1st Edition
The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium
This Handbook is the first to consider the interrelated subjects of gender and sexuality in the Eastern Roman Empire from an interdisciplinary perspective. Drawing on both modern theories and Byzantine perceptions, and considering multiple periods and religions (Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, and Jewish), it provides evidentiary textual and visual material support for an analysis of the two linked themes.
Broadly, the essays demonstrate that gender and sexual constructs in Byzantium were porous. As a result, they expand our knowledge of not only how sex and gender were conceived and performed but also how ideas and practices shaped Byzantine life.
The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium will be an indispensable guide for students and scholars of late antique and Byzantine religion, history, culture, and art, who will find it a useful critical survey of current scholarship and one that shines new light in their areas of research. The focus on issues of gender and sexuality may also be of interest to individuals concerned with Eastern Mediterranean culture, as well as to the broader public.
Foreword: An Octogenarian Welcome
Judith Herrin
An Introduction: Gender and Sex(uality) in Byzantium?
Mati Meyer and Charis Messis
Part I. Gendering Thinking
Chapter 1 Framing Gender I: Scientific and Religious Discourses
Charis Messis
Chapter 2 Framing Gender II: Paradigms of Social Gender
Lynda Garland
Chapter 3 Reading Gender Variance
Roland Betancourt
Part II. Practicing Gender and Sexuality
Chapter 4 Section Intro: Contextualizing Gender in Byzantine Society and Politics
Leonora Neville
Chapter 5 Practices of Religious and Social Constructions of Gender
Damien Casey and Bronwen Neils
Chapter 6 Childhood and Gender
Béatrice Caseau
Chapter 7 Women and Trade from the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century: Some Remarks
Maria Gerolymatou
Chapter 8 Materiality Gendered
Brigitte Pitarakis
Chapter 9 Gendering Cooking: The Case of Mageiros
Ilias Anagnostakis and Maria Leontsini
Chapter 10 Gender, Sexuality and Marriage in Late Byzantium
Patrick Viscuso
Chapter 11 Gender and Extramarital Sexuality: Adultery, Fornication, Prostitution
Eleftheria Papagiannaki
Chapter 12 Gender and Transgressive Sexuality: The Case of Homosexual Practices
Charis Messis
Chapter 13 Gender and the Perception of the Ethnic ‘Other’
Anthony Kaldellis
Chapter 14 Judaism and Byzantium
Joshua David Holo
Part III. Performing Gender and Sexuality
Chapter 15 Section Intro: Configurations of Gender: Femininity, Masculinity, Sexuality, Same-Sex Love in Text and Visual Arts
Leslie Brubaker
Chapter 16 Fleshing Out the Sexed and Gendered Body in Art
Mati Meyer and Lora Ellen Webb
Chapter 17 Resurrected, Blessed, or Damned: The End of Time – Texts and Material Culture/Visual Art
Eirini Afentoulidou
Chapter 18 Gender (and Sexuality) in Byzantine Literature
Stratis Papaioannou
Chapter 19 Centaurs at the Wedding: The Desiring Gaze and Visuality
Diliana Angelova
Chapter 20 Gender in the Visual Culture of the Early and Middle Byzantine Imperial Court
Alicia Walker
Chapter 21 Negotiating Gender Identity through the Visual Arts
Maria Parani
Chapter 22 Gender and Fashion
Bente Kiilerich
Chapter 23 Gendered Emotions in Byzantine Narrative Literature
Stavroula Constantinou
Chapter 24 Gendering Emotion in Art
Henry Maguire
Chapter 25 Singing and Performing Gender in the Sacred Space: Music and Theatre
Przemysław Marciniak and Andrew Walker White
Redefining Gender in Byzantium: Future Directions of Research
Liz James
Biography
Mati Meyer received her PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is a faculty member at the Open University of Israel. She has published extensively in articles and a monograph and co‑edited books on women, realia, emotions, corporeality, gender and sexuality, and biblical reception in Byzantine art, including Emotions and Gender in Byzantine Culture, edited by Mati Meyer and Stavroula Constantinou (2018) and Between Judaism and Christianity: Art‑Historical Essays in Honor of Elisheva (Elisabeth) Revel Neher, edited by Katrin Kogman‑Appel and Mati Meyer (2009).
Charis Messis holds a PhD in Byzantine Studies from Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a habilitation from the Sorbonne University. He is now teaching Byzantine Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. His research interests concern Byzantine history and literature, especially the history of gender, along with other social and anthropological aspects of the Byzantine world. He is author and co-editor of several books and articles, including Storytelling in Byzantium: Narratological Approaches to Byzantine Texts and Images, edited by C. Messis, M. Mullett, and I. Nilsson (2018).
