Leeds International Medieval Congress, 2018.
Sponsor: The Society for the Study of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages
Queer theory’s application to the Middle Ages has provided innovative new strategies for thinking historically about gender construction. Questioning how we look at the body and challenging prescriptive ideas about gender in the Middle Ages is essential to further existing discourses about gender, sexuality, and structures of power. This panel will advance discourses about gender construction in the Middle Ages by providing genderqueer readings of texts, image and artefacts.
New volumes are beginning to look at trans and genderqueer bodies and identities in the medieval period, with journals such as Transgender Studies Quarterly providing key insights into how we can identify queer subjects for study in the past. This session focuses on genderqueer topics, providing trans and non-binary readings of materials from the Middle Ages, and taking an interdisciplinary approach to readings of subjects and bodies that identify outside or beyond the gender binary. This panel invites papers from a broad spectrum of disciplines which offer new perspectives on how we can identify trans and non-binary narratives in the past, to create radical new possibilities for future research in the emerging field of transgender studies.
We welcome papers from all relevant disciplines. Papers may explore (but are not limited to):
-Theoretical discourses around non-normative bodies and identities in the Middle Ages
-Historical constructions of trans and non-binary narratives
-Scientific and medical approaches to trans and non-binary gender
-Trans and non-binary readings and analysis of literary texts
-Trans and non-binary readings and analysis of images and iconography
-Feminist and queer readings of trans and genderqueer identities
-The political and legal treatment of trans and non-binary subjects
-The intersections of race and gender identity in socio-legal contexts
-Analyses of power structures and the body politic with relation to trans and genderqueer identities
We particularly invite papers from under-represented voices, and welcome scholars from all backgrounds, including genderqueer scholars and scholars with disabilities. We are committed to ensuring that this panel is accessible; please feel free to inform us in confidence of any requirements you may have.
Proposals are invited for 15-20 minute papers. Please send abstracts of up to 300 words and a biography of up to 100 words, as well as a brief statement of any audio-visual equipment required for your presentation, to genderqueeringthemedieval@gmail.com by September 20th 2017.