Roland Betancourt – författare

A fascinating history of marginalized identities in the medieval worldWhile the term “intersectionality” was coined in 1989, the existence of marginalized identities extends back over millennia. Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in medieval thought and visual culture around sexual and reproductive consent, bullying and slut-shaming, homosocial and homoerotic relationships, trans and nonbinary gender identities, and the depiction of racialized minorities. Roland Betancourt explores these issues in the context of the Byzantine Empire, using sources from late antiquity and early Christianity up to the early modern period. Highlighting nuanced and strikingly modern approaches by medieval writers, philosophers, theologians, and doctors, Betancourt offers a new history of gender, sexuality, and race.Betancourt weaves together art, literature, and an impressive array of texts to investigate depictions of sexual consent in images of the Virgin Mary, tactics of sexual shaming in the story of Empress Theodora, narratives of transgender monks, portrayals of same-gender desire in images of the Doubting Thomas, and stereotypes of gender and ethnicity in representations of the Ethiopian Eunuch. He also gathers evidence from medical manuals detailing everything from surgical practices for late terminations of pregnancy to save a mother’s life to a host of procedures used to affirm a person’s gender.Showing how understandings of gender, sexuality, and race have long been enmeshed, Byzantine Intersectionality offers a groundbreaking look at the culture of the medieval world.

This volume explores the power of matter and materials in the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium. Recent attention to matter as dynamic and meaningful constitutes an emerging, interdisciplinary field of inquiry known as materiality, new materialism, or the material turn. Materials can be symbolic, but matter can also act on human subjects. This volume builds on these insights to consider the role of matter, materials, form, and embodied experiences in Byzantium. In many respects, Byzantine materiality represents a continuation of its Greco-Roman inheritance, which was also shared by neighboring peoples such as the Umayyads and Abbasids. But the Byzantines also developed their own, unique perspectives on matter and form, as with their parsing of the sacred materialities of icons, the Eucharist, and relics. Chapters in this volume consider the cultural meanings and functions of materials such as gold and ivory, the materiality of icons and relics, experiences of objects, as well as Byzantine philosophies of matter and form. Materiality takes center stage in Byzantine constructions of power, luxury, belief, and identity, which will be of interest to scholars and students of Byzantium and the wider medieval world.

This volume explores the power of matter and materials in the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium. Recent attention to matter as dynamic and meaningful constitutes an emerging, interdisciplinary field of inquiry known as materiality, new materialism, or the material turn. Materials can be symbolic, but matter can also act on human subjects. This volume builds on these insights to consider the role of matter, materials, form, and embodied experiences in Byzantium. In many respects, Byzantine materiality represents a continuation of its Greco-Roman inheritance, which was also shared by neighboring peoples such as the Umayyads and Abbasids. But the Byzantines also developed their own, unique perspectives on matter and form, as with their parsing of the sacred materialities of icons, the Eucharist, and relics. Chapters in this volume consider the cultural meanings and functions of materials such as gold and ivory, the materiality of icons and relics, experiences of objects, as well as Byzantine philosophies of matter and form. Materiality takes center stage in Byzantine constructions of power, luxury, belief, and identity, which will be of interest to scholars and students of Byzantium and the wider medieval world.