ANDREW SHAIL is Lecturer in Film at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, UK. He has published on male feminism in Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration (2004) and on the cinematic body in The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded (2005). GILLIAN HOWIE is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, UK, and Director of the Institute for Feminist Theory and Research. She is author of Deleuze and Spinoza: Aura of Expressionism (2002), editor of Critical Quarterly's special issue on higher education (2005), editor of Women: A Cult

• Notes on Contributors Acknowledgments List of Figures Introduction: 'Talking your body's language': The Menstrual Materialisation of Sexed Ontology; A.Shail & G.Howie PART 1: SCIENCE AND MEDICINE Menses in the Corpus Hippocraticum ; L.Arata Menstruation in Aristotle's Concept of the Person; G.Hiltmann The Art and Science of Menstrual Balancing in Early Medieval China; S.Wilms Flowers, Poisons and Men: Menstruation in Medieval Western Europe; M.H.Green The Secrets of Women (c. 1300): A Medieval Perspective on Menstruation; B.Bildhauer Menstrual Knowledge and Medical Practice in Early Modern France, c. 1555-1761; C.McClive Menstruation and Sexual Difference in Early Modern Medicine; M.Stolberg 'I believe it to be a case depending on menstruation': Madness and Menstrual Taboo in British Medical Practice, c. 1840-1930; J-M.Strange Embryological and Agricultural Constructions of the Menstrual Cycle, 1890-1910; H.Blackman Of Sex, Nationalities and Populations: The Construction of Menstruation as a Patho-Physiology; Z.Meghani PART 2: MYTH AND CULTURE Menstrual Misogyny and Taboo: The Medusa, Vampire and the Female Stigmatic; M.Mulvey-Roberts The Swan Maiden's Flight Over Time: Rituals, Fairytales and Matriarchy; J.K.Thomas Menstruating Women/Menstruating Goddesses: Sites of Sacred Power in South India; D.E.Jenett Medieval Responsa Literature On Niddah : Perpetuations of Notions of Tumah ; H.Ner-David 'Let Him Pass for a Man': The Myth of Jewish Male Menstruation in The Merchant of Venice ; A.M.Balizet A Menstrual Lesson for Girls: Maria Edgeworth's "The Purple Jar"; H.Robbins 'A rag and a bone and a hank of hair': The Menstrual Background of "the Vampire"; A.Shail Masking Menstruation: The Emergence of Menstrual Hygiene Products in the United States; S.L.Vostral Blood, Laughter and the Medusa: The Gothic Heroine as Menstrual Monster; R.Munford PART 3: APPENDIX A Guide to Bibliographical and Archival Resources for the Study of the History of Menstruation; A.Shail Index