Intersections of Gender, Religion and Ethnicity in the Middle Ages

This volume advances the study of medieval gender, which in recent years has started to pay more attention to how gender intersects with other categories of difference, particularly sexuality but also religion and ethnicity, which are closely connected. It considers these intersections through a number of case studies from the year c.800-1500, with a particular focus on c.1050-1150. This was a time of much debate about the renewed emphasis on clerical chastity and its implications for the relationship between gender, sexuality, and authority. It was also the era of the First Crusade and its linked attacks on Jews at home. Each chapter in the volume suggests new ways of looking at key topics and debates, including the Herrenfrage, Orientalism, and postcolonial theory.

Cordelia Beattie is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She is the author of Medieval Single Women: The Politics of Social Classification in Late Medieval England and co-editor, with Anna Maslakovic, of The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c. 850-1550: Managing Power, Wealth and the Body.
Kirsten A. Fenton is Honorary Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of St Andrews, UK. She is the author of Gender, Nation and Conquest in the Works of William of Malmesbury, and a number of articles that focus on ideas of medieval masculinity.