35, 1 (2023): 3-19

Abstract: "This article analyses the parallel representations of enemy warrior women as sexually profligate and inappropriately martial in selected Latin and Arabic texts from the period of the first three crusades (late eleventh to late twelfth centuries). Cross-cultural comparison of depictions of fighting women demonstrates that both cultures portrayed the other side as dominated, and thus undermined, by women who were unnaturally assertive in both sexual and military affairs. Both Muslim and Christian authors sexualised and militarised the bodies of enemy women in order to define which men were the strongest, best and most deserving of battlefield victory in the holy wars of crusade and jihad." — [Reproduced from the article page on the Wiley Online Library website.]

Garrison, Jennifer. "Speaking of Failure: Modern Masculinity and Medieval Confession." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 48, 4 (2023): 923-942.

Abstract: "Modern hegemonic masculinity often entails a focus on the past, a longing for an imagined time when men had more authority and power. I argue that this orientation toward the past stretches back to the Middle Ages. Specifically, the discourses surrounding medieval confession—the mandatory ritual of confessing one's sins to a priest—continue to shape how white men assert their own power and domination in modern North America. In Europe's Middle Ages, guides to confession encouraged men to assert their patriarchal authority by narrating their own past failures. Through an analysis of representative medieval penitential manuals, I show how confession became a discursive tool for men to imagine themselves in positions of social and moral superiority. This penitential tradition's continuing influence is particularly evident in North America's booming men's self-improvement culture and the growing nostalgia for historical versions of masculinity. By narrating the sins of their own past and their collective flawed past as men, North American men enact a modern penitential masculinity that does not undermine patriarchy but rather justifies their place as powerful men within it. Western patriarchy has long relied on a penitential model of masculinity that deploys men's past failures—both individual and collective—as a justification for future gendered domination." — [Reproduced from the article page on the University of Chicago Press website.]

Van Dyke, Christina. "'Lewd, Feeble, and Frail': Humility Formulae, Medieval Women, and Authority." Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 10 (2022): 1-23.

Abstract: "This paper argues that medieval European Christian women often used humility topoi not to express genuine lack of knowledge or education, but in order to establish themselves as authorities within contemplative philosophical discussions. Humility formulae were ubiquitous in such discussions and typically used by both men and women to provide an explanation of the text's larger purpose and a defense of the author's claim to write it, in addition to situating themselves respectfully with respect to their presumed audience. Women writers in this period frequently also employed humility formulae to foreground objections to their right to write on these subjects qua women, and then to explicitly address those objections in the voice of the only universally recognized medieval authority: God." — [Reproduced from the article page on the Oxford Academic website.]