Religion, Gender, and Culture in the Pre-Modern World

BRIAN BRITT is Associate Professor and Director of Religious Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA. He is the author of Walter Benjamin and the Bible and Rewriting Moses.ALEXANDRA CUFFEL is Assistant Professor of History at Macalester College, USA. She is the author of Filthy Words/Filthy Bodies.

• Introduction; B.Britt & A.Cuffel PART ONE: ANCIENT CULTURES Ethnic Curses as Last Resort of the Weak in the Hebrew Bible; B.Britt Nymphs, Sexuality, and Young Girls in Ancient Greece; A.Knoblauch Hercules in a Skirt: The Paradox of Victory in the Early Roman Empire; C.Barton PART TWO: MEDIEVAL CULTURES Queer Mediterranean: Queer Sexualities in the Medieval Arab-Islamic World; S.Amer Eunuchs and Amazons: Exploring Gender Diversity in Byzantium; K.Ringrose "The Sweepings of Lamia": Transformations of the Myths of Lilith and Lamia in Christian Anti-Jewish Polemic; I.Resnick & K.F.Kitchell, Jr. Hunters and Boundaries; S.Belcher PART THREE: EARLY MODERN CULTURES The Vain, Exotic, and Erotic Feather: Dress, Gender, and Power in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England; C.Howey Soothing the Savage('s) B(r)east(s): Women's Clothing and Covering in the Discourse of Colonialism; A.Knobler Becoming Jews: Slavery, Conversion, and Upward Mobility in Colonial Suriname; A.Ben-Ur Revolution and the Family: Christian Marriage Law and European Expansion; J.Muldoon Conclusions; B.Britt & A.Cuffel