Book ID: CBB499335303

The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance (2021)

unapi

DeVun, Leah (Author)


Columbia University Press


Publication Date: 2021
Physical Details: 336
Language: English

The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of nonbinary sex, focusing on ideas and individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender categories from 200–1400 C.E. Ranging widely across premodern European thought and culture, Leah DeVun reveals how and why efforts to define “the human” so often hinged on ideas about nonbinary sex.The Shape of Sex examines a host of thinkers—theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, poets, surgeons, and alchemists—who used ideas about nonbinary sex as conceptual tools to order their political, cultural, and natural worlds. DeVun reconstructs the cultural landscape navigated by individuals whose sex or gender did not fit the binary alongside debates about animality, sexuality, race, religion, and human nature. The Shape of Sex charts an embrace of nonbinary sex in early Christianity, its brutal erasure at the turn of the thirteenth century, and a new enthusiasm for nonbinary transformations at the dawn of the Renaissance. Along the way, DeVun explores beliefs that Adam and Jesus were nonbinary-sexed; images of “monstrous races” in encyclopedias, maps, and illuminated manuscripts; justifications for violence against purportedly nonbinary outsiders such as Jews and Muslims; and the surgical “correction” of bodies that seemed to flout binary divisions.In a moment when questions about sex, gender, and identity have become incredibly urgent, The Shape of Sex casts new light on a complex and often contradictory past. It shows how premodern thinkers created a system of sex and embodiment that both anticipates and challenges modern beliefs about what it means to be male, female—and human.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Biagio Mazzella (2022) Review of "The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance". Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (pp. 736-738). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB499335303/

Similar Citations

Book Greta LaFleur; Masha Raskolnikov; Anna Kłosowska; (2021)
Trans Historical: Gender Plurality Before the Modern (/isis/citation/CBB256213398/)

Book Basil Arnould Price; Jane Elizabeth Bonsall; Meagan Khoury; (2023)
Medieval Mobilities: Gendered Bodies, Spaces, and Movements (/isis/citation/CBB380024492/)

Book King, Helen; (2013)
The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence (/isis/citation/CBB001421664/)

Article M. Hicks; (2019)
Hacking the Cis-tem (/isis/citation/CBB071329740/)

Book Zubin Mistry; (2015)
Abortion in the Early Middle Ages, c.500-900 (/isis/citation/CBB831129518/)

Book Simons, Patricia; (2011)
The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History (/isis/citation/CBB001251131/)

Article Katharine Park; (2023)
The Myth of the “One-Sex” Body (/isis/citation/CBB629564037/)

Book Danijela Kambaskovic; (2014)
Conjunctions of Mind, Soul and Body from Plato to the Enlightenment (/isis/citation/CBB417702291/)

Book Salvatore Califano; (2015)
Storia dell'alchimia: misticismo ed esoterismo all'origine della chimica moderna (/isis/citation/CBB559415425/)

Book Enrico Giannetto; Giulia Giannini; (2009)
Da Archimede a Majorana: la fisica nel suo divenire (/isis/citation/CBB945473809/)

Book Priesner, Claus; (2011)
Geschichte der Alchemie (/isis/citation/CBB001220781/)

Book Bailey, Michael David; (2007)
Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present (/isis/citation/CBB001232135/)

Article Knox-Johnston, Robin; (2013)
Practical Assessment of the Accuracy of the Astrolabe (/isis/citation/CBB001421461/)

Thesis Newman, Catherine Rachel; (2000)
Graphic bodies: The writing of early modern gender and sexuality (/isis/citation/CBB001562591/)

Book H. Floris Cohen; (2015)
The Rise of Modern Science Explained: A Comparative History (/isis/citation/CBB557444466/)

Book Pierre Caye; Romano Nanni; Pier Daniele Napolitani; (2015)
Scienze e rappresentazioni. Saggi in onore di Pierre Souffrin (/isis/citation/CBB407685518/)

Chapter Cohen, Jeffrey J.; (2013)
The Sex Life of Stone (/isis/citation/CBB001201717/)

Chapter Giuseppina Ferriello; (2015)
La diffusione della meccanica di Erone in ambito iranico (/isis/citation/CBB462889172/)

Authors & Contributors
Meagan Khoury
Vincenti, Denise
Jane Elizabeth Bonsall
Kambaskovic, Danijela
Beneduce, Chiara
Masha Raskolnikov
Concepts
Sexuality
Gender
Gender identity
Arab/Islamic world, civilization and culture
Astronomy
Physics
Time Periods
Medieval
Renaissance
Ancient
Early modern
17th century
Modern
Places
Europe
Greece
China
North America
Italy
India
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment