Sexe et genre dans l'Europe médiévale

Sex and Gender in Medieval Europe and the Middle East
Contributions to a Transcultural History of Concepts

Call for contributions
Panel at the DOT 2013

Veranstalter: Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft: Deutscher Orientalistentag 2013

Panel organisiert von Prof. Dr. Almut Höfert / Dr. Serena Tolino, Historisches Seminar Zürich

Datum, Ort: 23.09.2013-27.09.2013, Münster

Deadline: 17.03.2013

As a new historical approach in the late 1980ies, gender history often adhered to what was an established dichotomy - sex vs gender. The first, sex, viewed as an unchanging, biological marker; “gender” instead seen as the historically changing way in which men and women acted according to contemporary understandings of what it meant to be male or female. This opposition between “sex” and “gender”, however, has been challenged in a number of ways (e. g. by Judith Butler but also Joan Scott) and, at least theoretically, dismissed since historical research has shown that the biological category of what we recognize as “sex” was for the most part a product of the 19th century.

In the last decade, there has been much discussion of how we should analyse the way gender was perceived or represented in different time periods and in different geographical areas. This experimental panel will approach this problem inspired by the “history of concepts", thus enhancing the Begriffsgeschichte of Reinhard Koselleck on new transcultural and methodological levels. In so doing, papers should throw light upon the categories and concepts that were used in the medieval sources, both in Europe and the Middle East. How did contemporaries utilise such ideas to conceptualise cultural and physical differences between men and women? In this way, the panel seeks to address the full range of possible topics accessible through the medium of gender history; yet the session will place particular emphasis upon the specific concepts and registers that can be identified within broader narratives.

For example, papers could deal with gendered discourses within legal and medical texts, the comparisons made between male and female saints, young beardless men and women as common objects of the adult male gaze in love poetry or ambiguous figures like the mukhannath. The broad misogynistic discourse of how male superiority in different contexts was constructed remains to be fully explored both in medieval European and Middle Eastern history. We welcome papers on either European or Middle Eastern history or trans-cultural approaches. We will, however, not be able to provide any contribution for the registration fee or costs for travel and accommodation.

Please send your proposals (1-2 pages) including a short CV until March 17th 2013 to: Serena.Tolino@uzh.ch.

Kontakt: 

Serena.Tolino@uzh.ch.