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Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

Alicia Spencer-Hall Blake Gutt Alicia Spencer-Hall Martha G. Newman Caitlyn McLoughlin Kevin C. A. Elphick Felix Szabo Sophie Sexon Vanessa Wright Lee Colwill

9789462988248
342 pages
Amsterdam University Press
Overview
Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography presents an interdisciplinary examination of trans and genderqueer subjects in medieval hagiography. Scholarship has productively combined analysis of medieval literary texts with modern queer theory – yet, too often, questions of gender are explored almost exclusively through a prism of sexuality, rather than gender identity. This volume moves beyond such limitations, foregrounding the richness of hagiography as a genre integrally resistant to limiting binaristic categories, including rigid gender binaries. The collection showcases scholarship by emerging trans and genderqueer authors, as well as the work of established researchers. Working at the vanguard of historical trans studies, these scholars demonstrate the vital and vitally political nature of their work as medievalists. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography enables the re-creation of a lineage linking modern trans and genderqueer individuals to their medieval ancestors, providing models of queer identity where much scholarship has insisted there were none, and re-establishing the place of non-normative gender in history.
Author Bio
Alicia Spencer-Hall is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London (UK). Her research interests include medieval hagiography, disability, gender, digital culture, and film and media studies. Blake Gutt is a postdoctoral scholar with the Michigan Society of Fellows (University of Michigan, USA). He specializes in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French, Occitan and Catalan literature, and modern queer and trans theory. Alicia Spencer-Hall is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London (UK). Her research interests include medieval hagiography, disability, gender, digital culture, and film and media studies.