Kathleen Coyne Kelly – författare

How is history even possible, since it involves recapturing a past already lost? It is through this urge to understand, feel and experience, that films based on medieval history are made. They attempt to re-create the past, but can only do so through a queer re-visioning that inevitably replicates modernity. In these mediations between past and present, history becomes misty, and so, too, do constructions of gender and sexuality leading to the impossibility of heterosexuality, or of any sexuality, predicated upon cinematic medievalism. Queer Movie Medievalisms is the first book of its kind to grapple with the ways in which mediations between past and present, as registered on the silver screen, queerly undercut assumptions about sexuality throughout time. It will be of great interest to scholars of Gender and Sexuality, Cultural and Media Studies, Film Studies and Medieval History.

This book challenges the belief that female virginity can be reliably and unambiguously defined, tested and verified. Kelly analyses a variety of medieval Western European texts - including medical treatises and their Classical antecedents - and historical and legal documents. The main focus is the representation of both male and female virgins in saints' legends and romances. The author also makes a comparative study of examples from contemporary fiction, television and film in which testing virginity is a theme. Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages presents a compelling and provocative study of the parodox of bodily and spiritual integrity as both presence and absence.

This book challenges the belief that female virginity can be reliably and unambiguously defined, tested and verified. Kelly analyses a variety of medieval Western European texts - including medical treatises and their Classical antecedents - and historical and legal documents. The main focus is the representation of both male and female virgins in saints' legends and romances. The author also makes a comparative study of examples from contemporary fiction, television and film in which testing virginity is a theme. Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages presents a compelling and provocative study of the parodox of bodily and spiritual integrity as both presence and absence.

How is history even possible, since it involves recapturing a past already lost? It is through this urge to understand, feel and experience, that films based on medieval history are made. They attempt to re-create the past, but can only do so through a queer re-visioning that inevitably replicates modernity. In these mediations between past and present, history becomes misty, and so, too, do constructions of gender and sexuality leading to the impossibility of heterosexuality, or of any sexuality, predicated upon cinematic medievalism. Queer Movie Medievalisms is the first book of its kind to grapple with the ways in which mediations between past and present, as registered on the silver screen, queerly undercut assumptions about sexuality throughout time. It will be of great interest to scholars of Gender and Sexuality, Cultural and Media Studies, Film Studies and Medieval History.

Examining journal drawings as an integral—and often delightful—feature of Thoreau’s work In 1850, Henry David Thoreau began to draw in his Journal—a hedgehog’s quill, a locust’s wing, a goldenrod leaf. The sketches reflect his efforts to train his eye to observe more carefully, to look closely enough that he could see what was in front of him—with intention and attention. As Thoreau worked to combine the vivid language of a writer with the precision of a scientist, his drawings became more vital to the process. For him, writing and drawing were not separate activities; they were part of the same active, hands-on process of learning about the natural world. Thoreau’s Journal Drawings offers a sustained examination of an understudied aspect of the Journal, emphasizing visual as well as textual analysis. It places Thoreau’s illustrated entries in the broader context of nineteenth-century scientific illustration, nature writing, and visual culture, while also offering close readings of key passages in which text and image work in tandem. The book opens up new possibilities for interpretation—both within the Journal and in the larger project of Thoreau’s thinking. Ultimately, Thoreau’s illustrated Journal offers a case study in the complexities of representing the natural world through both language and image. His practice raises enduring questions about how we document, interpret, and mediate the more-than-human world across different forms of expression. To read the later volumes of Henry David Thoreau’s Journal without attending to his drawings is to overlook a vital dimension of his practice as both writer and observer.